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Part I: Introduction
I.1. Rationale
I was born to a family whose members are all business people except me. My father used to be
a successful businessman who traveled all around the world from Asia, Europe, America to
Australia. After each trip, he told me about the places he had been to and about the people he
had met with vivid examples of their culture. From my father, I learnt about the beautiful
Singapore city and Copenhagen capital of Denmark whose people are very well aware of
keeping their city clean and green, about fast-food and the work-oriented and individualistic
people in California compared to the out-going and neighborly people in Texas, Louisiana and
Arkansas. My father has left in me the curiosity to learn about culture of the countries around
the world. Besides, my father and my brother were my first teachers of literature who blew in
me the wind of passion to study literature, moving my heart with the poem “Me om” by Tran
Dang Khoa, “Nguoi thay dau tien” translated from a Russian short story by a Russian writer,
“Chiec la cuoi cung“ translated from an American short story by O’Henry. These literary
works provoked in me the love for men, the understanding of the people, their culture and the
social circumstances in and about which the works were written.
I am now a teacher of English at Haiphong Foreign Language Center under Haiphong
University. For a teacher of English, having good knowledge of the culture and society of
English speaking countries is of great benefit since such experiences do help to make the
teaching and learning of the target language easier, more lively and vivid. It can not be denied
that the teaching and learning of a language would fail if the teacher does not have good
cultural and social background knowledge to explain to his or her students the situations in
which the native speakers use the language or the social circumstances in which the language
is used.
Once watching the “Sao mai diem hen” and “Bai hat Viet” competitions, the favorite music
tournaments of the Vietnamese on television, listening to most competitors singing all pop
songs, which originated from the United States, it came to my question that “To what extents
has American culture penetrated the Vietnamese?” Beside pop music, we can witness the
practice of American culture by a large number of people in our country, especially, by the
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young generation, through the way they sing pop, rock, Hip-hop songs, dance and dress in
American style with jeans and T-shirt, through the way we eat fast-food, drink soft drinks and
spend money, through the way young people think more practically about love and money and
so on. No one can say how much we have absorbed American culture, however, it is obvious
that American culture has more or less had an impact on the Vietnamese.
I have recently become interested in American literature, especially the short stories. When
reading pieces of literary work of this genre, I have in mind a clear mosaic of American
people, their culture and society. I find it very effective to learn about the culture and society
of a country through their literature since literature is the art of words made up from the “raw
material of life”. Reading literature not only provokes our thoughts and imagination but also
enriches our knowledge of the people, and aspects of the target culture and society.
The twentieth and twenty-first century have witnessed a breakthrough of American economy
as the United States of America has become the leading power of the world, and especially
witnessed dramatic changes in American society and culture. Literary works of this time in
general and the short stories in particular have done a good job to depict these changes in the
liveliest ways. Short stories do not require much time and effort to read. The reader can enjoy
the whole piece of a short story without interruptions or even without changing his or her
posture, therefore, he or she can have a more thorough and correct interpretation of the work
as well as of the cultural and social context in which the work is written.
I.2. Aims and objectives
Doing this research, I wish to gain an in-depth understanding of some aspects of American
popular culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through highlyappreciated short stories. Once at a time, I have chance to study both American culture and
society and a special cultural category, that is American literature in general and the short
stories in particular.
People may think that I am too greedy to “catch two birds with one hand”. However, I myself
acknowledge that this greediness is for the sake of my students’ advantages. When their
teacher of English has a thorough understanding of one of the target cultures, the students
would benefit. Instead of being taught about the language, they are explained about the
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cultural and social contexts in which the language is used. Thus, they could use the language
in a more natural way and, therefore, engage in language activities more actively.
I have always insisted that teaching literature in a foreign language is not for the sole aim, that
is to teach the language and the art of language to express the ideas, but it is for the greater
aim, that is to broaden the knowledge of the students of the target culture and society. With
such knowledge, my students would be more conscious of their cultural identity and practice
the target culture more selectively.
I.3. Scope of the research
Within the limitation of a minor thesis, I only discuss some of the most prominent aspects of
the culture and society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
such as individualism, American informality, racial discrimination, modern American women,
generation gap and American people in the turbulent ages. These are the features of American
culture and society that arise most prominently in the short stories I luckily came across.
The literary works used for analysis are the short stories written by recognized American
authors such as William Faulkner, Jesse Stuart, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Bernard
Malamud, Grace Paley and the new generation of writers including Charles Bowden, Tom
McNeal, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bobbie Ann Mason, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Nathaniel Bellows,
Julia Alvarez, Akhil Sharma and others. Besides, I include one piece of memoir and a literary
essay which I find helpful to support my discussion.
I.4. Design and methodology
The paper is divided into three main parts:
Part I presents an overview of the whole research, providing readers with the rationale, the
aims and objectives, the scope, the design and methodology of the study.
Part II is the development of the paper, consisting of two chapters. Chapter 1 is devoted to the
literature review of the subject matter which deals with the concepts including culture and
society, literature, short stories and other genres of literature, techniques in storytelling, and
short literary works and their portrayal of culture and society. Besides, the first chapter also
provides an overview of American society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Such
overview of American society, along with the theoretical background in the previous section
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are the bases for chapter 2, which discusses the main issues concerning aspects of American
culture and society in the 20th and 21st centuries reflected in the short literary works. The
explicative method is employed to exploit the cultural and social circumstances embedded in
the literary works since this research does not aim at studying thoroughly the techniques of the
writers.
Part III gives the conclusion of the whole discussion in part II along with implications for
teaching.
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Part II: development
Chapter 1: Literature
review
In this chapter, an attempt is made to clarify some basic concepts such as culture, society,
literature, short stories and other genres of literature including essay and memoir, techniques
in storytelling and moreover, short literary works and their portrayal of life . With the
understanding of such concepts, our discussion on some aspects of American culture and
society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through literature in the next chapter would
be more precise.
II.1.1. Culture and society
For many people, culture is an abstract and, therefore, it is very difficult to give a brief
definition of it. Nevertheless, culture is a very simple term to me. When we talk about Japan,
people think of cultural artifacts such as “kimono” “shusi”, “gheisa”, tea art, and the hardworking Japanese people. Regarding Vietnam, international friends discuss our charming
women in the “all revealing and all concealing” “ao dai”, “pho”, “Ha Long Bay”, “Hue
ancient town”, the street sellers and the brave and intelligent Vietnamese who won the victory
in our struggle against the American. Meanwhile, when the United States is considered, no
one can exclude their hamburgers and fast-food industry, the jeans, the White House, the
Statue of Liberty, the skyscrapers, Hollywood, the king of pop Michael Jackson, the king of
basketball Michael Jordan and the “golfing genius” Tiger Wood. These examples are to prove
that culture is not unfamiliar with us, but it is anything, both tangible and intangible, that we
have, we think and we do. As M. Thomas Inge and Dennis Hall pointed out in their book The
Greenwood Guide to American Popular Culture, “Man’s culture is the complex of all he
knows, all he possesses, and all he does.” (2002, xix) “All he knows” can be his knowledge
and ideas of life, science and his explanation of the relationship among people, their customs,
religion or so. “All he possesses” includes all his material property, his family, his relationship
with other people, his belief and values, his personality as well as his talent. And “all he does”
is concerned with either his material or spiritual activities. In the same light, Michael Kammen
in his book “American culture, American tastes, social change and the 20th century” identifies
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culture as “the way of life of particular people living together in one place. That culture is
made visible in their arts, in their social system, in their habits and customs, in their
religion…” (1999, p.8) What Kammen meant by the “particular people living together in one
place” is what we call society. In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, society is defined as
“people in general, living together in communities” or “a particular community of people who
share the same customs, laws, etc.” Such customs, laws and etc make up a culture. Culture and
society are closely related. We do not have two different societies with exactly the same
culture or one society with completely different culture. Let consider American society and
Vietnamese society. The two communities live in different parts of the world on different
continents. With different geographical features and history, each community develops their
economy in different ways, therefore, each country has a distinguished culture. With its origin
in water-rice agriculture, the culture of Vietnam is often regarded as community-based culture
whereas the American tend to develop their individualistic culture owing to their hunting, and
farming origin supported by developed industry. Within the American society, there are many
races such as white, black or African-American, American Indian or Alaska native, Asian,
native Hawaiian, other Pacific Islander and ethnic groups due to immigrations from all around
the world. However, when all these races live together in one united society, they share the
mainstream culture such as fast pace of life, individualism, informality, modernity although
their practice of these criteria varies in terms of degree.
II.1.2. Literature
II.1.2.1. Definitions
Before having a discussion about literature, I would like to spend some words for Earnest
Hemmingway, one of the greatest American writers, who I find some similarities with the
excellent writer Nguyen Tuan of Vietnam. Earnest Hemmingway and Nguyen Tuan, who
were restless, share the passion for traveling and writing about the people and places they had
been to. Hemmingway spent his whole life traveling all over America, Europe, Cuba, Africa
and wrote his masterpieces A Farewell to Arm when he was an ambulance driver for the Red
Cross in Italy during the World War I, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, For
Whom the Bell Tolls and Death in the Afternoon based on his experiences while living in
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Spain and joining the Spanish civil war. Meanwhile, Nguyen Tuan, who is claimed to be an
adventurer and a motionist of Vietnamese literature, gained great success in variety of literary
forms, one of which is essays (tuú bót) with the works such as Mot chuyen di (A Trip),
Vang bong mot thoi (Echo and Shadow Upon A Time), Chiec lu dong mat cua (The CrabEyed Copper Censer), Song Da (Da river) and others. These brilliant works are the result of
his never-stopped watching, listening, involving and writing.
The examples of Earnest Hemmingway and Nguyen Tuan are to prove that literature is the art
of employing language as a tool of symbolizing what the writer sees, hears, feels, involves in
and understands real life. A writer can not stay in one place all his life if he wants to sharpen
his senses for the production of literary works. As David Stuart Davies has appealed, writers
in general and story tellers in particular are the “magicians who can take the raw material of
life, enhance it and mould it into something that both entertains and provokes thoughts”
(2000, p. vii). This statement not only points out two of the many functions of literature and
story telling, that is entertaining and provoking thoughts, but also reveals the realistic basis of
literature. It is obvious that the ideas which inspire writers for a worthy piece of literary work
often come from real life. Therefore, it can be understood that literature is a tool for the
reflection of life and for the expression of viewpoints of the writers . Davies emphasized that
“True literature is not just there to entertain…it is there to help us understand ourselves and
the world in which we live that little bit better.” (2000, p. viii) As he suggested, a real literary
work does not only provide readers with pleasure but also helps to improve their critical
thinking of their own ways of life, their belief, their religion, which means their culture and
“the world in which ” they live in, which is the society . In the same light, Norman N. Holland
also stressed the roles of literature in providing readers with knowledge of the world and,
moreover, with approaches to their understanding that world. He insisted that “Literature is
not things but a way to comprehend things.” (as cited in Beaty, Booth, Hunter & Mays, 2002,
p. xxviii) What Holland meant by “things” here is everything in the world around us including
culture and society. Literature is not only concerned with problems of a culture and society but
also reveals how the writer deals with such problems. The writer approaches the subject
matters in one way and the reader may approach them in a different way but the thing is, the
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writer brings about his experiences and views of life for the reader to expose to, to compare
with and to sharpen his owns.
