American Studies
Short story / book excerpt descriptions
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.
“Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the
transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one
Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel
west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collision
against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots, Steinbeck
created a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision,
elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its insistence on human
dignity.” (From the back cover)
The excerpt here is three different chapters (3, 17, and 19). Steinbeck’s novel alternates
chapters between the story of the Joad family and those with a broader cultural lens.
While the latter are the ones included here, it could be worth looking deeper into the
novel if you find that the subject matter applies to your paper topic.
Topics covered:
 Rural (vs. Urban) life
 Class
 Immigration
 Economics / Finance
 Government / Politics
 Labor
Anderson, Sherwood. “The Other Woman.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 38-44.
The feminist movement that was taking place in the period in which the story was written
is an evident factor in the actions and emotions of the different characters. Looking at the
ways in which the characters describe each other and view their social positions, as well
as what they both accept and question raises the idea of the “awakening woman” and how
her role is shifting in society.
Topics covered:
 Women / Feminism
Rosenblat, Benjamin. “Zelig.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Ed. John
Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 1-6.
Although written in 1915, just before the “official” window of time for this essay, this
story serves as a powerful statement of the issues facing immigrants and their experience
in arriving in America. It focuses on the story of a Rabbi and links to other concerns
facing the new and growing Jewish community
Topics covered:
 Immigration
 Urban life
 Economics / Finance
 Class
Lerner, Mary. “Little Selves.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Ed. John
Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 7-17.
Again, this is a story of the immigrant experience from the World War I era, but this time
with a focus on the Irish. It focuses on the voice of an old woman on her deathbed,
thinking back on her youth and sharing her stories for the benefit of future generations.
Topics covered:
 Immigration
 Women / Feminism
 Urban life
 Economics / Finance
 Class
Lardner, Ring. “The Golden Honeymoon.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 45-59.
This story of a planned Florida vacation is noted for its gritty realism. The critic Alfred
Kazin speaks of the "harsh, glazed coldness" of Lardner's work, who “wrapped his
dreadful events in comic language, as you would put an insecticide in a bright can.” This
is a look at new classes and types of people, a prospering middle class figure as the object
of satire, at the start of the boom time of the 1920’s.
Topics covered:
 Urban life
 Economics / Finance
 Class
 Women / Feminism
Porter, Katherine Anne. “Theft.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 105-110.
The heroine of this story looks at her life, and considers how it was either well spent or
wasted, in the context of the “predatory contacts of the city” (Updike). The setting for
"Theft" is New York City. The heroine is a writer and reviewer, like Miss Porter. The
time is the onset of the Great Depression of the l930s. The stolen purse in the story
symbolizes all property. Appropriately, it is made of gold cloth. Thus, the stealing of the
purse represents the conflict between the "haves" and the "have-nots." But as the conflict
is never simple in Porter's stories, other issues arise, and emotions are mixed and not
easily defined.
Topics covered:
 Women / Feminism
 Urban life
 Economics / Finance
Hughes, Langston. “Father and Son” (from The Ways of White Folks). The Portable Harlem
Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering Lewis. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.
Hughes, Langston. (Various poems: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “I, Too,” “America,” “The
Weary Blues,” “Jazzonia,” “Mother to Son,” “Negro,” “Mulatto,” “Elevator Boy,” “Red
Silk Stockings,” “Ruby Brown,” “Elderly Race Leaders,” “Dream Variation,” “Goodbye,
Christ,” and “Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria.”) The Portable Harlem
Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering Lewis. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.
Faulkner, William. “That Evening Sun Go Down.” The Best American Short Stories of the
Century. Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 111-126.
Topics covered:
 Women / Feminism
Parker, Dorothy. “Here We Are.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 127-135.
A story about a honeymooning couple filled with imagery and symbolism as they
contend with their new life and their surroundings, especially the role of the city.
Topics covered:
 Women / Feminism
 Rural vs. Urban life
 Class
Godin, Alexander. “My Dead Brother Comes to America.” The Best American Short Stories of
the Century. Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 153-158.
This story looks at the issues of immigration through a series of reflections and
remembrances. It takes place during the mid-twenties to the early thirties. The story
follows a young boy and his arrival with his family to America, displaying his thoughts
and conflicts. Many changes were going on during this period of time, and the same is
true for the protagonist, the boy. The essence of depression foreshadowed the soon-tocome global hardships and had already begun to negatively affect employment and status
of poverty in lower-income families. The fear of foreign radicalism in terms of liberal
ideas and the loss of jobs to lower-paid immigrants lead to strong political conservatism
which, in turn, lead to isolationism and the restriction of immigration into America.
Topics covered:
 Immigration
 Government / Politics
 Class
Saroyan, William. “Resurrection of a Life.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 159-168.
The content of the story carries the message that as difficult as times are, they will pass,
and America will survive. The narrator's memories are of 1917, the year America entered
World War I. By setting his story in this difficult, but now receding, period in America's
history, Saroyan shows readers that America and its people are able to withstand hardship
and overcome incredible adversity. He demonstrates that Americans are tough, adaptable,
and able to draw on a strong sense of camaraderie, and he presents the ugliness of life in
America but concludes that he is glad to be part of it because the ugliness is balanced by
joy.
Topics covered:
 Arts and Culture
 Politics and Government
Welty, Eudora. “The Hitch-Hikers.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 211-223.
