Local Color, Humor, Social Criticism, early Naturalism. Mark Twain, Jack London, Stephen Crane. Rediscovering Europe: Henry James
Naturalism
- The meticulous observation and accurate description of one slice of life - to show and represent the world 'as it is' - Acknowledgement of the determination of human beings: powers of nature and powers of society are stronger than the human self! -Biologically: we are determined: under the veneer of civilization: there is the 'brute', the 'beast' -Socially: Social Darwinism (Spencerism) - we are also determined by society: the survival of the fittest - The individual is swept along by these forces, there is no human freedom to act or decide - In Europe: all this caused despair and disillusion - In America: some writers become extremely enthusiastic about these powers! More optimistic naturalism (e.g. Jack London: The Call of the Wild; Frank Norris: Wheat Trilogy I., II.) - The first naturalist writer in America: Stephen Crane 1871-1900 - Critical - having grown up in a pious, over-religious family - Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (1893) - life of a prostitute in New York, description of slums, squalor and injustice - scandal, had to be published at the author's expense - The Black Riders 1895, a book of poems - Crane's ambition as a writer: to achieve personal honesty - to deflate romantic idealism and portray man battered alone in a hostile world - News reporter: travels to the American west; war correspondent in Cuba - Ill health: tubercolosis - died very early (age 29)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (analysis)
- The plot of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of two characters' attempts to emancipate themselves. Huck desires to break free from the constraints of society, both physical and mental, while Jim is fleeing a life of literal enslavement. - At the time, books mostly concentrated on uppet/middle class - outrage at the poor people, slaves, Jim's portrayal, accents - Huck is very class conscious - Huck is an unreliable narrator - child innocence, confusion, doesn't always feel the weight of the situation - BUT he improves Racism: - Huck's initial racism is purely from society's influence, not something he consciously decided - However he starts to notice more and more the similarities between Jim and a white man - When he tricks Jim in the fog and scares him, he realizes Jim is able to feel the same emotions as any man - "uncommon level head for a ******", "it don't seem natural", "good ******", "white soul" - Finally, he refers to Jim simply as a "good man", his racism towards him mostly dissolved - Whether this change stays with him when faced with that time's society, is uncertain
Local Color, Humor, Social Criticism, Early Naturalism
-After the Civil War: The 'Genteel Tradition' dominant on the East coast - Gap between life and literature! Literature: only for the family dinner table, about beautiful things, far away from harsh reality! -Against this tradition: new, more critical voices from the West! -Late 19th century: center of literature no longer on the East coast - many centers: local color writing! (Speech, characteristics of a certain period, region.) Journalism, documentation, introduction of new settlements, ways of life there - regional, marginal, but: possibilities of becoming mythological! (e.g. the Wild West has become real American mythology as well as part of a worldwide popular culture) Co-existence of journalism together with popular literature, dime novels, etc. oral tradition - the vernacular language 'Let them speak!' (Mark Twain) artistic demands - actually every important author uses local color to represent universal human conditions
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (characters)
Huckleberry "Huck" Finn - The protagonist and narrator of the novel. Huck is the thirteen-year-old son of the local drunk of St. Petersburg, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River. Tom Sawyer - Huck's friend, and the protagonist of Tom Sawyer, the novel to which Huckleberry Finn is ostensibly the sequel. Widow Douglas And Miss Watson - Two wealthy sisters who live together in a large house in St. Petersburg and who adopt Huck. Jim - One of Miss Watson's household slaves. Jim is superstitious and occasionally sentimental, but he is also intelligent, practical, and ultimately more of an adult than anyone else in the novel. Pap - Huck's father, the town drunk and ne'er-do-well. Pap is a wreck when he appears at the beginning of the novel, with disgusting, ghost-like white skin and tattered clothes. The Duke And The Dauphin - A pair of con men whom Huck and Jim rescue as they are being run out of a river town. The older man, who appears to be about seventy, claims to be the "dauphin," the son of King Louis XVI and heir to the French throne. The younger man, who is about thirty, claims to be the usurped Duke of Bridgewater. Judge Thatcher - The local judge who shares responsibility for Huck with the Widow Douglas and is in charge of safeguarding the money that Huck and Tom found at the end of Tom Sawyer. The Grangerfords - A family that takes Huck in after a steamboat hits his raft, separating him from Jim. The kindhearted Grangerfords, who offer Huck a place to stay in their tacky country home, are locked in a long-standing feud with another local family, the Shepherdsons. The Wilks Family - At one point during their travels, the duke and the dauphin encounter a man who tells them of the death of a local named Peter Wilks, who has left behind a rich estate. The man inadvertently gives the con men enough information to allow them to pretend to be Wilks's two brothers from England, who are the recipients of much of the inheritance. Silas And Sally Phelps - Tom Sawyer's aunt and uncle, whom Huck coincidentally encounters in his search for Jim after the con men have sold him. Aunt Polly - Tom Sawyer's aunt and guardian and Sally Phelps's sister. Aunt Polly appears at the end of the novel and properly identifies Huck, who has pretended to be Tom, and Tom, who has pretended to be his own younger brother, Sid.