II.1.2.2. Short stories, memoirs, essays and other genres of literature
The classification of literary genres or types of literature is often based on many categories
including theme, form, technique, tone, length and others. Regarding the form, literature is
traditionally divided into three main genres including prose, poetry and drama. Prose is
distinguished from the other genres in the way the ideas are organized in paragraphs made up
of complete sentences. Short story is a sub-genre of prose. Regarding the technique whether to
use real or imaginary materials, literature comprises of fiction and non-fiction As defined in
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, fiction is “a type of literature that describe imaginary
people and events, not real ones”. The characters and events are invented to promote the
writer’s point of view or ideology about life. However, there is still some real in fiction. As I
have said in the definition of literature, a piece of literary works is made up from the “raw
materials of life”. Therefore, there must be something true in the work. The “something” here
can be either the social context or the features of the characters which resemble ones in the
real life. This genre comprises short stories, novels, poetry, dramas and others.
On the contrary, non-fiction, the broadest “category” of literature is a type of writing about
real subjects although the characters or events can be imaginative or invented. “Under this
umbrella term come autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, essays, speeches,
travelogues, news articles and many more types of writing.” (as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p.
422)
The genres of literature used in this study are primarily short stories supported by a memoir
and a literary essay.
II.1.2.2.1 Short stories
As the term itself suggests short stories are pieces of writing which are short. However, what
is the criterion to say that one work is short and the other is long. In the Preface of the book
Fiction – An Introduction to the Short Story, Jane Bachman Gordon and Karen Kuehner
(1999) argue that a short story often contains around five hundred words. Those contain much
less than five hundred words are considered short-short stories. And if a story is made up of
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about fifteen thousand words, people call it a novella, a short novel. However, what is counted
here is not only the matter of the length of a story. Edgar Allan Poe described a short story as
“a short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal.” (as
cited in Gordon & Kuehner, 1999, p. vii).
Regarding the form of a short story, Robert DiYanni pointed out: “Short stories…typically
reveal character in dramatic scenes, in moments of action, and in exchanges of dialogue.”
From the scenes, the moments of action and what the characters speak to each other, the
readers can understand the characters, which contribute to the understanding of the underlying
ideas of the author as well as the cultural features and social aspects of the time.
Like other types of story, a short story consists of five elements:
-
Setting is the time and place in which the story takes place. The setting here means
either the physical environment or the belief, values, ideas, traditions and customs.
-
Characters are the people, animals or anything that the writer chooses to act in the
story. The main character is called the protagonist and the other characters that
support the conflict of the story are the antagonists.
-
Point of View is the “vantage point” of the author from which the story is told. This
“vantage point” can be depicted from the first person stand (The first person is the
narrator named “I” or “me” that tells the story.) or the third person stand (The third
person can either be an omniscient narrator who knows everything that happens or a
limited narrator who is the outsider of the events and describes from the points of view
of one character in the story.)
-
Theme is the message of the story that the author wants to send to readers. The
message is often about human behavior and relationship, human nature, conflicts in the
society and the solution and so on. The theme can be explicitly stated or implicitly
presented, which encourages readers to consider all the elements of the story in order
to infer the message.
-
Plot is the sequences of related events which help conveying the theme and the point
of view. A plot is often developed in five stages: exposition, which provides
introductory information for the setting, the characters and the conflict; rising action,
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which develops and complicates the conflicts, which then leads to the climax – the
highest emotional or turning point of the story; falling action – the action that the
characters do after the climax, which brings about the resolution which deals with
how the conflicts are resolved.
Let consider an example with the short - short story “Snow” by Julia Alvarez, a recognized
Dominican - American fiction writer (as cited in Chin. et al, 2002, p. 1032)
“I”
–
an
immigrant, spent
her first year in
New
York
studying at a
Catholic school
Exposition
“I” learnt
the
first
new words
including
snow
“I” had airraid
drills
and
learnt
about
nuclear
bomb,
radioactive
fallout and
bomb shelter
Her
teacher
drew a
picture
dotted a
flurry of
chark
marks to
illustrate
the dusty
fallout that
would kill
them
Rising actions
“I” shrieked
“Bomb!
Bomb!” seeing
the sky dotted
with snow
The
teacher
Climax told “I”
that it is
snow, not
bomb
“I” watched the
snow and found
each snowflake
irreplaceable
and beautiful,
like a person,.
Falling action Resolution
As seen from the diagram, the climax is drawn from a number of rising actions and after the
climax come a falling action which perform a lead to the resolution, which indicates the theme
- the message the writer wishes to present to readers, that is the value of life, which should be
highly considered. The climax of this short story, which is the extreme anxiety of the young
immigrated girl when mistaking snow for bomb, was not only the suffering of a single
character in the story but of a number of real American people during the nuclear age in the
1960s. Although their characters, actions and dialogues can be invented, short stories often
portray real cultural and social subject matters.
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II.1.2.2.2. Essays
As our common knowledge, essay, one of the most common types of non – fiction, is a short
piece of writing dealt with a chosen topic which can be of social or cultural issues, personal
conflicts and perception of the world, interpersonal relation and many other subjects.
There are two main kinds of essay: narrative and informative. Narrative essays are short
writings devoted to true stories told from either the first person or the third person point of
view. While a short story has to do with unreal people and things, a narrative essay focuses on
real people and events. However, in some essays, writer employs some imaginary and creative
elements to promote a true story. Informative essays are divided into two main kinds:
expository essay which describes a single issue such as discrimination, American fashion,
American women and persuasive essay or argumentative essay which supports an opinion.
The main objective is to persuade readers to share a common point of view with the writer by
offering facts and real-life situations which promote the main argument. Most of informative
essays develop into three stages: The introduction or lead introduces the topic to readers by
using a topic sentence or in other words, a thesis statement, which can either be implied or
explicit. In some essays, a thesis statement may come at the end. The body develops the topic
with a number of supporting details or ideas, from statistics, tables and charts or facts,
personal observations and experience to legal documents. The conclusion provides a summary
of the main points discussed in the body. At the same time, the writer brings readers back to
the thesis statement which has been drawn in the introduction.
II.1.2.2.3. Memoirs
A memoir is a personal “account” of the events of the author’s life in the past. In many books
they use autobiography for a memoir. Nevertheless, the two terms represent two different
forms of writing. While an autobiography is a personal “account” of the writer’s entire life up
to the time followed a chronological order, a memoir tells an “episode” of the whole life of the
author, focusing on particular events or facts in a particular period of the author’s life.
A memoir is a combination of the writer’s memory and his thoughts and feelings about the
incidents described. These thoughts and feeling may not be stated directly but implied in the
interaction and actions of the characters. Most commonly, a memoir is written from the stand
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of the first person. A small number of memoirs are written in the third-person to increase the
objectiveness of the amount of narration.
There are two main types of memoirs including personal memoirs and historical memoirs.
As a personal observations of, thoughts of and feelings about the writer’s own life, a personal
memoir is more subjective. Whereas a historical memoir tends to describe historical facts and
events on a more objective stand.
Elements of a memoir are, like a short story, settings, characters, points of view, theme and
plot with conflicts, which may not lead to a climax or require a resolution as in short story.
Besides, a memoir, like an essay is often made up of three parts, introduction, body and
conclusion
II.1.2.3. Some techniques in storytelling
Technique is one of the five major elements of storytelling in association with plot, theme,
point of view, character and setting. Technique has to do with the structuring of the story into
the plot so that the writer can convey the theme and the manipulating of the language in order
to express the ideas of the writer in the most effective way. Hereby, I take into consideration
some of the most popular techniques which have been used so far:
-
Flash-back or “replay” of scenes or events. As Beverly Ann Chin defines it, “Flashback is a portion of a story that interrupts the chronological sequences of events to
describe what happened earlier.” (Chin, et al., 2002, p. 813). This technique provides
readers with the background of a setting, an event or a character.
-
Foreshadowing is considered opposite with flash-back as it “gives hints or clues that
suggest or prepare the reader for events that occur later in a work.” (Gordon &
Kuehner, 1999, p. 5). However, the writer must be careful when employing this
technique because too apparent hints or clues may result in boredom for the readers as
they can speculate exactly the ending of the story in early stages.
-
Coincidence is the arrangement of time and place for two characters to meet or two
events to take place at the same time. As Gordon and Kuehner point out coincidence is
“the chance occurrence of two things at the same time or place to denote the working
of Fate in a person’s life.” (Gordon & Kuehner, 1999, p. 6)
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-
Indirect characterization is a technique utilized to develop a character. The writer
does not present the personalities of the character in a direct way but readers can learn
what kind of personalities the character is through the words or actions of the character
himself or herself, or through what the narrator or the other characters say about him or
her.
-
Foil is a character used to contrast with a second character in order to highlight the
qualities of the second character. (Chin, et al., 2002, p. 872) This is an effective
technique as it helps readers identify the main character more easily.
-
Sarcasm, known as satire or irony is a kind of humor in storytelling that uses bitter or
“caustic” language for the portrayal of a negative character.
All the techniques employed are to generate the curiosity –the desire to know what is
happening and what is going to happen next or, moreover, the suspense of readers – a type of
involvement of the readers in doubting and speculating the coming events of the story.
II.1.3. Short literary works and the portrayal of life
In the lifetime of a writer, he or she witnesses and engages in many activities or events. Each
activity or event causes certain effects on the writer. However, there are some activities or
events that have prevailing or overwhelming impressions on the writer and, therefore, provoke
deep thoughts in the writer. The writer, with his or her natural gift in language, will look for a
way to record the event as well as his or her feelings and point of view for it. Literature is
created as the result. Among various genres of literature, literary works consisting of short
stories, memoirs and essays, unlike other longer pieces of work such as novels or dramas, can
be an instant record of real-life events since they do not require too much time and energy.
