The End

Welp.  That's it.  We've reached the end.  I had a mixed experience with the class.  Sometimes the class was fun.  Other times it wasn't.  Some of the reading was boring and too long for me, personally.  Other times it was long and fun.  Other times it was shorter and nicer and more to the point.  Honestly, I did a lot of skimming in this class, but I still learned quite a bit.  My only regret is that I maybe didn't take it a little more seriously, especially toward the end.  I just tend to get demotivated or distracted toward the end of spring semesters in school, no matter what grade I'm in.

Walt Whitman "Song of Myself"

"Song of Myself" is a bunch of different poems put together in one huge poem.  I just want to focus on a two segments or parts, however.

The first part of the entire thing is very nice to me because it shows that he has some self confidence.  He believes that he is a wonderful being who has learned much and wants to share all of his knowledge with others, a.k.a. - the readers.

The second segment I want to focus on is in part two.  It is the lines beginning with "Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much?" and ending with "You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."

I like this part of "Song of Myself" because he is asking the reader if they have learned as much as he.  If not, he invites them to learn from him.  He doesn't want the reader to learn exactly as he has, though.  He wants the reader to take everything in, everything he says and then look at their surroundings.  He wants the reader to filter everything they see and hear and learn to create their own views on different matters.  This moment I find so precious because he's addressing the reader directly, and very early on, too.

Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature - William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison is trying to make people see something about the slaves.  That thing is that slaves are real people, too.  I believe he's not just talking about the ones still enslaved, he's also talking about the ones who have been freed.  He wants people to give full equality to African Americans/blacks/slaves not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's what they would want if they were in the same situation.  He wants them to see them for who they are... people.

Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature - Martin R. Delany

Martin R. Delany had some very good points.  His biggest one was, "...no people can be free who themselves do not constitute an essential part of the ruling element of the country in which they live."

He uses this point to call for slave freedom.  Not just for slave freedom and equality, though.  No, he calls for an entirely free state/country where the slaves can rule themselves.  That is the only way he can see them being truly free.  If they don't make up the ruling element of the place they live, there will always be things working against them, for all of time.  That's his main point.

I see this main point and I kind of agree with it.  Even in today's world, you can see long held prejudices against different races, whether you personally have them or not.  It would be nice to tell everyone to stop being that way and they do, but that's just not going to happen.  So maybe the best choice would've been to give slaves their own country.  We'll never know now.  I just hope that prejudices and stereotypes against African Americans can be lessened.

Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature: Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson is an odd case.  He makes a lot of seemingly racist remarks.  Lots of people call him racist because of this.

I just want to pose a few questions.  Could this be because this was the "normal" way people talked about blacks and slaves at the time?  Could this be to make a point of how foolish people sound when talking like that?

I personally can't see how the man who wanted to abolish slavery with the Declaration of Independence, and even with the Constitution, could be so abhorrently racist.  I just don't see it.  So there has to be a reason behind what seems racist to us in today's world.  I think it's because we have gotten so much more focused on "political correctness" that anything that could be taken offensively could be seen as racist or bad.

Margaret Fuller "Four Kinds of Equality"

Margaret Fuller talks about four types of equality between men and women.  The first is called the household partnership which means that the man furnishes the house and woman regulates it.  She calls this one good as far as it goes, but she really thinks that it could be better.

Then there's the closer ties of intellectual companionship and mutual idolatry.  The mutual idolatry she doesn't like because it focuses just on looks and not actual feelings for one another or partnership with one another.  She says they usually don't end or go well.  The intellectual companionship she says is more like a friendship based on ideological similarities.  She says this one leaves little room for love as they are more like friends than mates.  However she does like that they do tend to lean toward people with similar goals working together to obtain them.

Basically, the last one is the best one.  It is kind of a combination of them all.  The couple has a mutual idolatry of each other to a point (they have sexual attractions to one another).  There is an intellectual attraction as they have to help each other work toward each other's goals.  And each one must have abilities and jobs the other simply can't do so they compliment each other.  This last one is very similar to what I believe my fiancée and I have.