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw
In The Turn of the Screw, a governess begins to suspect that the children in her care are under the control of ghosts. Miles has started using foul language, and Flora walks the ground at night. The governess sees the ghosts of past employees Peter Quint and Mrs. Grose. Miles dies soon after. The unnamed governess is hired by her unnamed employer to care for his children, Miles and Flora. She goes to live with them in Bly, where she sees the ghosts of her predecessor Mrs. Grose and her employer's former valet, Peter Quint. Miles has been expelled from school for foul language and bad behavior. At night, Flora walks the grounds of the country estate, where the ghost of Mrs. Grose appears across the lake. The governess fears that the children are possessed. At the end, Miles falls ill. Neither child appears to have actually seen the ghost, and when the governess screams at one, Miles dies, confessing his sins. Themes: -The corruption of the innocent (possessions) - The destructiveness of heroism (the young governess) - Forbidden subjects - hints, but only vague (reason for Miles' expulsion, Quint and Jessel's relationship (sexual?) - a technique for engaging the imagination to produce a more terrifying effect. Symbols: - Light (candle light - safety, twilight - danger) - The Written Word - events become fully real only when they have been written down, hence the governess' reluctance to send the letter to her employee
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Original name: Samuel Langhorn Clemens - Synthesis of voices - the greatest writer of his era - Great story-teller: appreciation of the vernacular, great sense of humor - Humorous genres: hoax, tall-tale, jokes, yarn - How to Tell a Story: differences between a humorous story and a comic story - American European - Only an artist can tell it Anybody can tell it - 'Poker face performance', 'Laughing, pathetic performance' - Humorist: not necessarily a happy man - later in life turned more and more bitter and skeptical - Ruland & Bradbury: two distinct voices: - boyish comedian - bitter satirist. The two exist together in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) - B. 1835 Florida, Missouri - later lived in Hannibal - Mississippi river boyhood background - 1847: father died, left school, apprenticed to a printer - Brief/glorious carreer: Mississippi steamboat pilot - Civil War: River blockaded - Short term of soldiering: Confederate volunteer - After the war: Nevada, silver fields - failed but found another real treasure: oral tradition, folk tales, stories, yarns - became a frontier humorist, journalist - 1865: famous story: 'The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County - 1866: after 6 yrs as a miner: news reporter and lecturer in California, Nevada and Hawaii - Lively imagination, burlesque humorous sketches The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884 Life ont he Mississippi 1883 - realism! A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - more serious and critical Pudd'nhead Wilson 1894 furious attacks on bigotry The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg 1900 - More and more bitter, detested even the readers - became a pessimist - Personal tragedies: death of his wife and daughters, failure of his publishing firm - Bankruptcy: worldwide reading tour (to Hungary, too!) to pay his debts - Health problems - died in 1910, Hartford, Connecticut
Stephen Crane: The Blue Hotel (summary)
Published in two installments, it tells the story of a group of people who experience something extraordinary in the middle of their ordinary lives. It features a style of writing not common in American literature of that time, expressionism. The Palace Hotel is rather out of place in Fort Romper, Nebraska. The bright blue paint on the outside of the hotel owned by a man named Pat Scully doesn't really fit in with the green and gray desolate landscape surrounding it. Three guests from different places arrive at the hotel, and Pat is pleased to meet them. Known simply as The Swede, The Easterner, and The Cowboy, the three are escorted to their rooms. A family hotel, the three have dinner with Pat and Pat's son Johnnie. The Swede is the most peculiar of the group, often quiet but, when talking, says something that leaves others speechless. After dinner, Johnnie and the three guests play cards. The Swede is still a wary man, and says that someone has been killed in the front of the hotel. Everyone looks at him as if he is insane, and The Swede announces that he will die in the hotel tonight. Pat brings The Swede upstairs for a drink, but The Swede believes that Pat is trying to poison him. He also thinks that Pat may have been the one that killed the person in the front of the hotel, but doesn't say so out loud. Johnnie and the other two guests remain downstairs during this time, and say how crazy The Swede is. Pat and The Swede come downstairs, and Pat tells everyone that The Swede was acting odd, but is now okay. The game of cards ensues, and, losing, Johnnie gets angry. He is violent to The Swede, and takes him outside in a blizzard to fight. The two fight, and The Swede wins easily. Grabbing his suitcase, The Swede trots off. The Swede goes to a nearby bar, where he meets and angers a notorious Gambler. In another fight, this time The Swede does not win, and is murdered by The Gambler. The story jumps ahead for a time, to when the other two guests are at the murder trial of The Swede. The Easterner tells the cowboy that Johnnie had in fact cheated in the case that led to the initial fight where The Swede left, but he remained a bystander in that incident. He says that everyone, Johnnie, Pat, himself, The Easterner, and The Gambler, were equally responsible for the death of The Swede.
Stephen Crane: The Blue Hotel (analysis)
The most important theme of the story is alienation and what that can do to the human psyche. The town is already isolated, and winter makes it an even drearier place. The Swede is already estranged from the group, and this isolation causes increasing paranoia. The events that result from his paranoid behavior leave the Swede dead and change the life of the gambler forever. As a stranger, the Swede's sense of isolation causes him to fear for his life, and he does things that increasingly draw negative attention to himself. This negative attention puts him in situations that put his life at further risk and this vicious cycle continues. Eventually, it leads to his death. Fear is something that people face continually and understanding that fear can have a huge impact on our behavior. The Swede's fear is his undoing. It propels him towards what he is most afraid of, losing his life. The story is ironic because the Swede fears losing his life but his attempts to escape death only drive him closer towards it. Crane leaves it to us to decide if the Swede's attitude and actions trap him in an environment that will ultimately kill him, or if the environment is the trap. We do not know if nature is cruel and indifferent to humankind, or if our ideas about the environment are our undoing. The story is a haunting look at man's quest to overcome his environment. We cannot always free ourselves from our fate, and sometimes our fears drive us further towards what we wish to avoid. The Blue Hotel demands that we consider our deepest fears and whether our fate is already determined.