Since memoirs and essays are of non-fiction genre, I suggest spending most of this section
discussing the realistic reflection of short stories, which belong to fiction genre.
In her note for the short story “Nobody’s business” about the life and love of the young
American students, Jhumpa Lahiri states that “I spent most of my twenties in Boston. In my
eight years there, I moved a total of eight times. For the majority of those years, I shared
apartments with people whom, initially, I didn’t know at all. I usually found them through
newspapers or words of mouth…Everything in those households was communal. I felt normal
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then, but it’s hard to imagine now, living in such proximity with perfect strangers. This story
was inspired by the unexpected glimpses one sometimes has the intimate lives of others.” (as
cited in Kenison, 2002, p. 349-350) Yet, what Lahiri had experienced is described vividly in
her story, which begins with the moving in of the new comer, Sang from Bengali, to share the
rented house with the other two perfect strangers from different corners of the States. Then,
the whole story is devoted to describing the love affairs, the life of the three students under the
same roof and how they cope with their personal problems as well as the shared-problems of
the house. Without her experience, her sharpened mind and deep thoughts about the student
life she had experienced, Lahiri could never create such a recognized work which does not
only do the descriptive job but also provokes thoughts in readers as they may have their own
judgements about the modern lifestyle of the young American and, then, have the solutions for
their own problems which resemble those in the story.
For another instance, in her note for the short story “Accomplice”, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
writes “”Accomplice” grew out of my efforts to understand how a well-conceived assignment
managed to go awry. How could such involved, wordly, educated parents accept as real a
teacher’s report that was so obviously false? It was only by imagining Ms. Hempel’s
relationship with her father that I began to grasp what it might feel like, as a parent, to be the
only one who recognizes your child’s talent and greatness, and how hungrily you might
welcome the news that you are not alone...” (Bynum, as cited in Morre, 2004, p. 435) This
note is to show that a literary work is the fruit of the ponderation of the writer for the
understanding of different aspects of life. For Ms. Bynum, it was the ponderation of a teacher
herself finding a way to make a true school-report to the prideful parents as well as activate
the students in their study and their self-responsibilities by doing self-assessment. The story
reflects serious innermost conflicts of an individual school teacher, which many teachers of
the time might experience.
In whichever genre of literature either fiction or non-fiction, with whichever technique
employed, the sole aim of the writer is to portray real life, to express his or her own
viewpoints of real life and to suggest a solution for problems in society. In each literary work,
the writer uses a particular technique which helps to achieve his or her ultimate purposes. For
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example, as flash-back technique is employed in fictional A Rose for Emily with constant
shifts of past and present events, William Faulkner brings to readers the suspense in their
attempt to interpret the plot and, therefore, creates more curiosity and interest of the readers
when discovering changes in the attitude of the town people toward the protagonist, Miss
Emily as well as the changes in the South of the U.S where the story sets. Along with flashback, Faulkner also utilizes other techniques such as irony in his description of the women,
Miss Emily’s people and the other people in town, and, indirect characterization technique,
which employs the third limited narrator to present an objective voice for the story and
stimulate the analysis and interpretation of the readers. All of the techniques used in the story
are to contribute to the success of the writer in achieving his ultimate goal, that is, as a
common interpretation says, to portray the extreme racial discrimination in the Southern white
society of the time which causes a prideful white, Miss Emily to kill her colored lover in order
to keep him for herself forever.
From the discussion above, we see that literature in general and short stories in particular do
not come solely from the imagination of the writers. Such works are deeply rooted in real life
and are written to reflect real life.
II.1.4. An overview of American society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
The twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century have been marked by the
most important and eventful periods in American history which have made up substantial
changes in American society. The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed an excessive
economic growth with dramatic industrial expansion, which brought about the so-called the
roaring 1920s or the Jazz age symbolized by the rebellious and modern American flappers.
This roaring age was soon followed by the worst economic downfall in American history, the
Great Depression from 1929 to 1939 which caused one - third of all American farmers to lose
their land and a recognizable decline of 60% of farm income between 1929 to 1932 (Brinkley,
2000, p.739), along with a reduce by 40% in the average income of American family. The
American faced the hardest time ever before. (retrieved on December 12, 2008 from
http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade30.html) From 1932 to 1935, the American, especially
those living in the Great Plain region – the Dust Bowl, had to suffer one of the most
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devastating disasters of the nature, the dust storm. After these difficult phases, the American
joined the World War II, which, with its aftermath, led the American to the golden age of
booming national prosperity with the highest standard of living in the history of the world
economy, as indicated in the increase of the Gross National Product by 250% from 200 billion
dollars to over 500 billion dollars between 1945 and 1960. The baby boom after World War II
prepared a vast number of 70 million coming of age generation in the 1960s. Another
aftermath of the Second World War is the struggle of American women for liberation and
equality during the chaostic1950s and 1960s, which ended with the success of Women's Strike
for Equality on August 26, 1970. The period between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s was
also the time of Civil Right movement which ended with the equal rights for the AfricanAmerican in the whole country. The late 1960s and the first half of 1970s saw millions of
people march to protest the American wars in Vietnam in which 57,939 American soldiers
were
killed
or
missed
(as
inscribed
on
Vietnam
Veterants
Memorial)
(from
http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade80.html, retrieved on Dec 12, 2008). The 1980s was the
time of “I” generation who craved for their own status in the society marked by sex revolution.
Entertainment was booming with new genres of music such as rap or hip-hop, cable
televisions, MTV and so on. The following 1990s, though witnessing the U.S involvement in
the Gulf War, escalating terrorism, school shooting and sex scandals, the American enjoyed a
booming economy which led to low unemployment and flowering consumption. However the
beginning of the twenty-first century was welcomed by the American great anxiety and fear
after the suicide attack by the Islamic extremist’s organization named Al-Qaeda on the Twin
Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which caused 2,974 fatalities excluding
the 19 hijackers and billions of dollar for economic recovery (retrieved Mar 10, 2009 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_attacks). Along with the tense of terrorism,
the American, at the beginning of the twenty-first century once again have been suffering
another global economic recession with the unemployment rate reached to 8.1% in February
2009, equivalent to 12.5 million people out of work. (retrieved on March 11, 2009 from
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.html)
17
Such mosaics of American culture and society provides a background for our understandings
of the more specific cultural and social aspects of the American in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries later discussed in this research.
18
Chapter 2: some
Aspects of American culture and society in
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through short literary
works
II.2.1. American informality
The American are very well-known for their informality. I remember seeing an American man
in the U.S embassy when I was reading a book, I looked up and caught his eyes. He smiled
and said “Hi” to me to my surprise since we had never met before. The other day, when I was
climbing the staircase up to my friend’s room in the dormitory of the University of
Technology in Hanoi, some American guys went past me and greeted “Hi” to me in a very
casual way. This informality is not a common practice among the Vietnamese when we meet
strangers as for Vietnamese people, we only greet those who are well-known to us or those
who are older.
American informality is expressed in various forms. In Cosmopolitan, a short story by Akhil
Sharma in The Best American short stories 1998, Gopal, the main character when treating his
female neighbor for the first time at his house, presents an open, hospitable and very informal
manner. “Gopal walked to the refrigerator and asked her if she wanted anything to drink.” In
a traditional Vietnamese way, we normally bring tea or sometimes drinking water to serve our
guests without asking them if they want to have a drink or not. On a contrary, the American
often ask their guests and give the options to them. Like Gopal, he listed any things he had in
his refrigerator: “Orange juice, apple juice, or grape, pineapple, guava. I also have some
tropical punch, he continued, opening the refrigerator door wide, as if to show he was not
lying.” (1998, p. 50) Later in the story, when Gopal visited the female neighbor, Mrs. Shaw at
her home, she asked him if he would like anything to drink and offered “I have juice if you
want.” (1998, p. 55) and then, very frankly when Gopal had not made up his mind for what to
drink, she added as a suggestion “”I was going to have gin and tonic.” She said opening the
refrigerator and standing before it…” (1998, p. 55) When I asked two of my American
19
teachers, one from California and the other from Pennsylvania about this informal practice,
they said that this is typical of the American to serve their guests at home in such an informal
way. In addition, in the book American Ways, an example of an American woman welcoming
guests is given to illustrate the informality of the American. The evidence is that “When the
guests arrived, she welcomed them by saying “Make yourself at home.” She showed them
where to find the food and drinks in the kitchen and introduced them to some of the other
guests.” (Althen. G, Doran R. A., & Szmania. J. S, 2003, p. 16) The woman treated her guests
as her family members. Hence, these casual behaviors provide the guests with comfort for the
feeling that they are at home and, therefore, improve the closeness of the host and the guests.
Another variation of American informality is seen in the short story “The Magic Barrel” by
Bernard Malamud. The story, which takes place in the 1950s in New York, provides us with
an evidence of casuality in the way Salzman, a marriage broker, behaved as a guest at the
home of Leo Finkle, his customer and a rabbinical student when he came to Leo to persuade
him to consider some of the women he had introduced to him. While Leo behaved very
formally, asking Salzman to call him “Mr. Finkle.” (as cited in Chin. et al, 2002, p. 877),
Salzman, on the contrary, is very casual. He brought with him something to eat because he
was so hungry after “all day in a rush” (As cited in Chin. et al, 2002, p. 880) and ate in front
of Leo without offering him. “…first must come back my strength”, he said and “took out of
the leather case an oily paper bag, from which he extracted a hard, seeded roll and a small,
smoked fish. With a quick motion of his hand stripped the fish out of its skin and began
ravenously to chew.” (as cited in Chin. et al, 2002, p. 879-880). Salzman felt like home and he
made himself at home. Host and guest are friends so there is no need to conceal one’s hunger.
In Vietnamese situation, it is not common to bring food to other people’s house and enjoy the
food there. The Vietnamese often try not to tell the host that he or she is hungry for the
question of saving face. Only among those who are very close to each other such as among
close friends or relatives do people do so. However, for the American, it is quite normal for
the guest to say how he feels or what he wants to eat or drink. For example, when Salzman felt
for some tomato, or some tea, he asked Leo right away, though a bit hesitantly and humbly
due to the serious attitude Leo created “A sliced tomato you have maybe?” and “A glass tea
20
you got, rabbi?” (2002, p. 880). These evidences, though indicate rather extreme casualty for
the purpose of the author to draw a picture of a real awkward salesman, more or less reveal the
informality of the American as the guests. For an American, it is not uncommon to bring food
to other people’s house, especially to their friends’ for a party. And the thing they often bring
along is often a drink, such as beer, a bottle of champagne or wine or any of their favorite
drinks so that everyone can enjoy together. Like Kevin, a character in the short story
Nobody’s Business by Jhumpa Lahiri in The Best America Short Story 2002, when he came to
his girlfriend’s house shared with other students, he often brought along beers and helped with
the washing up.