Abraham Lincoln "The Gettysburg Address"

What I find funny about this speech is that it probably only took a few minutes to say, President Lincoln wrote it quickly on the way to the event, and he says that no one will remember what is said there that day, but it is one of the most famous speeches in American history.  Also, there was someone else who spoke either before or after him for at least an hour and no one remembers what he said.

One of my favorite lines from the address is, "...we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

To me this is Abraham Lincoln saying, "What are we doing here?  This war is not an easy one, and what our soldiers are doing is dedication enough.  It's time to come together and work to make this place better so their dedication will not be in vain."

This address is short, sweet, to the point, and memorable.

Edgar Allan Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart"

I first read this story my sophomore year of high school.  My english teacher at the time read it in such a way that it came alive before my very eyes.  I can imagine everything that is occurring throughout the story.

The fact that the narrator is an insane murderer confessing everything in the end was a crazy plot twist.  But the fact that he's trying to convince us otherwise throughout the story is even more crazy.  I love that aspect of it.  It's such a crazy story and that way of storytelling with the craziness of the story keeps me on the edge of my seat.

This is one classic story that definitely is not even on the line between boring and exciting for me.  It is one that I even enjoy reading a few different times a year online somewhere since it's pretty short.

Edgar Allan Poe "The Raven"

The Raven is the first thing I ever read of Edgar Allan Poe's.  I first read it in 8th grade and I found it confusing.  Just being honest.

I read it again a couple of times throughout high school and finally developed ideas about it and understood it.  First off, Edgar Allan Poe was somewhat crazy himself.  So I think this poem may be something he was feeling at the time of his writing it.

Secondly, let's talk about what happened.  A very brief summary of what happened, that is.  The narrator of The Raven is someone who is dying whilst descending into madness.  In his madness, he hallucinates about a raven who can talk and is really just a projection of his innermost thoughts.  By the end, he has died, or is on the very brink of death, and says that the raven is the cause of it all and that he shall never be lifted again.

Scarlet Letter Part II

I don't really want to focus on the reading of The Scarlet Letter we did for this part.  I'd rather focus on an in class activity we did.  We were asked to write down a letter on a card that represented one of our biggest sins.  We didn't have to tell what they meant, just write the letter (basically make our own scarlet letter).

I will explain mine later, but first, I would like to say that I knew immediately what I wanted to put.  This activity was both easy and hard for me.  It was easy because I have told others about this sin before, but I haven't really told strangers before.  And even though it was just a letter that could mean anything, it was somewhat difficult to do.

I put down a P.  This "P" stood for my addiction to pornography and masturbation that I had throughout most of middle school and high school.  I don't have time to go into detail, but the basics of the story are I wanted to get free for the longest time and finally did after my junior year at a youth rally/camp in Branson, MO called Champions 4 Christ.

Scarlet Letter Part I

The Scarlet Letter gets into the story pretty quickly.  To me, this is kind of odd for the time period the story was written in.  We get the backstory as we go along, rather than getting the backstory and then getting to the actual story.

I want to focus on the fact that Hester's sin is divulged early on in this book.  What is the reasoning for the punishment of the sin?  She is publicly shamed and confesses to the sin.  Some see this as a good punishment because they should have killed her.  Others have other reasonings.  My personal though on the issue is that the punishment was given to her in order to maybe clear the consciouses of those in charge.  They knew that she was a well liked person in the community and they didn't want to kill her for fear of what the people may have done.  It also helps to make an example of her so that they can maybe stay in power.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter I-VI

This story is set in Massachusetts in the times when Puritans were the main religious view of the state (at the time, colony).  The story is mainly about a woman who had an affair of sorts that ended up bringing about the birth of a child, but she won't say who the child is.  Her punishment?  She has to wear a scarlet letter (the letter wear) and stand for hours on some sort of scaffolding in front of one of the main buildings for the city to see her.

Why do they punish her in this way?  After all, some of the people made the comment that they should kill her, as per usual punishment for such an act.  Although this story does kind of seem written a sort of extreme style to kind of show the wrongness of how some extreme puritans or extreme religions may act in Hawthorne's mind, why this punishment?

