Kathleen Norris' Dakota
Kathleen Norris uses small town society to illustrate a much larger phenomenon that occurs in America: The obstruction of truth in the name of progress and patriotism. Norris makes an example of a small Dakota town, the old families ingrained in local society who act as somewhat of a censorship committee, silently fixing the past's blunders and bad dreams so not to discourage themselves or the younger generation:
A good story is one that isn't demanding, that proceeds from A to B, and above all doesn't remind us of the bad times, the cardboard patches we used to wear in our shoes, the failed farms, the way people you love just up and die. It tells us instead that hard work and perseverance can overcome all obstacles; it tells lie after lie, and the happy ending is the happiest lie of all. (85)
Norris mentions the "progress model" and "linear narrative" used in the telling of history. People in Dakota don't want to hear about the countless generations before them who also failed at farming, the once thriving town that are now abandoned completely. They don't want to hear about anybody who failed, or anything bad that happened at all unless things turned out OK in the end. People have a need to hear fixed history to give them a false sense of hope. Even though many of them know it's false, they're willing to accept the fable as truth before facing a painful past.
The larger repercussions of this form of history, is that it misses out on the larger purpose of history. The most important part of history to be told truthfully is the bad part. Imagine our history glazing over Hitler as a crazy guy who acted alone, and forced everybody in Germany to go along with his plan. We need to hear the story that regular people were pulled into his mentality, that random Joe's were converted into Jew-hating murderers.
Unfortunately, American history does have a habit of covering up its history for the sake of offering its younger generations a progress model. In a book titled Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen shows how the progress model mode of history telling has covered up many important events in American history to the point that children in public education are graduating high school with extremely warped views of history.
What is in a story if you can’t take something out of it and relate to your everyday life? The book “Typical American” by Gish Jen, gave me something that I never fully, and I probably still don’t, comprehend: foreigners, and their struggles in making a new life in another country. I have been on my share of trips, both domestic and abroad, but was never in a distant land long enough to feel the effects of the unknowing these people felt every day. The manner in which this story was presented has given me a new insight into, not only foreign nationals, but more importantly, how one goes about presenting emotional feeling not just through words, but setting, characterization, point of view, conflict, and theme.
[2] Manipulated history used in an inappropriate manner is one of the ways in which the Nazis were able to convince so many people to follow their evil and tyrannical beliefs. This is not something that we as Americans can have happen. History in the cinema should be a carefully monitored area, so as to prevent fictional accounts to be passed as the truth. If we allow our screenwriters and directors to have free reign in the movies, they could theoretically conjure up any scenario that they pleased and pass it off as an actual event. This can not be so. If history is to be conveyed through film, it should be of the highest accuracy. Many people rely on what they see as fact so that if all movies decided to create a “history” that never happened, a large percentage of the American population would fall victim to their chicanery.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone, 2007.
Loewen, J. W. (1995). Lies my teacher told me, everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: New Press, The.
Short stories are temporary portals to another world; there is a plethora of knowledge to learn from the scenario, and lies on top of that knowledge are simple morals. Langston Hughes writes in “Thank You Ma’m” the timeline of a single night in a slum neighborhood of an anonymous city. This “timeline” tells of the unfolding generosities that begin when a teenage boy fails an attempted robbery of Mrs. Jones. An annoyed bachelor on a British train listens to three children their aunt converse rather obnoxiously in Saki’s tale, “The Storyteller”. After a failed story attempt, the bachelor tries his hand at storytelling and gives a wonderfully satisfying, inappropriate story. These stories are laden with humor, but have, like all other stories, an underlying theme. Both themes of these stories are “implied,” and provide an excellent stage to compare and contrast a story on.
Romance narrative is a type of writing that usually features a hero and his journey or quest. The hero reaches a transcendent goal through tests or trials. The narrative is often represented as a circle because the story begins with the hero’s goal. It then continues with the hero’s journey through the difficulties that he must overcome to achieve that goal and finishes with the initial goal accomplished. It’s a popular format because it externalizes the internal struggles that people face in their own lives in overcoming problems and especially in defining themselves as they transform from childhood to adulthood. The narrative follows a pattern of initial innocence, acceptance of duties and trials, then failure and despair. The failure is
New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. (2003). Achieving the promise: Transforming mental health care in America: Final report (DHHS Pub. No. SMA-03-3832). Rockville, MD: Author.
There are various types of curricula that are implemented at one time or another in which the children are policed, treated like the military personnel they are not and structure the classrooms with protocols similar to that of the workplace. Moreover, working class children are not given the ability to challenge themse...
...ime of the author rather then accurate historical facts. (Lies?293) Textbooks are being written this way and history is being taught this way to show people how they should act and strive to be. This relays to the student what is deemed acceptable to everyone and what is not. When it comes to a student remembering historical lessons they normally do not remember what is being taught to them unless they are moved by it. (Lies?301) So what is the result to a society where our students are being taught this way? The number one result is that students do not know the true history of their country nor do they remember what they were taught in class. This is a sad conclusion but Mr. Loewen feels it is an accurate one given responses to questions he has asked his students throughout the years. What can we do to change this and reeducate the people out there? Sadly I feel nothing can be done for those of us out there who are not truly aware of this misinformed way of teaching. But, our children need not be sheltered from our true history, rather they should learn all that has happened so we can prevent the atrocities from reoccurring again.
Many people see history as a set of facts, or as a collection of stories. The reality, however, is that history is a fluid timeline. Each act of an individual or a group has an effect on others. Each moment in history is a building block that, good or bad, contributes to the stability of the next. This can be seen clearly in American history, as there have been several developments since the 1800’s that have played major roles on the growth of the nation.
		The theme was very well presented, by the development of Sydney Carton’s character. He sacrificed his life to make others happy. He sacrificed his life in the name of love. Sydney Carton was indeed a hero.
In much of The Things They Carried, stories are retold time and time again. One reason for this is the idea of keeping a story’s story-truth alive. In “Good Form,” O’Brien differentiates what he calls story-truth from happening-truth. Story-truth seems to give us a better understanding of O’Brien’s sentiment in a particular story even though the story itself may not be true at all. On the other hand, happening-truth is what actually happened in the story, but may not contain as much emotional authenticity as story-truth. According to O’Brien, story-truth is therefore truer than happening-truth. Relating back to storytelling, O’Brien retells stories continuously to maintain their sentiment and emotional value. Without this continuous repetition, this sentiment fades away and the emotional value of the story is lost.
This book is written from a perspective foreign to most Americans. Historically, American students are taught from a single perspective, that being the American perspective. This approach to history (the single perspective) dehumanizes the enemy and glorifies the Americans. We tend to forget that those on the opposing side are also human.
Perkins, George, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. Print.
Learning about history helps us learn about the humanities own reflection and what’s good or bad about it. This is just like a diary , people and by people I mean historians , just wrote what they saw and what seemed to cause a major change in society and we just happen to be reading it a couple of years later. I believe that historians actually wrote historical truth because it makes sense and it has been scientifically proven