Beside the evidences of American informality discussed above in their greeting, in welcoming
guests or in behaving as a guest, we have seen many informal practices in their dressing such
as the Casual Friday in many American company or school when the staff can put on anything
they feel comfortable with, in the way they address each other, for example, the way a student
addresses his teacher or a child addresses his parents with their first name. My teacher of
American culture Manvel Victor Bringas often allows us to call him by his first name Manvel
and in his free time, he sometimes goes on a picnic with us in T-shirt and shorts. There are no
gaps between teacher and students. His informality creates a very friendly atmosphere which
we usually have with our American teachers in particular and with our American friends in
general.
II.2.2. Racial discrimination
Racial discrimination is as old as American history since the first black African slaves came to
America over three centuries ago. For centuries, the colored people in the United States have
suffered unjust segregation due to the dark complexion that they are born to possess. As
learners of English, we have heard about racial discrimination in America, about Rosa Parks, a
black woman who was arrested for her refusal of the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to a
white rider in Mongomery, Alabama and about Martin Luther King, the leader of the Civil
Rights movement in the 1960s that resulted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act which transformed
the American society in the late twentieth century and the century to come. Nevertheless, we
have not learnt many of the illustrative evidences for racial discrimination itself.
21
In his wonderful short story Big Boy leaves home first published in 1936, Richard N. Wright
provides us with a vivid illustration for racial discrimination set in Southern America in the
early twentieth century. The story begins with a lively scene of the four black boys Bobo,
Lester, Buck and Big Boy, the main character, who are as naughty and lovely as any boys in
the world walking “lollingly in bare feet, beating tangled vines and bushes with long sticks”
(Schorer, p.885), twitting each other in a swimming hole in the woods after playing truant
from school. From the bottom of their heart, they always dreamt of the train that could bring
them to the North which was said to have equal rights for the colored folks. “They counted
each train passed by and began to sing the song about “a train bound for glory””. While
singing the song, they felt a bright future ahead. Wright draws a lively picture with “A black
winged butterfly hovered at the water’s edge. A bee droned. From somewhere came the sweet
scent of honey suckles. Dimly they could hear sparrows twittering in the woods. They rolled
from side to side, letting sunshine dry their skin” (Schorer, p. 893). Unfortunately, the black
boys’ happy time did not last long until they were found naked by a white woman. In a normal
situation, the woman is supposed to be shy and run away. But the woman in Wright’s story
screamed panickly as if she was seeing four monsters. “You go away! You go away! I tell you
go away!” (Schorer, p. 894), she shouted even when Big Boy said very politely: “Lady, we
wanna git our closes.” (Schorer, p. 894) The climax of the whole story arises when the
woman’s fiancÐ appeared and immediately shot the four boys. Lester and Buck died. Bobo
was extremely terrified but Big Boy got the riffle and shot him to death. What the woman and
her fiancÐ did to the four innocent boys represents what the white did to the colored. The
black were treated like animals. They would be killed at any time, for any reasons. The more
extreme segregation is depicted in the barbarous punishment the white gave to Bobo, one of
the escaped. As Big Boy could see while he was running away from his hometown, the white
men burnt Bobo and “A black body flashed in the light. Bobo was struggling, twisting, they
were binding his arms and ligs.” Bobo’s arms and ligs were bound symbolizes the fate of the
black was bound. No matter they struggled, they would be killed. The injustice and barbarian
of the society of the time is shown in the death of the three black innocent boys and the
exhausting flee of Big Boy paid for the nonsensical fear of a white woman.
22
The severe segregation is also revealed in the memoir Prime Time by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
when he recalled the murder of the fourteen-year-old Emmette Till in August 1955 in
Mississippi after his friends dared him to ask out a white woman. “He whistled at some white
girl…that’s all he did. He was beat so bad that they didn’t want to open the casket.” (Gates, as
cited in Chin. et al, 2002, p. 1092). For the American and the world, the murder of Emmett
Till was an international issue. It is well-known that three days after Emmett Till whistled at
Carolyn Bryant, a store clerk, he was weighted down by a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan
tied around his neck with barbed wire by Carolyn’s husband and her half-brother. They
mutilated his face so terribly that his uncle Wright could only identify the body basing on the
ring worn on a finger of the dead body. If it had been a white man to whistle at Carolyn, the
situation wouldn’t have been so bad. This degrading discrimination was not the first of its kind
but it was an alarming point that put the black people in America on fire for justice and peace.
Throughout the memoir, Gates provides us with variety of evidences of the segregation of the
time. “For most of my childhood, we couldn’t eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn’t
use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores…Even after basketball games, the colored
players had to stand around and drink out of paper cups while the white players and
cheerleaders sat down in the red Naugahyde booths and drank out of glasses ” (as cited in
Chin et. al, 2002, 1087) Gates gives an example of his family being avoided from sitting down
at the Cut-Rate, a restaurant in town, which had a permanent TAKE AWAY ONLY sign for
the colored people. Only Gates’s father was not stopped from sitting down. As Gates
explained, it was in part because his father had lighter complexion. At this stand we can see
that the reason was only the matter of black or white. The lighter one’s complexion was, the
more chances for him or her to use public service. Another example of Carl Dadisman, who
had vowed not to integrate, was given to support Gates’ irony of discrimination. Carl
Dadisman was a proprietor who ran the taxi service, therefore, he tried to behave nicely, even
to the colored. However, he did not want the colored to sit in his booths, eat off his plates and
silverware or put their “thick greasy lips” over his glasses. Gates’s satire arouse in the way he
described the death of Carl. Carl died because of a heart attack in a tiny toilet of his own place
of business. “Daddy and some other men tried to lift him up, while he was screaming and
23
gasping and clutching his chest, but he was stuck in that cramped space.” (as cited in Chin et.
al, 2002, 1088). Why Carl had such heart attack in such a “relaxing” place is not given but we
can understand that he was
“attacked” by his own prejudice for his “cramped” mind. Lowell, a black brilliant soccer
player came to saw the toilet to help him but it seemed hopeless. Carl cried, moaned and died.
Then Gates says that “By then it made little difference to Carl that Lowell was black.” Yet, it
is so ironic that not until a “white” dies that his prejudice of black or white might be blurred.
Like in Big Boy Leaves Home, the colored people in Gates’s memoir also show their thirst for
equality. This thirst is embedded in their excitement to see the shows on television such as
“the all-colored world of Amos and Andy” which is full of black lawyers, black doctors and
nurses. “We were starved for images of ourselves and searched TV to find them.” (p.1089) But
for other fields, the colored people were well-known for their sport ability. This is the reason
why the people in Piedmont, where Gates spent his childhood, kept track of every sport
programs which the colored played in. “We’d watch the games day and night, and listen on
radio to what we couldn’t see.” (p.1089) and “Colored, colored, on Channel Two.”
(p.1091)All these thirst and excitement to see their own images and success reveal the desire
of the colored people to be recognized in the society. They wanted to have the same stand and
to enjoy the same lives as the white. “With a show like Topper, I felt as if I was getting a
glimpse, at last, of the life that Mrs. Hudson, and Mrs. Thomas…must be leading in their big
mansions… Smoking jackets and cravats, spats and canes, elegant garden parties and
martinis… This was a world of so elegantly distant from ours, it was like a voyage to another
galaxy.” (p.1090) By then, all the advantages seen on television that the white came in for
seemed “just out of reach” of the colored in Piedmont in West Virginia. In the third part of the
memoir, Gates gives us lively facts of the Civil Rights movement, of the black children
integrated into Little Rock high school in Arkansas, of the soldiers from the National Guard
and the state police who surrounded these black children and how the people in Piedmont
reacted to the news. Nonetheless, all these facts were seen only on television. The people in
Piedmont still had to face with segregations.
24
While in Gates’s nonfiction, we learn about the cheerleaders, in the Civil Rights era, from allwhite high school with a big red C for “central” on their chest waved and cheered “Two, four,
six, eight – We don’t want to integrate.” (as cited in Chin, 2002, 1094), we know more
evidences of this offensive attitude in many other fictional works including Everything That
Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor. From the beginning to the end of the story, the
writer reveals her light irony when describing Julian’s mother and other passengers and their
hostile attitudes toward the Negro people in general and the Negro passengers on the bus.
Julian’s mother was so afraid to ride the buses alone at night because the buses at the time had
been integrated. Therefore, after looking up and down the bus and acknowledging that there
were all white on the bus on the first route, she was so happy. “I see we have the bus to
ourselves,” said her. She did not expect any others of colored complexion to join her world.
Her negative attitude was shared by other passengers on the bus as the Negroes got on the next
route. A woman stood up immediately and found another seat far away when a Negro sat
down next to her while the other protruding woman looked at the Negro avidly as if he were a
type of monster. These resentful reactions, unlike those in the early twentieth century revealed
in Big Boy Leaves Home, were not open and vigorous but in a silent way.
Her attitude was typical of many white people toward the colored in the early 1950s and even
after the Civil Rights Act took effect in 1964.
Throughout American history, the attitudes of the white people toward the colored have
changed considerably as it can be inferred from the analysis above. In addition, we can
witness these changes in the language used to address the colored people. In the early
twentieth century, the colored was called nigger by many white people. This hostile word
appeared repeatedly in A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner to speak to and about the
colored. By then came the term Negro, Afro-American, the black and nowadays, African
American is used to convey a neutral and more respectful attitude. The late twentieth century
and the early twenty-first century have witnessed great innovation in the thinking of American
society on the whole. While Miss Emily in the early part of the previous century had to hide
her beloved dark man Homer Barron in her house until he died to avoid rumors, African
American people nowadays are much more confident than ever before in showing themselves
25
in front of the public. The evidences are since the African American Vanessa William was the
first to be crowned Miss America in 1984, there have been a large number of colored women
to win this honor including the 2008 Miss America Crystle Stewart. Besides, African
American have widely appeared on the cover of mass consumer magazines such as Seventeen
and Cosmopolitan, made up 20 % of the models to appear on 471 covers of 31 magazines
published in 2002 (Garcia. G, 2004, p. 43). Many African American have come into power in
the society of which nearly three-forth of the population is white. (Garcia. G, 2004, x)
Typical examples are the first black woman Condoleeza Rice who served as the 66th Secretary
of States of America and most recently, the current 44th president of the United States Barack
Obama who has made a history in American presidency to be the first black to hold the office.
African American have gained recognizable stand in American society that they deserve.