Maybe it's to show that they can be merciful.  Maybe it's to make her an example.  Maybe it's so that they can show how without God, people make mistakes and amount to failures and sinners.  Maybe it's to have her confess her sins so that God can restore her soul.  Either way, I don't know if that's the point of this part of the story.  Although it is clearly what's going on, I think Nathaniel Hawthorne is writing this part of the story to make a different point.

I believe that point is simply, "certain crimes are punished at a level undeserving of the crime (whether too much or too little).

James Fenimore Cooper - The Last of the Mohicans

We only read a portion of the story titled "The Last of the Mohicans."  Basically, this story seems to follow a character known as Hawk-Eye.  Hawk-Eye seems to be a man who is of European descent but has kind of adapted some of the ways of the Native Americans.

In this particular part of the story, the white man (Hawk-Eye) is having a conversation with a Native American, a Mohican named Chingachgook.  They seem to be discussing what happened in the past and how things came to be about today.  It also seems to be a conversation that is peaceful and shows the white man gaining "prestige" and "rapport" with the native.

They continue discussing for a little while and the white man makes a point that "things are what they are based on how you look at them."  Really, I believe this story is meant to show that whites and natives can work together and be friends or friendlies with one another.  They don't have to be at each other's throats or mean to each other as they had been up to the point this story was written (even after this story was written).

That makes this story to be one with political intentions behind it.  At the same time, though, it is a work of fiction.  It is a work of fiction that is American Fiction.  It hits close to home with the Americans and probably had some effect on some people back then.  All in all, it was refreshing to read some fiction.

Henry David Thoreau - Walden Ch. 1

Throughout this chapter of the writing named Walden, he says that we need to be as much a part of nature as we can.  He puts forward his belief that it is better for us to get out and experience life for ourselves than for anything else to happen in our lives.

He shows the economy works better for us if we don't go to college by showing that he was able to build a cottage in the woods at Lake Walden for the same price that it costs to rent a dorm room that's a little smaller at a university per year.  This is kind of his way of saying that universities should not be where we go to learn and to live.  We should be getting out in nature and living life and learning things from our experiences.

The last major point of his I want to talk about is the point that "these things are more easily acquired than got rid of."  He's basically saying that material things can be gotten extremely easily if you get out and work for them yourselves.  Once you get them, though, it is difficult to get rid of them because you feel some sort of connection or pride with it.  Or maybe it's just too hard to get rid of because not everyone needs it.  Either way, this chapter's underlying tone is that you should do things for yourself instead of getting them done for you.

Henry David Thoreau - Resistance to Civil Government

Henry David Thoreau loved nature just as much, if not more than Ralph Waldo Emerson.  He was also against government for the most part.  He seems to wish that there was no form of government, although he does admit it can't happen right away.

At the very least he wants government to become less involved in the daily lives of the people.  He states right from the beginning that he heartily accepts the saying: "That government is best which governs not at all."

He says that will be the government we will have when man is ready for it.  I believe man will probably never be ready for it.  Man will probably never be ready for it because it's not in our nature. For as long as man has existed, they have had a leader (or a government) of some kind.  Whether that leader/government was God or a person or persons, it has always existed in some way.  It's a fun thought to think about, though.

A lot of his ideas can be heard by Presidential Candidates today.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - The American Scholar

Ralph Waldo Emerson challenges society.  He challenges both the society of his day and the society of our day.  What do we classify or identify ourselves as?  Is our identity found in what we do?  He believes it shouldn't be.  He believes we should be Man Thinking, not just thinking about what we are told to think about.

We should be thinking for ourselves, asking questions and finding answers for ourselves.  We shouldn't just take everything we're told at face value.  We should dig deeper and learn things from our own experiences.

One of the biggest/most well known statements from this speech is "Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst."

