American Literature
28/04/2014
Circumstances versus Choice: Paradox of Vanity
Stephen Cranes novella, ‘Maggie: A Girl of the Streets’ recounts the experience of children growing up in a violent and morally decadent society. It raises fundamental question as to the extent of man’s helplessness in certain circumstances. Moreover, it juxtaposes issues of personal choice and responsibility on one side against immense social circumstances on the other side. To the reader and critic, the thought to ponder is whether human beings can rise above a morally corrupt edifice and ride to the high pedestal of decency. In Cranes’ novella, the environment condemns characters to irredeemable and inevitable vanity. Vanity exacerbates the situation as characters are engrossed in vainglorious pursuits.
Maggie and Jimmie, siblings whom Cranes uses as protagonists, live in deplorable and violent conditions. The setting is America West, during the industrialization era. The change from agricultural to industrial economy led to many casualties, including Maggie and Jimmie’s parents. They found themselves in periphery of economic edifice where poverty was rampant. Now alcoholics, they are incapable of offering parental care and support to their children. This leaves the children at the mercies of a violent, vain, and despondent society that shapes them to what they became in the end. Cranes’ ability to create and sustain characters that readers can empathize with is epic though critics like Eichhorst have lambasted his episodic style (23). This paper will demonstrate that in spite of its inadequacy, Cranes Novella caricatures American naturalism in a way hitherto unseen by illustrating the profound effect of social circumstances on his characters.
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...’ family is in deep alcoholism, depriving children the benefits of a proper upbringing. The Johnsons are also chaotic and tyrannical. Jimmie and his ilk of brawling youths epitomize the violence that rocked the society. In the middle of this violence is pursuit of vanity. Children are fighting viciously to establish the superior one. Adults are watching on indifferently. Maggie gets into prostitution because of pursuing an elegant life. She lacks appreciation of her beauty and persona. In the end, the question to ponder is whether human beings have the capacity to make personal choices in midst of immense social circumstances. Regrettably, Johnsons share the blame for the kind of person that their children turned out. The society too has remained passive in the midst of great social trepidation. Maggie and Jimmie share the blame for pursuit of vainglorious vanity.
In an enticingly realistic novel, contemporary western writer Cormac McCarthy tells the coming-of-age story of a young John Grady Cole whose life begins and, in a sense, ends in rustic San Angelo. Page by page, McCarthy sends his protagonist character creation on a Mexican adventure, complete with barriers, brawls, and beauties. The events which bring about John Grady’s adventure and the reasons behind his decision to flight familiarity are the most intriguing aspects of the novel. Through an examination of the text, readers can determine that John Grady Cole’s hellish plunge from his position of grace on his grandfather’s ranch in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses is a compilation of the deterioration of his ranch country, Cold War west Texas culture, and societal expectations that left him with no other option but to run in an ironic effort to return to pre-World War II normalcy.
Hattie spent much of her younger years living with different relatives because both of her parents had died when she was five. As Hattie was “tossed” from one relative’s home to another throughout her childhood, she never had a sense of belonging. To make matters worse, her relatives treated her like a hassle—as though her very existence was an annoyance. Needless to say, Hattie’s relatives were neither supportive nor encouraging of her. By age 16, Hattie’s feeling of self-worth was at an all time low. The story did not describe her appearance in depth, but it did say she was very modest and dressed humbly.
Stephen Crane’s novella, “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets” deals with many difficult concepts and situations. However, the most prevalent seems to be the people that find themselves caught in a vicious cycle of violence. Although some claim that a literary label cannot possibly contain Crane’s work, his ideas certainly have much in common with other naturalistic writers of his time. He portrays poor Irish immigrants, the dregs of humanity, struggling for survival during the Industrial Revolution. Even while relating terrible events, Crane remains detached in the typical naturalistic style, seeming to view the world as a broad social experiment.