II.2.3. Modern American women
From all the literary works I have had chances to read, I have the same feelings for the
American women, who share many things in common as very modern, practical, strongheaded women who have new concepts of love, thirst for love and try their best to achieve true
love.
In the short story Watermelon Days selected in The Best American
Short Story 2002, Tom McNeal draws a picture of an American woman
in the late 1920s. Doreen Sulivan, a beautiful woman from Philadelphia,
had an appearance which was a fashion of the day with “a thin,
sleeveless dress over a light camisole, her bobbed hair was marceled
into deep horizontal waves, she wore a wide ribbon in her felt cloche…
She also used a scarlet lipstick to form her lips into a fresh cupid
bow…” (McNeal, as cited in Kenison and Miller, 2002, p. 211). The
way Doreen dressed up and wore make-up represents a revolutionary
1920s flapper’s cloche
hat and bobbed hair
trend of the rebellious American flappers in the so-called Jazz Age or
the Roaring Twenties. Traditionally, women wore long dress, long hair and very light makeup. On the contrary, the rebellious flappers wore dresses which exposed their hands and legs
down from the knee. Their long hair was cut short and even bobbed. The year 1926, which the
26
story dates back to was a turning point in American fashion when camisoles, short dresses,
bobbed hair under cloche hats and heavy make-up were in their hey-day. What the flappers
wanted was to show themselves to be very young, modern, strong and different from
traditional American women of the time. Doreen, with her modern appearance raised the
curiosity of the people in Yankton, the town which she came to for a job. And also in
Yankton, she got married to a radio reporter who proposed to her only five weeks after their
first meeting.
In the story, we also come across a young American flapper who was very practical minded
about love, Aggie, who endlessly looked for men for fun. “In men, Aggie looked for what she
called the three m’s – married, money, and merry…” Love is
something quite vague to her. Her attitude toward love and
marriage was not uncommon among young American women, the
flappers in the late 1920s who treated love and sex in very casual
ways.
A question arises at this point that “Do American women in the
late twentieth and the early twenty-first century share the same
view of love and marriage with those in the early twentieth
century?” The answer is “Yes, they treat love and sex even more
Actress Alice Joyce, 1926
casually.” In the short story Nobody’s Business first published in
2001, we vividly witness the casual practices of the young American in general and the young
American women in particular of living together before marriage. All of the characters in the
story are intellectual: Paul, the protagonist who had got his Ph.D on literature from Havard;
Sang, another female main character from Bengali, who graduated from New York university;
Heather, a female law school student at Boston college; Farouk, Sang’s boyfriend, who was an
Egyptian who taught Middle Eastern history. These characters came from different parts of the
world but they had been used to the casual way the young American treat love and sex before
marriage. For example, Paul’s girlfriend, who had lived with him in her department for three
months and taken him home to her parents’ house for Thanks Giving, said goodbye to him for
the sole reason that she did not like the way he kissed her when they were naked in bed.
27
Another illustrations for their living together before marriage are Heather and Sangs, Paul’s
housemates. Heather, who had a boyfriend named Kevin, a physicist at MIT, often took him to
the house to sleep over night and she was going to celebrate their “one-month anniversary”.
Regarding Sang, she was so sad when talking to her male friend Charles about Farouk’s
refusal to live together before marriage and they both agreed that “…he’s a little oldfashioned.” for they had been together for three years. As the three examples above suggest
cohabitation before marriage is a common practice, or even a fashion among young American
and among the American people on the whole. Statistics shows that 41% of American women
ages 15-44 have cohabited (lived with an unmarried different-sex partner) at some points.
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2002, retrieved on Feb 17, 2009 from
http://www.unmarried.org/statistics.html )
As Mrs. Shaw, a protagonist in the short story Cosmopolitan by Akhil Sharma, first published
in1997, states that “only overtime and through living together could people get to know each
other properly.” (Sharma, as cited in Keillor. G, 1998, p. 66). For her, living together before
marriage was a necessity to get to know each other before marriage. And she had done that.
The evidence is she brought a number of men home at night as Gopal, her neighbor and
boyfriend, saw different cars in front of her house every night. Like Aggie in Watermelon
Days, Mrs. Shaw endlessly looked for true love, for her right man. Disappointedly, she could
not find one for herself after countless number of affairs. The truth that she found out, as she
shared with Gopal, was that there was a great difference between to love someone and to be in
love with him. After many times living together with Gopal, she felt that she truly loved him
but actually, she was not in love with him. As she explained: “When you are in love, you never
think about yourself, because you love the other people so completely. I’ve lived to long to
think anyone is that perfect.” (as cited in Keillor & Kenison, 1998, p. 67) From what she said,
love is perfect. Therefore, she could never find true love because nothing is perfect. This
uncertainty of love will result in disbelief and disillusionment, which may be one of the causes
of the high separation and divorce rate in the United States. According to current statistics,
from 41% to 50% couples in the U.S get divorce after first marriage, from 60% to 67%
couples get divorce after second marriage and 73% to 74% break up after third marriage.
28
(retrieved on February 15, 2009 from http://www.aboutdivorce.org/us_divorce_rates.html).
The statistics reveals that those who get involved in more marriage are more likely to fail. At
the end of the story, a pitiful image of Mrs. Shaw is drawn with “..mascara stains beneath her
eyes and silver strands mingled with her red hair.” (as cited in Keillor & Kenison., 1998, p.
69) The mascara stains and silver strands imply that she had grown old after years longing for
her right men and true love. She had got exhausted.
Nonetheless, what is concealed inside such modern appearance like Doreen, inside such casual
treatment of love and sex like Aggie, Sang, Heather, and Mrs. Shaw is a woman of passion
and desire who has her own identity and always tries to achieve happiness. Doreen, who held
her head very high and was always stared at by the men in the street, after some time devoted
herself for her new family, realized that she had missed a life of her own. “…she missed going
to work. She missed going to dances. She missed putting on her camisoles and beaded chiffon
dresses and feeling goose bumps in the cold.” (McNeal, as cited in Miller & Kenison, 2002, p.
214) Her ego had risen up. She started to hate housework, cooking for her husband, listening
to his “cowboy tales”. However, the hardship of her marriage life, and the responsibilities with
her new-born baby daughter Edna Arlene, had carried her ego away until that watermelon day.
She heard the music. Yet, the music in the distance pulled her toward the festivities. She was
stimulated by the music. She was so excited. She was drawn to the pavement dance, ignoring
the sack races, the seed-spitting contests and the free watermelon. “Doreen positioned herself
among the encircling fringe of onlookers and after a while stepped onto the pavement and
pulled Edna Arlene out with her, trying by her own example to coax the girl into dancing…”
(McNeal, as cited in Kenison and Miller, 2002, p. 219) Nevertheless, she could not do what
she wanted because her daughter was too frightened. But when the handsome dancer fixed his
gaze upon her, she became bewildered. A mixture of feeling slipped into her. She did not
know whether she hoped the man to ask her to dance or wanted the man not to do it. “As he
moved nearer, Edna Arlene’s grip on Doreen’s leg began to tighten and Doreen herself was
overcome with something that seemed equal parts panic and exhilaration.” (2002, p. 220)
Doreen should have been really exhilarated but for the tightening of her daughter’s grip which
tightened her leg, or, as it can be inferred, the tightening of responsibilities to the exposure of
29
herself. She could not expose herself to what she had used enjoyed and craved. Her wandering
away from her daughter later revealed her desire to get rid of responsibilities for some
moments for her own. Her ego came back again when, instead of going home to fulfill her
stomach, Doreen alone went to Wilkemeyer’s pub, sitting herself on the same booth which she
had seated long time ago when she and her husband spoke to each other for the first time.
After ordering her drinks, she printed her maiden name DOREEN SULLIVAN on the napkin
and cried when she found the words she saw odd to herself. She cried because of desperation
to realize that she had missed herself, the haughty woman she had used to be. However, her
desperation did not take her away. She remembered she had left her daughter for so long at the
watermelon festivities. She returned to take her home. She had to come back on earth again.
She could not forget the reality that she had a husband, a daughter and another baby to expect.
By the end of the story, Doreen went out to the river alone. The image of her standing with her
hands folded below the waist and her back straight in the illumination of a lamp fixed to the
underside of the bridge over the river revealed an enlightenment that came to her. “…she
could sense a stillness coming over the camps, and feel herself pulling imaginations up out of
darkness.” (2002, p. 228). She had found peace inside herself and that imaginations had not
left her. She had not lost her ego. Her spirits were improved so that she could came back home
and enjoyed her husband singing as she used to do in the first weeks of their marriage.
It is undeniable that Tom McNeal did a great job when describing the conflicts inside his
woman. Such sophisticated descriptions help to indicate a sensitive and strong headed
American woman like many other women in the difficult time of the early twentieth century.
Up to the twenty-first century, such motif of an American woman has been developed in
literature. Though with some differences due to new social circumstances, readers still feel
their modernity, their strong identity and their desire for happiness. Like in the short story
Shiloh by Bobbie Ann Mason, from the beginning of the story, we could see an image of a
modern woman, very strong and energetic lifting “three-pound dumpbells to warm up, then
progresses to a twenty-pound barbell.” (Mason, as cited in DiYanni, 2004, p. 62) She is
Norma Jean, the wife of Leroy Mofit’s who had injured his leg in a highway accident when he
was a truck driver. Norma Jean had a job at a cosmetic counter, therefore she knew all about
30
make-up and was well aware of keeping fit by her daily exercises with weight-liftings. She
was an active and energetic woman who enjoyed working and studying. After work, she used
to come home and prepared dinner for her husband. Nowadays, she took up a six-week bodybuilding course, after which she took an adult – education course. She herself found a list of
jobs for her husband to choose from. When her husband refused to do any jobs where he had
to stand up all day, she did not give up but encouraged him while doing her usual exercise:
“you ought to try standing up all day behind a cosmetic counter. It’s amazing that I have
strong feet, coming from two parents that never had strong feet at all.” (as cited in DiYanni,
2004, p. 65). She is a practical-minded woman as she never approved of her husband plan to
build a log house for their own. She called a log house “a log cabin” and did not even care
about it no matter her husband tried to persuade her. She is an independent woman because
she often got crazy when her mother told her to do this and not to do that and especially, when
she told her to go to Shiloh, an Civil War battleground in Tennessee where her parents used to
spend their honeymoon, which she did not want to. She even cried and felt disapproved when
her mother caught her smoking and shouted at her as if she was eighteen. And it was her to
take the initiative to say good-bye to her husband after she agreed to go to Shiloh with him
and her mother. The story ended with Norma Jeans standing by Tennessee River waving her
arms toward Leroy as if she was doing her chest muscle exercise. She waved her arm or, as
inference can be drawn, she waved goodbye to her past which had been made up of a gap
between her and her husband.