Books have a use and are good to an extent.  We should not, however just believe everything we read, he's saying.  We need to take the books we are given and challenge them to see if they hold up to be true.  If we find that they don't, then we need to rewrite them.  He even makes a point that each generation has it's new writers who make new books.  They are no use, though, if they just reiterate and say the exact same thing as what's been stated for generations upon generations, unless they still are true.  We just need to be learning for ourselves.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature

Ralph Waldo Emerson is a guy who had a lot of ideas.  He was a philosopher, maybe a believer, and a lover of nature.  He was a Transcendentalist.

Let's look at his lecture/writing entitle "Nature."  I really want to focus on his eyeball analogy though.

He says "...all mean egotism vanishes.  I become a transparent eye-ball.  I am nothing.  I see all.  The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."

All mean egotism vanishes.  I believe he's saying something along the lines of "nature is so large, we are just one part of the larger picture."  Next, he says "I become a transparent eye-ball."  The transparent eye-ball means that he believes that being in nature, truly in and a part of nature, means that you are entirely open and transparent with nature (which includes with people).

The "I am nothing" part may refer to the idea that nothing we do will ultimately change nature (in the sense Ralph Waldo Emerson talks about it).  "I see all" may refer to the idea that: if you are truly being a part of nature, you will be able to see the big picture of what's going on, not just what's happening in your immediate surroundings.

Now we are getting to the main part I want to talk about.  "The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."  This may sound like he's saying he is God to some people.  You see, I don't believe that at all.  I believe he is referring to the fact that we are made in God's image.  We are made in God's image.  God made everything.  We are a part of God's creation.  That's what I believe he is referring to with this.

Another thing I believe he's referring to with this statement is that no matter what we do, the outcome of nature will be the same in the end. But, by nature, I think he could be talking about the ultimate end of the world as we know it.  I mean this as God's plan will come to pass whether we want it to or not.  Whether we believe in Him or not, His plan will come to pass.

Washington Irving - Rip Van Winkle

I both like and dislike this story.  I like this story because the character of Rip Van Winkle is an interesting being.  I like this story because it is a fictional story (finally, some work of fiction).  I like this story because of the fact it used an actual folk tale some Dutch Americans said at the time and made a whole story out of it.  I like this story because it used actual events (the Revolutionary War) as a background detail in the story.

I dislike this story because I feel it takes too long to get to the good stuff.  The good stuff I think is everything after Rip leaves to go up into hills/mountains with his dog.  It has too much exposition before the main events of the story start happening.  This could be because of my own personal tastes.  This could be because that's how I've been trained to think since a lot of movies have major events all throughout with background info sprinkled here and there throughout the story.  I could be wrong.  Maybe this style worked and was super intriguing back in the day.  Maybe a lot of people still like this style.  That's their prerogative.

Intro to 1820-1865

So... I have to start off with an apology.  The past 4 weeks have been pretty busy for me, whether with work, school, or personal matters.  Part of it was due to my preparing to propose (which I did on April 4th and she said yes!).  Part of it is I forgot one or two of the weeks.  The other parts I can't/won't go into.  So now I am paying for it with the fact that I have to knock out 8 blog posts over the course of the next 2 days and 4 responses to someone else's blog posts in my class.  This should be fun.

Now for the good stuff.  The American Renaissance.  That is the common name for this time period. It's not fully accurate to some people, but we'll just go with it.  During this time period, it is considered that American Literature truly became a uniquely identifiable thing.  American authors started to gain some notoriety, if only a little bit at the time of their lives.

Transcendentalism and romanticism became central ideas for a lot of the writings of the time.  We finally started getting fiction stories being written in the United States.  Imaginations could start to run wild.  The fiction, I believe, made it easier for a lot of authors to get their personal opinions across to their readers (as opposed to just straight up saying their ideas).

I do want to address the fact that some don't appreciate the period being called an American Renaissance since they don't think it's a rebirth as it is just forming.  I believe that calling it an American Renaissance is a perfect description of the period.  It is a rebirthing because they are remaking their literature image so that it isn't like the stuff of England or the rest of Europe.  They are being reborn in the sense that they are writing as Americans and not as Europeans who happened to move to the Americas or Europeans who were born in the American colonies.