“She imagined a future rose-tinted because of its distance from all she had experienced before,” (53). The distance from the broken furniture and drunken bawls was not far. Maggie’s new wonderful cultural experience was a short glimpse at New York’s museums with time spent at cheap theatres and dance halls. Instead of a fairy tale story, Crane told of reality in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets – the reality that would face a young girl from a dirt poor, chaotic existence. Crane contrives to show how much weight poor pre-existing conditions have in determining the future.
Yet the similarity between these two stories raises some interesting questions about how we read Carver. That he is adored as few late-century American writers are is not news -- as Bloom points out there's almost a cult of Carver. Readers treasure not only his taut, bleak, deeply moving short stories but the legend of his life, as well: unhappy, alcoholic, stifled by frustrating poverty and saddled with the overwhelming responsibilities of teenage parenthood ("[My wife and I] didn't have any youth" he told Simpson), Carver's singular talent didn't have room to develop until relatively late. His eventual triumph over adversity, a story of late, spectacular blooming against all odds, has given him a rare hold on his readers' affection. Carver chronicled the lives of the lumpen proletariat and the demoralized white working class with a sensitivity and eye for detail unmatched in his contemporaries and, many would argue, his followers. He is commonly thought of as a truly American writer, perhaps stylistically indebted to Sherwood Anderson, Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway (he himself suggested the link to Hemingway in his book "Fires"), but in a sense sui generis -- a talented, sensitive soul who rose up out of the deadening laundromats and strip malls of the great, dreary American suburban wastelands and wrote beautiful, sad stories in clipped, stripped prose. The minimalism and domestic realism of his short stories made his work read very differently from the cerebral literary styling of his contemporaries, the university-ensnared postmodernists. But perhaps Carver's work wasn't as unfettered or as American (in his literary influences, at least) as all that.
...g with the sordid images of the street and of society, suggests a new, slightly more kind idea of the street:"I am moved by fancies that are curled / Around these images, and cling: / The notion of some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing," (CPP, 13). These last lines seem to portray a forgiving vision of society, an almost compassionate attitude toward the filth and the spiritual degradation.
In the personal essay “Context” (1994), the author, Dorothy Allison, explores the difference in lifestyles of the prosperous, sophisticated people and poorer, less fortunate people. Allison develops this by comparing her impecunious childhood with the privileged youth of her lover. Allison emphasizes her lack of certain experiences as child in order to give readers a vivid understanding of what was “normal” or a context for her. This essay is mainly directed towards people who are quick to judge how someone speaks or acts without having a thorough understanding of their context and what they consider as “normal”.
The confrontation between Maggie's character and her circumstances is paramount when offering a possible explanation for George Eliot's decision for Maggie's tragic conclusion. Maggie is growing up in a rapidly changing world, which detrimentally effects her own family's prosperity. Her unique qualities and lack of conformity make it difficult for her to fit into and move forward in what is essentially a patriarchal society. The reader is introduced to Maggie aged 9 and the description of her physical appearance suggests that she is somewhat of an anomaly as regards the expectations of her mother and Aunts. Her `brown skin', dark eyes and straight back hair that `wont curl' contrast unfavorably with the appearance of her cousin Lucy Deane, the blond, pale skinned stereotypical representation of 19th century femininity. The difference between them is described as,' the contrast between a rough dark overgrown puppy and a white kitten' . However it is not just Maggie's appearance t...
Willa Cather’s novel, My Antonia, is set in old time Nebraska. This setting impacts how characters act and their values. The readers can tell the difference from the way each character that is from a different place acts. Such as Jim, who becomes attached to Nebraska and it never leaves him, even after two decades in New York. The characters in My Antonia have a strong response to their environments, the landscape becomes the novel’s most solid symbol of the vanished past, as Jim, the lawyer in distant New York, thinks back longingly on the landscape of his childhood.