II.2.4. Generation gaps
Regarding generation gap, it is no doubt that the gap is broad when the social circumstances
which shape the characteristics of each generation differ greatly from each other. Let take an
example of Julian and his mother in the short story Everything That Rises Must Converge
written in 1950 by Flannery O’ Connor. Although Julian’s mother, a working widow “… had
struggled fiercely to feed and clothe and put him through school and … was supporting him
still…until he got on his feet.” (O’Connor, as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 209), Julian did not have
anything in common with her. Any of her points of view or behaviors was an eyesore and a
disturbance to him. As when he felt his own sacrifice for her to take her to the reducing class
31
every Wednesday night on the bus which helped his mother with her high blood pressure by
losing weight, “Julian walked with his hand in his pockets, his head down and thrust forward
and his eyes glazed with the determination to make himself completely numb during the time
he would be sacrificed to her pleasure.” (as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 209). He called her
intention of keeping herself fit a joke. He felt compelled to take her there and, most of all, he
felt ashamed to go with such “dumpy figure”. Additionally, his annoyance was one more time
made worse when he saw his mother standing in front of the mirror watching her new hat
murmuring that she should have returned it the next day because it cost her seven dollars and a
half, a great amount of money she had never spent on a hat in her life. ““Maybe I shouldn’t
have paid for it. No, I shouldn’t have. I’ll take it off and return it tomorrow. I shouldn’t have
bought it. “She lifted the hat one more time and set it down slowly on top of her head.” (as
cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 209) Julian did not cheer her up, instead, he thought of her hat as
“comical”, “jaunty” and “pathetic” without considering how much she interested in it. For
him, “everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.” (as cited in Yanni,
2004, p. 209) He could never understand the joy of a devoting mother who had worked hard
all her life and saved every penny for her son and now, she could be able to buy something for
herself. Julian could never understand that it was the first time in her life a woman watched
herself with such a beautiful hat. He could not understand his mother because he, who had
been out of school for a year, grew up in the sacrifice of his mother for his comfort and his
“first-rate education”. He grew up in an affluent society as the year 1950 when the story was
written was the prime time of American prosperity between 1945 and 1960. Therefore, he
could not imagine how an over-fifty woman, who had survived from the most difficult times
of her country, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era when unemployment reached to
80% and “an increasing number of families were turning to state and local public relief
system, just to be able to eat.” (Brinkley, 2000, p. 739), would feel unfamiliar to enjoy such
little happiness. That is why he treated his mother as a complete stranger throughout the story.
And for many times he tried to declare wars on her. The first war on their journey broke out
when his mother found him in a very bad mood taking her to the reducing class. She wanted to
go home so as not to bother him. And at this point, he said extremely irritatedly: “True culture
32
is in the mind, the mind.” But his mother did not approve: “It’s in the heart…and in how you
do things and how you do things is because of who you are.” Julian thought the knowledge he
had learnt from college was enough and his mother, who had not had chances to enjoy such
good education like him, was just narrow-minded. And he decided to teach her a lesson. That
was when the second war began. As mentioned at the very beginning of the story, Julian’s
mother was afraid to go on a bus by herself at night because they were integrated. She could
not stand it when sitting next to a Negro. That was her weak point which Julian took
advantage of. He tried to make acquaintance or attract the attention of any Negro who got on
the bus like he used to do to make friends with any Negroes who looked like professors,
ministers or lawyers, although he often failed to do so. What he did had only one effect, that
was to make his mother’s blood pressure rise high. It is a common knowledge that up to the
year 1950, the African American had not gained equal rights. The colored people still suffered
segregation in public places. And Julian’s mother had been used to such unequal practice since
she was born. While Julian, who had enjoyed the “first-rate education” and whose “mind” had
been enlightened, was supposed to treat the Negroes differently from his mother. It is ironic
that Julian had been well-educated but he did not respect his mother as an educated often does
even though he had watched her secretly many times. He wanted to become a writer but
actually, he was selling typewriter. He wished to make money so that he would not have to
wonder whether to wear a seven-dollar-and–a-half- hat or to return it to the store, but he knew
he never would. He had tried many times to make friends with the Negroes who he supposed
to be intellectual but the stimulation was not that he liked them but because he wanted to make
a revenge against his mother. If only he had been a real intellectual, he would have put himself
into her position, therefore, the gap between them would not have been so big.
Flannery O’Connor is such a skillful writer in exploiting different facets of generation gap,
often among people of flesh and blood relationship. In another short story written by her in
1955 “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.”, the conflicts among the three generations are not as
extreme as in the previous work “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”, however, the
differences in the behaviors and attitudes of the grandmother, the father and the mother and
the children at least cause discontent to one another. The grandmother held the floor most of
33
the time from the beginning of the story in her decision where to go, in her introduction of the
scenery along the journey. While the father, the mother and the children enjoyed going to
Florida, “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of the
connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing every chance to change Bailey’s mind.” (as
cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 198). (Baily was her only son whose family she lived with.). The idea
she put forward was that from the newspaper she was reading the criminal called the Misfits
headed toward Florida. ““Now look here, Bailey.” She said, “see here, read this, “ and she
stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head.”
(as cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 198). From her language and gestures, the grandmother exposed
herself as the superior in the family. She was the one to make decisions and the others were
her inferiors, therefore, they had no choice but to obey her. And they did although their
reactions did not reveal their agreement. Bailey didn’t look up or nodded his head or said
anything. His wife, the mother of the children “whose face was as broad and innocent as a
cabbage…” didn’t seem to hear or actually, she ignored to hear that. Throughout the story, we
do not see any of her involvements into any conversations with the grandmother. Regarding
the children, they disapproved of the decision of their grandmother but, as the youngest in the
family, their reaction did come to no where. Finally, it was the grandmother to be the first in
the car the next morning, ready to go. One more time we come across a silent but apparent
conflict between the two generations, the grandmother and her son and her daughter-in-law.
They do not share much in common. However they respect the hierarchy of the family in order
to keep peace among family members. Two main factors that make up the gaps among the
three generation in this story, they are the different experience and different interests of the
members. Like the mother, she had lived all her life so she made traveling a chance to revisit
her past. That was the reason why she really wanted to go to east Tennessee instead of Florida.
That was also the reason why she was so excited to show the children the sightseeing along
the road. She wanted them to broad their mind and, most of all, she wanted them to gain
experience of what she had experienced. Nonetheless, out of her expectation, the children and
their parents did not get interested. While the grandmother tried to point out the “interesting
details of the scenery” with “Stone Mountain” as a blue granite, “the brilliant red clay banks
34
slightly streaked with purple”, “the various crops that made rows of green-lace work on the
ground”, the children read their comic books and their mother went back to sleep. No one
cared about her and shared her interest. The grandmother was interested in the scenery and the
people along the road because she, a woman whose experience of life had remained in “her
thin veined fingers” had had some memory with the sights and the people and in her time, she
had learnt to respect their native states and their parents and everything else. On the contrary,
her children and grand children did not learn such things, especially for the children. The
sightseeings were unfamiliar to them and they had learnt only about their negative aspects
such as “Tennessee is just a dumping ground …and Georgia is a lousy state.” Such negative
ideas of the children disappointed their grandmother “If I were a little boy…I wouldn’t talk
about my native states that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills.” (as
cited in Yanni, 2004, p. 199) The grandmother had experienced both the hardest time such as
the time of the Civil War, the Great Depression, the World War II and the prime time of the
nation, the affluent America in the 1920s, the late 1940s, and the early 1950s. She was very
conscious of the value of what she had and what the country offered. However, her son, his
wife and especially her grandchildren did not share such common knowledge and experience
which helped to narrow the gap.
Similar conflicts are also revealed in the short story “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason discussed
in the previous part. Norma Jeans’s mother, Mabel Beasly was a caring mother who took care
of her daughter very carefully, even when her daughter had been married, for which Norma
did not seem to be grateful. She treated her like a little daughter as she saw her smoking,
which resented Norma and, according to her, what her mother had done was apparently a
revenge against her and her husband for they had not been able to save their four and a half
month baby from infant death. For the past few years, Mabel had always been urging her
daughter and her husband Leroyd to visit Shiloh, the Civil War battle ground in Tennessee
where she and her husband used to spend their honeymoon, with which her daughter felt
extremely annoyed whenever she started. At first Norma’s reaction to her mother’s suggestion
to go to Shiloh was just in the form of an impatient response like “One of these days, Mama.“
(as cited in Yanni. R, 2004, p. 65). But, eventually, it became a terrible annoyance indicated in
35
her response “When are you going to shut up about Shiloh, Mama?” (as cited in Yanni, 2004,
p. 69) Unlike Julian, who did not want to take his mother to the reducing class but finally, he
still did it, and unlike Bailey, his wife and his children, who after all followed the grandmother
to east Tennessee even though they did not feel like it, Norma Jean did not agree to go to
Shiloh for the sake of her mother. She decided to go there for her own sake to end her
marriage where her parents’ marriage started. As the evidences suggest, Norma Jean was a
very independent woman who did things in her own way. She did not enjoy being treated as a
child. She did not feel like being told what to do, even by her mother. What she did was
typical of the “Me! Me! Me! Generation of the 1980s” when the story was written. During this
era, the young people respected their “self” images. They lived their own lives and did what
they thought to be right. Most of all, they seeked their status in the society, keeping in mind
the examples of their billionaire idols such as Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, and Ivan
Boesky. For Norma, whatever arguments she had with her mother or husband, she kept on
doing her physical exercises. She knew how to look after herself and to value herself like the
other young people of her generation. She had a casual treatment with sex which resulted in
her pregnancy before marriage. For the young generation of the 1980s in the United States, her
practice seemed widely acceptable. Nevertheless, this casualty was a disgrace to her mother.
Mabel never forgave her daughter and her husband for that. The ending of the story that
Norma and her husband splitted up in Shiloh was the beginning of another war, the war
between Norma Jean and her mother.
It is undeniable that, the more modern and independent the young generation become, the
greater the gap they create between themselves and the older generation since the two
generations live at different time and they respect different values.
II.2.5. Individualism
One of the most typical aspects of American culture and society is individualism. From the
early time of their lives, American children are trained to be independent and considered
themselves as individuals who take responsibility of their own problems or situations. They
are not supposed to depend on their parents on any of their “close-knit”, groups or their nation.