Olaudah Equiano

Equiano is an interesting character.  He is very much about showing people what slavery was like and challenging their beliefs that they are "high and mighty" and "Christians."

I can see how some historians have come to think that he wasn't actually born in Africa and just wrote where he came from as a way to try to make his story a representative of the whole slave story. I can see this because he says that his country's customs were carefully implanted in him, which can give that illusion.

Once we get past the very beginning of his story, however, I believe it is too detailed to have been written as just a symbol for the collective slave narrative. I believe this was his actual life story with maybe a few points slightly exaggerated to make a point.

Either way, though, his story should've been a rude awakening for the white people of the Americas and of Europe who kept slaves.

Benjamin Franklin

Ben Franklin.  A man of many talents... a.k.a. - a Renaissance man.  He was pretty direct with his writing, in my opinion. His main point of "you can make yourself morally good/perfect yourself by doing certain things" got through in his writing.  I would have to agree with the theme that you can make yourself into what you want because, based on your choices and perseverance, you will either make it or break it.

I'd have to disagree with his description of what you should believe in terms of faith, however. His basic description of what religion is basically describes how I feel a lot of people are towards calling themselves "Christian."  However, it is my belief that true Christianity is about having a relationship with God/Jesus. You can't just say that you're saved because you go to church or because you believe that there is a God of some kind up above.

J. Hector St. John de Crèvocoeur

First off, long name.  Secondly, long name.  Thirdly, long name.  Fourthly, let's talk about this guy.  The first thing I find fascinating about the guy whom lends his name to the title of this blog post is that he had so many hardships to deal with, both before and after he came to the colonies.  When he came to the colonies, he immediately seemed to feel pride in it and started to call it his home.

Hang on, let me backtrack.  He had one wife/fiancee die.  Then he got married once he got to the colonies to someone else.  They had a few kids.  He leaves the colonies for a time, but then returns to find that his wife had been murdered and his children were living with strangers.  I mean, that's rough.  That's really rough.

In all of it, however, he still seemed to love America and consider himself an American, no matter where he was at.  I think he said it best (at least for his time) when he said that upon arriving on the shores of the colonies, you feel a sense of national pride in your countrymen and what they have accomplished here.  That is what an American was at that time.  They felt more pride in America (the British Colonies) than they did in their home countries (their motherlands).

Jonathan Edwards

Where to begin with Jonathan Edwards?  I know. I think I'll begin with, and focus on, the sermon titled: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.  I'll mainly do this because it's something I've read before for other classes and it's the main point of focus we had in my class at USF.

One thing I learned from reading it in this book and going over it in class is that he didn't necessarily read it in an angry or furious fashion, as I had previously thought.  In a class in my high school, we had to read this speech aloud, and we read it angrily.  We also had to write short speeches that were of a similar nature and read them aloud in class (all I remember is I had some colonial time period insults in my, which I thought were pretty funny).  Now, after learning that he didn't necessarily present this speech the way I thought he had, I see it in a whole new light.

Before, I saw it as he was angry and was really trying to drive home the point that everyone was probably going to die and go to hell or face God's wrath at some point.  Now, I see it as so much more than that.  What I believe Jonathan Edwards was trying to do with this sermon was show people how "in the wrong" they were, but not just condemn them and leave them there.  No, I believe this message is one of conviction and not condemnation.  The difference being that he is calling them back to God and saying, "Hey, you did wrong.  You messed up.  Thankfully, it doesn't have to stay that way.  You're better than this.  Come to God.  Let Him work through you and save you from the ending you deserve," rather than being full of condemnation and only saying, "You messed up.  You failed.  God doesn't want you back.  You're all going to die and go to hell.  There is no hope for you."

So although most people might have a problem with Jonathan Edwards because of this sermon, I think they have a problem with him for the wrong reasons.  It's not one of pure anger, as most people seem to think it is, but rather one of compassion, trying to help them back from their wrongdoings by showing them where they will end up going if they continue on this path they're on.

The "WE" at the end of D.E.W.