A dark story of America through the eyes of a traveling salesman. Welty explores issues
of aging and isolation, yet infuses the story with a music heard by the characters.
Topics covered:
 Rural vs. Urban life
 Arts and Culture
 Women / Feminism
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: DoubleDay, Page & Co., 1905. Literature@SunSITE. 16 Sep
1996. U of C Berkeley. 4 Mar 2003 <http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Sinclair/TheJungle/>.
"In this powerful book we enter the world of Jurgis Rudkus, a young Lithuanian immigrant who
arrives in America fired with dreams of wealth, freedom, and opportunity. And we discover, with
him, the astonighing truth about 'Packingtown,' the busy, flourishing, filthy Chicago stockyards,
where new world visions perish in a jungle of human suffering. Upton Sinclair, master of the
muckraking novel, here explores the workingman's lot at the turn of the century: the
backbreaking labor, the injustices of 'wage-slavery,' the bewildering chaos of urban life."
(from the back cover of the Bantam Classics 1981 paperback publication)
Topics covered:
 Rural vs. Urban life
 Immigration
 Labor
Addams, Jane. “Problems of Poverty” from Twenty Years at Hull House. New York: Penguin
Books, 1962. 118-132.
Jane Addams was a prominent Chicagoan and a great humanitarian. The Hull House
which she established (and which now exists as a museum on the University of Illinois at
Chicago campus) served at a safe haven for those in need. Addams’ work helped poor
and immigrant families. This chapter is a powerful, real-life account of individual men,
women and children and their struggles with poverty. Addams describes the hardships
immigrants and poor people faced and also discusses the role of the Hull House in
helping them.
Topics covered:
 Government / Politics
 Urban life
 Immigration
 Economics / Finance
 Labor
 Women / Feminism
Addams, Jane. “Immigrants and their Children” from Twenty Years at Hull House. New York:
Penguin Books, 1962. 169-185.
Jane Addams was a prominent Chicagoan and a great humanitarian. The Hull House
which she established (and which now exists as a museum on the University of Illinois at
Chicago campus) served at a safe haven for those in need. Addams’ work helped poor
and immigrant families. Jane Addams describes the ways in which immigrants in the
early 1900s assimilated to a new culture in the U.S. while they also maintained their “old
country” traditions. This chapter describes individual immigrants’ stories and their
experiences in Chicago.
Topics covered:
 Urban life
 Immigration
 Labor
 Women / Feminism
Cather, Willa. “Double Birthday.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 77-99.
This beautiful story, set in Pittsburgh, is an interesting contrast to Dorothy Parker’s “Here
We Are.” The characters are rich, and give a sense of the time period and the issues they
face, in addition to an engaging plot.
Topics covered:
 Urban (vs. Rural)
 Women / Feminism
Dresier, Theodore. Sister Carrie. (excerpt)
Young Carrie Meeber leaves home for the first time and experiences work, love, and the
pleasures and responsibilities of independence in late-nineteenth-century Chicago and
New York. The book is a startlingly real picture of the social history of the time, a stark
indictment of the ruthless nature of capitalism. Dreiser believed that men are inevitably
crushed under the wheels of the giant machinery that keeps society moving. People use
one another, mercilessly, and have no regrets for those who fall by the wayside. The
message is a grim one, but the impact of the novel renders it unforgettable.
Topics covered:
 Urban vs. Rural
 Women / Feminism
 Class
Sandburg, Carl. Chicago Poems.
Chicago Poems is an America classic, by almost any definition. Although Sandburg saw
himself as the spokesperson for the working class, this short volume speaks to all of the
issues of the time, in a way that opens our eyes to a variety of perspectives and insights.
Topics covered:
 (All, in different poems – take a look at the titles and first lines)
Hemingway, Ernest. “The Killers.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 68-76.
"The Killers" was first published at the height of the Prohibition Era in 1927, a time when
criminal activity was rampant throughout the United States, most notably in and around
Chicago. Like many of Hemingway's short stories of the 1920s, it features the character
of Nick Adams playing a passive, but nonetheless central, role as a reactor to the plot's
events. It begins when two men (Al and Max) enter a diner in a small town near Chicago
and order dinner. When the counterman George says that they must wait until six o'clock
for dinner, them, they order ham and eggs and then scan the scene. They see that young
Nick is the only other customer there, order him to go around the counter with George,
and then call the cook, Sam, from the kitchen. It becomes plain that Al and Max are
professional killers or hit-men. Furthermore, it shows how nothing can ever be sure
because the world is complex and forever shifting and uncertain.
Topics covered:
 Urban (vs. Rural)
 Finance / Economics
Coates, Grace Stone. “Wild Plums.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Ed. John Updike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 100-105.
“In it, a child tugs against her parent’ puritanical injunctions, hardened by I mmigrant
caution and rural class-consciousness. The obedient child, it seems, is being barred from
the experience of life itself. A veteran short-story reader dreads the worst, rendered with
some dying fall and bitter moral. But the outcome is in fact like ‘wild honey, holding the
warmth of sand that sun had fingered, and the mystery of water under leaning boughs.’ A
story exceedingly simple, and unexpectedly benign, but not false for that, nor less
American than the rest.” (John Updike, from the introduction to The Best American
Short Stories of the Century)
Topics covered:
 Rural (vs. Urban)
 Immigration
 Class
 Women / Feminism