36
Let consider the practice of individualism of the young boy called Dave in the short story Split
Cherry
Tree
written
by
Jesse
Stuart
(retrieved
on
Nov
9,
2008
from
http://www.americanliterature.com/Stuart/SS/SplitCherryTree.html) The story takes place in
the rural America at the beginning of the 1940s when the United States were dominated by
World War II and life, especially in rural areas, was very hard. Dave was born into a farming
family whose members work hard from four o’clock in the morning to supper time at night
except himself, who only worked after school with “Seven cows to milk. Nineteen head of
cattle to feed, four mules, twenty-five hogs, firewood and stovewood to cut, and water to draw
from the well.” Dave was the first of his people to study at high school. He understood the
hardship his father had to overcome to send him to school. That was why he insisted his
teacher, Professor Herbert, to punish by whipping him with a witch in return for one dollar
fine Herbert had paid for his participation in breaking a cherry tree with other five students
during their biology field lesson. Dave did not mind the punishment not only because he was
so terrified of being whipped by his father for coming two hours late (Professor Herbert finally
accepted that he stayed two hours after school to work out his fine by sweeping the
schoolhouse floor, washing the blackboards and cleaning the windows.), but also because he
was a brave boy who was aware of his responsibility for his own mistakes. The split cherry
tree was his fault so it was not his father to pay for that. It was his father who sacrificed to
send him to high school so it was not fair to bother him with such fine. Dave acknowledged
everything that Pa had done for his brighter future, therefore, he tried to do all the work with
great effort to satisfy his father. Dave was really a responsible boy who had no intention of
relying on his parents at a very young age, in such a difficult time of his family.
Another variation of individualism is indicated in the short story The First Seven Years by
Bernard Malamud. The story takes place in the prosperous time of American history in the
1950s when the World War II had ended and the Baby boom was “in full swing”. Like Dave’s
father and many other parents of his time, Feld, a shoe maker believed that education could
help improve the life of one person. Then, he begged his daughter Miriam to go to college,
raising her awareness that many parents of the time could not afford to send their children to
college. However, his daughter did not mind his idea. She wanted to be independent and to
37
find a job. Her decision grieved her father but he had to respect her choice. And the father had
to respect the choice of his daughter once again when she denied the boy her father had
tempted to match with her. At first Miriam respected the intention of her father to have an
appointment with the boy, who was a college student. Unexpectedly, her realization that he
was “nothing more than a materialist” who “had no soul” was made used for her getting rid
of him. She did not pay any more attention to the boy. It was Miriam herself to decide her own
life. Her father, although he was “deeply hurt”, he did not argue with her. He respected the
decision of his daughter. He had never imposed anything upon her. Like when the idea to
make Miriam and the boy a couple arouse, and after they had met once, he was so
embarrassed to talk to his daughter about the boy. “Often he was tempted to talk to Mirriam
about the boy, to ask whether she thought she would like his type – he had told her only that
he considered Max a nice boy and had suggested he call her…” (Malamud, as cited in
Kinsella. et al, 2005, p. 992) The embarrassment of the father, indicated in the way he cleared
his throat whenever he concerned her of the matter, was due to his fear of hurting his
independent daughter. He desired to do something good for her future but he only wanted to
play the role of a guide who made suggestions because her life was her own. He treated her as
an independent individual.
Although the two stories were written long time ago but the practice of individualism
conveyed in them is still shared with that in the recent literary work. Let consider the example
of a fourteen- year-old girl in the short story First Four Measures by Nathaniel Bellows
collected in The Best American Short Story 2005. The impression that the girl leaves in me
when I read the story is that she behaves more maturely than her age. As a fourteen-year-oldgirl, she did not want her parents to hire somebody to look after her while they were away
from home for a month. When Mrs. Spencer, the woman her parents wanted came, the girl did
not want her to take her to school in her car but she took the bus by herself. As a fourteenyear-old-girl, she was aware of her own abilities, blaming her old piano teacher for always
having her “play pieces that were slightly below” what she thought she could play. Another
evidence of her individualism is indicated in the way she coped with the strange behavior of
her new piano teacher who tried to touch her in every lesson. The girl felt strange and
38
managed to avoid his touching. However, she did not tell the story to anyone, even her parents
until they were told by Mrs. Spencer since she had witnessed what the piano teacher had done
to their daughter. To the surprise of the parents, she was not bewildered but, instead she
answered them firmly: “It’s an issue of perspective…and scale.” (Bellows, as cited in Chabon
& Kenison, 2005, p. 122) This is her imitation of the way her parents often judge a thing. The
answer revealed that she always tried to show herself as more mature than her age. She did not
want her parents to get involved in such, for her it was perhaps, a nonsense matter. And it was
the girl herself solved her own problem for she had decided not to come back to the piano
class. Mrs. Spencer insisted that the girl let her speak to the teacher because she really wanted
to do something for her. Nonetheless, the girl had made up her mind to do that as she
emphasized: “I’ll do it by myself.” (Bellows, as cited in Chabon & Kenison, 2005, p. 124) Like
Dave in Split Cherry Tree, the girl was well aware of her responsibility for her own situations
and like Mirriam in The First Seven Years, she wanted to be treated as a mature individual
who could look after herself and solve her own problem.
As Doctor Spock appealed in his book Baby and Child Care “In the United States…very few
children are raised to believe that their principal destiny is to serve their family, their country
or their God…Generally children [in the United States] are given the feeling that they can set
their own aims and occupation in life, according to their own inclinations. We are raising
them to be rugged individuals…) (Spock, as cited in Althen, Doran & Szmania, 2003, p. 7)
This practice can be seen apparently in a very well-known “student-centered” teaching
approach of American education which activates the competence of every individual student
in their learning process. Additionally, the students participate in self-assessment activities
through which each student himself can evaluate his own achievement. This approach of
teaching and learning is illustrated in the short story Accomplice by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum.
The protagonist, Ms. Hempel, a secondary-school-teacher of English pondered upon an idea
whether to let the students to write their own anecdotals about themselves and their study to
their parents with her remarks. Through this assignment, she hoped that her students “could
give voice to their own visions of themselves, visions that might differ from those held by their
teachers, parents or friends.” and that they would be able to “identify and celebrate what they
39
see as their greatest strength. During this crucial stage of their development, kids need…to
articulate what they believe themselves capable of.” (Bynum, as cited in Morre, 2004, p. 71).
The students would, therefore, discover themselves and be highly responsible for their own
study.
In such an individualistic culture like the United States, competition is a common practice.
There is fight for jobs and for personal wealth. Everyone tries their best to support their selfimage by studying hard and working hard. Such effort is described through many characters in
short stories such as Dave, the boy in the short story Split Cherry Tree set in rural America in
1940, whose parents worked from four o’clock in the morning until night in order to able to
send their son, as the first person among their people, to high school. Another example is
Julian in Everything That Rises Must Converge written in 1950, who had first-rate education
thanks to his devoted mother who pondered very much on buying a hat at one dollar and a half
for herself. Not only the male had the ambition to study but the married woman in Shiloh
named Norma Jean also devoted herself to study. After a whole day standing at the cosmetic
counter, she spent the night on an adult-education course in composition at Paducah
Community College and did not mind staying up late to write composition. In recent literary
works, many motifs of characters to represent the talented and diligent American, who crave
for success in life, have been created by many authors including Jhumpa Lahiri with her world
of intellectuals in the short story Nobody’s Business, first published in 2001. Such world has
Paul, who worked as a teacher at a graduate school in Boston with his Ph.D from Harvard on
literature and was studying for another important exam; Sang, who dropped out of Harvard for
her doctorate and was working part-time at a bookstore; Sang’s boyfriend, Farouk, an
Egyptian American who was teaching Middle Eastern history at Harvard; Heather, the
housemate of Sang and Paul, who was a law student at Boston college and her boyfriend,
Kevin was working as a physicist at MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology). These
young people, though have different ways of life, share the same serious attitude to their
study. It is no doubt that such attitude is resulted from their desire for a high position in the
society. Even for the talented fourteen-year-old girl in The First Four Measures by Nathaniel
Bellows discussed above, in addition to her study at school, she had a passion for piano. She
40
was well aware of her ability for piano and practiced very hard to master the more challenging
pieces firstly with the first four measures with one hand, then with both hands on the same
four measures and finally, she could go through the challenging pieces without much
difficulty with both hands on all eight measures. Such evidence of great efforts made by a
young girl represents the ambition of the young American to achieve success in life and to
prove their own talent and abilities as an individual in such society of competition.
II.2.6. The American in turbulent ages
“Stop it this minute, he says.
Oink oink, says the little girl.
What’d you say?
Oink oink, she says.
The young father says What! Three times. Then he seized the child, raised her high above his
head, and sets her hard on his feet…Just hold my hands, screams the frail and angry father.”