At the beginning of this piece, we are quickly introduced to the different lifestyles between the farm she lived in and the one she encountered when she left to New York. Easily distinguished is the contrast made by the use of the word “folks” when she mentions her relatives from “down under” but calls the New Yorkers “people.” The North is seen as a literature archetype as an unknown lucrative place, a strange place where “the flowers cost a dollar each.” This is positioned as a welcome mat to a world of differences betwe...
Developing into the person someone will be in the future depends on the environment they grow up in. Rum Alley is a place where people are expected to grow into a product of their environment. Becoming a product of the environment is like a trap, because once someone is a product of the environment, they will stay as one. Rum Alley, the slums of New York, is home to the Johnsons. The Johnson family all played major roles in illustrating how prostitution, poverty, alcoholism, and having no parental role model contribute to becoming a product of their environment. In Stephen Crane’s Maggie; A Girl of the streets, Crane shows how Maggie, Jimmie, and Mrs. Johnson are products of their environment in order to illustrate how the characters can’t
In the novella Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane, the protagonist, Maggie Johnson, is the only character seemingly unaffected by the torment of her hostile upbringing; however, as the story progresses, she becomes more aware of her indigent environment and becomes a proxy for the negative effect the Bowery has on its victims. Maggie's increasing desire to abandon her home diminishes her individualism and self-reliance. Additionally, Crane highlights the different ways in which characters are affected by and deal with their hostile environments. Anticipating an escape from this environment and a revision of her fate, Maggie turns to Pete; however, Maggie’s refusal to acknowledge that her problems are unalterable unfortunately results
The American Dream and the decay of American values has been one of the most popular topics in American fiction in the 20th century. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises create a full picture of American failure and pursue its ideals after the end of World War I by portraying the main characters as outsiders and describing the transportation in a symbolic way. Putting the aimless journeys for material life foreground, Fitzgerald and Hemingway skillfully link West and men and associate East to not only money but women. As American modernists, Hemingway utilizes his simple and dialog-oriented writing to appeal to readers and Fitzgerald ambiguously portrays Gatsby through a narrator, Nick, to cynically describe American virtue and corruption, which substantially contribute to modernism in literature.
“A Tale Intended to be After the Fact…” is how Stephan Crane introduced his harrowing story, “The Open Boat,” but this statement also shows that history influences American Literature. Throughout history, there has been a connection among literary works from different periods. The connection is that History, current events, and social events have influenced American Literature. Authors, their literary works, and the specific writing styles; are affected and influenced by the world around them. Authors have long used experiences they have lived through and/or taken out of history to help shape and express in their works. Writing styles are also affected by the current trends and opinions of the period they represent. By reading American Literature, we have seen the inhumane treatment of slaves, we have seen the destruction caused by wars, and we have seen the devastation of eras such as The Great Depression.
Poised to fly through the air, to finally let go, Ethan and Mattie cling to their last hope of being together. The landscape is still, the snow settled from hours of continuous falling, and they glide down the hill to their inevitable doom. Pages away, two lifelong friends stand in a gentle clearing with a pond lazily pooling about, as they say their final words just before the ring of a gun. Edith Wharton’s, Ethan Frome, takes readers back to the late 1800’s in Starkfield, Massachusetts. Ethan is a simple farmer burdened with a wife who insists she is sick whenever a slight sneeze escapes her. His dull, inescapable life brightens at the appearance of his cousin-in-law, Mattie, who comes to take care of the house. As the two lovers slowly descend into a darkness of their own creation, they do not take note of the warnings that surround them. In an entirely different kind of tragedy, John Steinbeck’s, Of Mice and Men, follows the quiet lives of George and Lennie who have finally found jobs on a ranch after forceful measures were taken to run them out of their old ones. One big and dumb, the other small and clever, these two friends find themselves on opposite ends of a gun with only one option; pulling the trigger. Both novels use setting to illustrate that place not only reflects one’s emotions, it also greatly dictates one’s future, as it can either stifle or encourage one’s dreams and aspirations, demonstrating the enormous role it has in any book.