At the end of the period we have called D.E.W. (Discovery; Encounter; Witness), the "WE" seems to have started to form.  People have started to identify themselves as colonists or people of the land they have colonized.  It's not too major of a view yet, but it is beginning.  Based on the writings that we read, the "WE" seems to be the Puritans or the Christians who live in the colonies.  But, if you go more into it, it seems to be the white people who came to the colonies or whose families came to the colonies and work together.

Intro to the Enlightenment

The enlightenment is kind of a crazy period in time when you think about it.  The primary belief system in the colonies (Puritanism) began to be challenged.  This is specifically shown in those in the field of science and philosophy.  They began to say things like: "There is a creator, but all he did was create things to have a certain order and then the rest of what happens is left up to us.  He's not actually intimately involved in our lives."  That was insane at the time!  Think about it, everything up to that point said that God was controlling everything intimately and we really had no control of what happened.  Now, they still did not see this as heresy, but the churches and those who saw themselves as puritans saw this as wrong.  So most of the writings we will probably encounter in this period are dealing with this new "Deist" idea and what this new viewpoint believes.  We will also eventually encounter political documents because the second half of the enlightenment dealt with the formation of the United States of America.

Beginnings to 1700

So I'm posting this at the end of the week instead of the beginning of the week... if I get sued, that's cool.  But seriously, though, I just forgot about the whole blogging thing until yesterday and I would've done this (as well as the Mary Rowlandson one) yesterday, but I didn't have time.

What I found intriguing from the first readings we had to do (the introduction thing, Christopher Columbus, and First Encounters - I read Hernan Cortés) is just how much most of it is in the same genre.  That genre is nonfiction.  It's nonfiction because most of the early American writings were letters sent back and forth from explorers and the monarchs who sent them, journals of the explorers or their crew members, documentations of colony life, and other things of the sort.

Was it all nonfiction?  No.  It's just that a vast majority of it (or at least what we've read) was nonfiction.  The main stuff that isn't nonfiction would be the Native American folk tales/legends/creation stories, which to them were actually nonfiction.

One thing that really stuck out to me, though, was that I didn't think about most of this stuff being American literature.  I didn't consider American literature to have actually started until the Revolutionary War time period, mostly because when I think "American," I think of the United States of America and it's history.  So it was slightly surprising to me that we started with the early explorers and that some of the early explorers (or at least Cortés) said that the Natives were even aware that they had come from other lands and didn't know what they used to believe so they had to come up with their own stories about what to believe and how they came about.

Review of Mary Rowlandson

Mary Rowlandson's writing was pretty intriguing.  It's amazing to think what she probably endured and went through, but still stayed faithful to God (or saw His faithfulness to her).  Of course, there is also the possibility that she has slightly fabricated her story as she did write it after it was over.  I will, however, choose to believe that her story is true.  Since I believe her story is true, I don't know what I would have done in her situation.  I'd like to think that I'd never have given up my hope in God, but I can't for sure say that I would have been able to be like Mary was.  The only way to know that for sure is to go through a similar situation.  The two biggest things that stuck out me about her story, though, were the only two things that I could remember when I tried to think back on it the next day in class.

The first thing is when she received the Bible from one of the Native Americans.  The fact that she was reading and fell into despair because she thought she was cursed, but then she kept on reading and saw that she would be blessed in the end and that God was with her is the first thing.  The reason this stuck out so much is because she didn't just stop reading when she felt like she was being told she was cursed.  Rather, she kept on reading to find the true meaning in what God was trying to tell here, and that is that He's always there, even when it seems like He's not.  Also, it reminded me as I was reading it that, as a Christian, you can't just read one passage in the Bible and jump straight to the conclusion that what you just read was what God wanted you to get out of your reading, but instead you need to keep on reading until you know for sure if what you thought He was saying to you is actually what He was saying.

The second thing that stuck out to me is how she kind of changes throughout her writing.  She goes from calling the Native Americans all sorts of mean and racist remarks to being practically sympathetic to them and kind to them in her writing.  At least, she does until the very end when she kind of just says that their purpose is to be evil in a way.  That just struck me because it shows that no matter what you may think about someone or something, your view could change if you would just get to know them a little more.