(Paley. G, as cited in Kinsella. et al, 2005, p. 832-833)
Why did the young father get so angry? Was that because the child wiggled too much or
because of other reasons? The questions were put forward by an old lady who had been
watching the man and the other fathers picking up their children from the school through the
glass window of her marigold greenhouse garden. The woman, before raising her questions to
the father, was so anxious, leaning herself far out of the window crying Stop! Stop! Why was
the woman so anxious seeing a strange man getting crazy with his little daughter? As this
story, Anxiety by Grace Paley takes place during the 1950s, one of the most turbulent period
of American history, the answers given later in the story do not require much efforts to be
understood. When the woman approached the father leaning “two, three dangerous inches
toward him”, she explained about her anxious involvement that “… madmen intend to destroy
this beautifully made planet. That the murder of our children by these men has got to become
a terror and a sorrow to you, and starting now. It had better interfere with any daily
pleasure.” (Paley. G, as cited in Kinsella. et al., 2005, p. 833) Who and what did Paley refer to
by “madmen”, “murder”, “terror” and “sorrow”? The evidences can be traced back to the
1940s and 1950s era which held numerous events that brought about great anxiety for the
41
entire nation. The beginning of the 1940s was marked by the assault of the Japanese on Pearl
Habour in 1941 which led to several nuclear bomb schemes and experiments in the United
States in preparation for the revenge of the United States by exploding two destructive atomic
bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The death of between 130,000 and 200,000
people including the injured and disappeared in the bombings over Japan, (Turnbull. S &
Holmes. R, retrieved on Feb 4, 2009 from http://www.answer.com/topic/bombings-ofHiroshima-and-Nagasaki) followed by the killing of 6 millions Jews by the Nazis and the
aftermath of World War II with approximately 60 million people worldwide lost their life,
(Graebner. W & Swansinger. J, 1997, p. 2) made up the excessive pervasive anxiety of all
Americans. There were many factors linked to the fear of the American but most of all, it was
the fear for nuclear warfare mounted by the threatening of the Soviet Union and the
communist regimes during the Cold War time from the mid-1940s to 1960s. The “madmen”
referred in the story implied the authority, those who started the wars, which caused the death
of millions of American people that Paley called “the murder of our children”. Such murders
had caused a terror and sorrow in the frail father, whose consequence was an obsession in the
father whenever he heard the sound “oink, oink”, which reminded him of the “cops”, the
police, their “demonstrations” in their training sessions for the coming war. Additionally, his
anxiety is revealed in the way he mistook the wigging of his little daughter for her dealing
with him as if he had been a “figure of authority”. “It’s not my thing, never has been, never
will be.” (Paley. G, as cited in Kinsella. et al., 2005, p. 834) By saying this, the man expressed
his disapproval of the authority and, moreover, his disgust upon the authority. The anxiety,
disapproval and disgust of the man implied the same feelings and attitude of the author. The
old lady in the story is the embodiment of Paley herself. She was so worried and anxious
about the safety of the American people in the nuclear age. Therefore, as the fathers hoisted
their children on their shoulders and galloped away, the old woman cried once more and
insisted “Be careful! Stop!” (Paley. G, as cited in Kinsella. et al., 2005, p. 834). She could feel
dangers lying ahead such innocent people. And such dangers deeply rooted in the excessive
boom of technology in the 1940s and 1950s when nuclear bombs were invented and the
automobile industry thrived. The advancement of technology, along with its recognizable
42
benefits, had stolen the life and the peace in the mind of every individual. As Paley wrote “I
sit in the light and wonder how to make sure that they gallop safely home through the airy
scary dreams of the scientists and the bulky dreams of automakers.” (Paley. G, as cited in
Kinsella. et al., 2005, p. 834) What Paley made clear is that it was the innocent ordinary
people who had to pay for the insensible dreams of the scientists and the automakers. For such
dreams, the ordinary people, including the children had to sacrifice their normal leisure, that
is to “sit down at their kitchen tables for a healthy snack…before going out into the new
spring afternoon to play.” The metaphorical image of the marigolds planted by the old woman
at the beginning and at the end of the story conveys the desire of every single American for a
bright future, for peace and the longevity of the whole planet without the threat of nuclear war,
where the marigolds can grow.
In the war time, the children often suffer the most. This fact explains why literary works
against wars usually deal with children and their anxiety. In another story named Snow by the
Dominican-American fiction writer Julia Alvarez, we, again, come across a vivid illustration
of the American anxiety in the 1960s. The story takes place in 1962. As a common
knowledge, the beginning of this decade held one of the tensest periods in American history in
particular and in the world history in general, which was known as the Cuban missile crisis.
The crisis commenced in October 1962 when American spy flights over Cuba discovered the
presence of Russian missile sites here. In association with an order for “naval blockage” to
avoid missile shipment to Cuba, President John. F. Kenedy demanded the withdrawal of the
missiles and launch sites of the Soviet Union. While waiting for the respond from Russia, the
American and the world were put under pressure for fear of another destructive nuclear war.
The same feelings are described concisely in the story as the young girl, the only and new
immigrant in the class, was taught about snow and was explained by her teacher about the
possibility of a nuclear war in the near future. After several air-raid drills, the fear of the little
girl reached its climax when she saw real snow falling out of the window. As usual, the girl
should have shouted excitedly “Snow! Snow!” However, to our surprise, she turned out to
shriek “Bomb! Bomb!”, causing other girls to start crying and her teacher to jerk around with
shock. Her reaction indicates a regular anxiety and fear lied deep in her mind, which led to her
43
mistake of snowflakes for bombs. The fear did not only place in the girl but it was the
common feeling of every American at the time. Only in this time could any ordinary person
realize the value of life. As the girl discovered while she was watching the “fine powder dust”
falling “Each flake was different…, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful.” (as cited in
Chin, 2002, p. 1032) The message Julia Alvarez wanted to convey is: let save every single life
because each life is worth and each person is a unique beauty. The existence of one person is
as natural as the existence of the snow that falls down American sky every winter.
Throughout the time such respectful attitudes of Paley and Alvarez towards the value of life
are always appreciated, especially in the contemporary age of technology, diseases and social
evils, which has caused escalating personal anxiety in the United States. Such anxiety is
depicted vividly in the continuous reminiscence of the narrator of the death of his friends in
the essay The Bone Garden of Desire taking place in 2000 by Charles Bowden. The first
person to leave him was Paul, a drug-addicted artist, who hung himself with a rope. The
second person was Dick, a businessman, who died after several attempts to commit suicide
due to depression. The third friend to die was Art, a navy officer, who died of cancer, the
modern fatal disease which killed his last friend, Chris, a carpenter. It is undeniable that drug
addiction, depression and cancer have been the causes of major anxiety in the modern time
nowadays. According to statistics, in the year 2000, about 552,200 American people, which
meant more than 1,500 people daily, died of cancer. (Gullota. T & Bloom. M, retrieved on Jan
06, 2009 from http://books.google.com/books?), compared to over 500,000 Americans died
from
cancer
in
2008.
(retrieved
on
Feb
06,
2009
from
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease ). Regarding depression, out of 29,350 people
died by suicide in the U.S in the year 2000, 90 percent had a diagnosable disorder, commonly
a
depressive
order.
(Buchanan,
2007,
retrieved
on
March
06,
2009
from
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/09/27/comedians-for-suicide-prevention/).
In
addition to cancer and depression, drug addiction damaged the health of 14.5 million people in
2000
and
16.6
million
in
2001.
(retrieved
on
Feb
6,
2009
from
http://www.usnodrugs.com/drug-addiction-statistics.html). Although throughout the essay,
Bowden expressed his optimism about life with its diverse of colors, sounds, smells and tastes,
44
who can assure that he did not feel depressed and anxious? As a human beings, no one could
keep himself from being unsettled when seeing his four dear friends, in turns, pass away.
Bowden could not hide his sorrow and anxiety. “fuck…too many words choking me, clutching
at my throat until they strangle any bad words I might say…I have sat now with something
broken inside.” He took a strong drug but his body was still “ravaged by all the love and
caring and the colors and forms and the body growing still in the new silence of the room as
someone I knew and loved ceased breathing.” (Bowden, as cited in Norris & Atwan, 2001, p.
44). To his regret, all his friends had left him, giving up their chances to enjoy life more with
him, a life which was full of colors, forms, sounds, smells and tastes, like various kinds of
dishes Bowden described throughout the story. Even the garden where he scattered the bone
and ashes of his friends was very beautiful and lively with variety of colors such as purple,
yellow, pink of the walls; dark green, white and yellow of the notocactus and cactus, and all
kinds of fragrance from the flowers and herbs together with the singing of the birds. It is a
garden of desire, the desire to grow and enjoy life. Such desire was revealed in the way
Bowden described the flower Selenicereus plerantus, which only opened in the darkness of the
nights, the hottest nights of the year, “the black evening when the air is warmer than your
body…”. The flower was an embodiment of desire since no one could be alone when it
bloomed. “This flower touches your face, it kisses your ears, its tongue slides across your
crotch…When it opens its white jaws, the petals span a foot and lust pours out into the night, a
lust as heavy as syrup, and everything is coated by the carnality of this plant.” (Bowden, as
cited in Norris & Atwan, 2001, p. 32). The flower was drawn like the body of a beautiful girl
bristling with life, a life which is beautiful but is very short, like the flower, beautiful and full
of lust but it only opens once a year around nine at night and closes before sunrise. Paul, Dick,
Art and Christ understood the flower. When they were alive, they often came to the garden
and watched the flower while drinking and enjoying the food its owner cooked. Even when his
friends knew that they nearly died, they came here to watch the flower unfold and felt its lust
or their own lust for life. Even when they died, their lust, their desire still glowed with life in
the growth of the flowers, the cactus, the Madagascar palm tree and the herbs. Like the
American people, despite their anxiety and sorrow in the troubled time, they still keep going
45
with a desire for a better life. The evidence is, after many economic crisis, several wars,
terrorist attacks and during this hard time of diseases and evils, the American, though with
anxiety, still stand on their feet and hold their heads high to the world.
Part III: Conclusion
III.1. Conclusion
In summary, short literary works, especially, short stories, memoirs and essays can tell us
many things about the culture and society of a nation. Through the American short stories in
association with memoir and essay of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I have
discovered prominent aspects of American culture and society of the time such as American
informality, individualism, racial discrimination, modern American women, generation gap,
and, moreover, about the anxious but optimistic American people facing the turbulent ages of
the Cold War, the nuclear warfare and the modern time of cancer, depression, drug addiction
and suicide. While informality and individualism as the lifestyle and value of the American,
respectively, have not been changed, the other aspects such as racial discrimination, American
women and generation gap have changed noticeably. Through the short literary works, I have
witnessed not only the severe segregations and gradual improvement in the treatment of
American society toward the colored people but also the more independent, freer and more
modern American women in the new era with their practical definitions of love and marriage.
Besides, I have acknowledged the wider gap between the young and the older generation in
American society through time due to their greater barrier in values and interests. In addition
to such cultural and social features of the nation, the short literary works reveal more about the
economic as well as political situations of this powerful country, which contribute to my
thorough understanding of the American culture and society.
III.2. Implications for teaching
For many people, learning about the art of using the language or, in other words, about the
techniques employed to convey the ideas of the writer is the sole objective. However, I myself
have more interest in finding out as much as I can about the cultural and social elements
embeded in any piece of literary work. And I have done that. In my opinion, providing the
46
students of English with chances to study literary works, especially those of short story genre
along with guidance for their understanding of the cultural and social background of the works
would be of great benefit and joy because when the students read short literary works and find
out about aspects of the target culture and society, they would be able to memorize the
linguistic elements much easier since they understand thoroughly the context in which the
language is used and the story is written. When they understand about the language, they
would have more interest in studying the foreign language as well as the literart works in that
language.
I am now teaching the in-service students of English at Haiphong Foreign Language Center.
My students are those who spend the whole weekdays at their regular colleges, universities or
companies. The time they spend studying English is very limited to the weekend. Therefore,
the short literary works introduced to them must not be too complicated and abstract in the
language but rather, they should reflect a variety of cultural and social aspects for the students
to discuss together. Besides, the works introduced should be of the twentieth or twenty-first
centuries because, firstly, these centuries have held the most important events of American
culture and society and, secondly, the language as well as the cultural and social elements of
the works would be more familiar with that of our time now.
47
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