american literature homework help

american literature homework help

Exploring the Rich Tapestry of American Literature: A Comprehensive Study

1. Introduction to American Literature

Americans have been producing literature for approximately four centuries. Within American literature, then, we are told again and again that there is a certain value in exaggeration and she was real. As in all literatures, the most important and valuable aspect of the literature of the United States is not what it reflects of history, a history that should be learned and acknowledged, but the quality of the writing itself. Moreover, a close acquaintance with the masterpieces of American literature can assure a better understanding of American ideas, desires, and imagination. American literature is not just one sector of the liberal arts, but it is a study that serves, along with all the other studies in the language and literature learning area (including the study of English and foreign literature), to enhance a knowledge of the richness of the human condition. Even in the most ordinary, clichéd writing, there is a sense of human characterization placed in relation to other characters or to the material world, a sense of the character negotiating some meaningful place within the fictional universe.

2. Major Movements and Themes in American Literature

These first Americans were struggling to stay alive, and their struggle is well reflected in their literature. As time passed and the way of life became less burdensome, the emergence of a uniquely American culture anticipated an equally unique literature. That such a literature not only came into being but flourished invincibly despite wars and depression, natural and man-made disasters, is one of the most significant reflections of American society. “The battle of the indolents” such as Van Wyck Brooks lovingly refers to it, was not an easy one yet it testifies to the continuing existence of a sound basic tradition despite all the contemporary ills of self-alienation. The dimensions of literature have come to parallel the dimensions of contemporary American society. The scope of that literature has established it as one of the most dynamic and exciting of the modern world. In surveying that literature, which originates with native Americans portraying the joys and sorrows of native-born people existing in a unique environment, let us approach with the expectation of beholding a broad, rich tapestry whose qualities are as varied as its creator, and subjects.

The people who first came to America over the centuries brought with them a wealth of literary expression and experience which might be called “British” or “European,” for they reflected the society and culture from which they had migrated. Slowly but inevitably, these settlers altered this tradition until from it emerged a literature that was distinctively its own. The factors that kept the American literary tradition apart from its chartered contemporary were: a difficult and demanding physical environment; the persistent influx of settlers and immigrants who were not prepared to contribute to their “New World” either the skills of the adventurer or the pioneer and the creative energy of their individual and collective talents; and the spiritual and intellectual change that the constant pressure of absolute evils, such as slavery and the racial and ethnic intolerance that was rampant among all nations throughout the 18th, 19th and the first half of the 20th century, inevitably produced in the society that these immigrants created.

3. Key American Literary Figures and Their Contributions

The New England Renaissance period also produced a band of note. The signers of the Anti-Transcendentalist Manifesto were Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In Hawthorne’s Marble Faun, four Americans who settled in Europe made their home in lovely Florence. These were symbolic figures, and the two men were sculptors. Similarly in Moby-Dick, the whaling ship was named for the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, while a Quaker and a Negro were the second and third mates, and a harpooner had the Biblical name of Elijah. Many figures are equally interesting for their treatment of American themes. Some served as well for painting American life. Melville, the most spectacular figure in the Renaissance group, wrote other novels and short stories that have made him one of the two or three most renowned American novelists. With the exception of Moby-Dick, which was recognized as a great work in England but almost unknown in the United States, Melville was poor during his life and starved during his last years. In 1860 he became a customs inspector in New York City, a post he would hold for the remainder of his life.

The United States has produced masters of the short story, the novel, poetry, and drama. A bridge between European neoclassicism and romanticism in America, Washington Irving (1783-59) is best known for his short stories. These include “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.” Imbued with imagination and a mellowed humor, Irving’s style embodied the easy grace and writing mechanics of the British squire whom he emulated. American as it is, Irving’s work reveals a rich blend of European tradition and American feeling. In our century, Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor have been working in the tradition of the short story. These and many others – Faulkner, Wharton, Fitzgerald, Anderson, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Steinbeck, Willa Cather, Carl Sandburg, Sinclair Lewis, James T. Farrell, Baldwin – represent the fabric of the rich tapestry of American literature. More recently, figures such as Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, and Russell Banks are helping to fulfill the promise of an American literature as varied and complex as the United States itself.

4. Analyzing Influential Works in American Literature

Analyzing Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” written in 1842, is a story of perversity and guilt. The tale of a madman who murders an old man because of an evil, pale blue eye, the “film” of which seems to “vex” the murderer, scandalized nineteenth-century readers and thrilled psychoanalytic ones of the twentieth century. It has also been recounted in a recording by the great nineteenth-century actor Edwin Booth, who, through a tour-de-force of imaginative mimicry, conveys a mood of brooding horror and suspense. Taken as an example of Poe’s art, the story tells much about his persona. The madman is not content with merely eliminating the eye. He wishes to eliminate the old man, who lives on in his imagination long after the victim has expired. Warding off the vulture eye seems to be in reaction to the phobic fascination it elicits: if it becomes the cause of elimination, then the image would have been mastered. At the close of the story, the imagination of the madman is haunted by the mocking throb of the victim’s beating heart, a constant reminder of his ultimate impotence in stopping what he felt was meant to be stopped. Poe’s theme here suggests that life in all its reality, which can be verified only in the irreducible resistance of the “Tell-Tale Heart,” is strength. Lurking behind the apprehension of an external object, or staring at its motive and its lingering reminders—preoccupations shared by the observer and the artist—is the Freudian concept of the fear of castration. The underlying fear of castration then represents loss, which Poe recognized and struggled with from an early age.

Analyzing “Rip Van Winkle.” Although the legend of Rip Van Winkle had existed earlier, Washington Irving fixed it into the public consciousness through his humorous and charming story published in 1819. The author had been intrigued with the Catskill Mountains in his youth when he resided in the Hudson River Valley. While visiting his sister, Irving scribbled the legend’s core idea and during later visits, added the details into his short story. The tale has a timeless appeal as it offers both romance of the fabled past and simple home-like quality of the post-colonial American community. Rip Van Winkle had been created during a hiatus in Irving’s lifelong revolutionary enthusiasm. This sweet-tempered story of a revolutionary sympathizer who sleeps for twenty years in an opium trance and awakens to find the world has passed him by has been viewed as an allegory of the American colony which slept on the eve of a revolution and awakened to find that the struggle had been fought and a brave new world was being born.

5. The Impact of American Literature on Society and Culture

In his autobiography, Mark Twain confessed, “I care nothing for any literature but American, and in one word nothing for any but high.” This collection of essays examines a community’s attempt to develop programs that place American literature at its core. It is rooted in the classical intellectual ideals of liberal education that were infused in the U.S. education system even before the republic was formally established – the American enlightenment which created the first real meritocracies. In the early decades of the first century, we acknowledge a looming historical challenge to the classical model in education. The extraordinary formulation, articulation, and representation of that challenge to the best in liberal learning, where the Socratic custom of persuasion and questioning flourish, is posed in American literature.

American literature has long been at the forefront of American culture. It is this nation’s greatest art form. American writers tell the American story. The authors of the essays in this volume remind us that the idea of “general education” is rooted in the classical ideal of political participation, deliberative discourse, the human capability for reason, and the stories that bind us to one another. The novels, poems, and plays produced by generations of American writers chronicle and interpret the nation’s origins, history, and future. The works produced by this nation’s authors address participation in the American experience, challenges it has faced, and the times when it has failed to meet its greatest ideals. The reference point of the discussion that takes place within the context of the national discourse is the works of American literature.