Final: Essay Question 2 - American Literature from 1865 to the Present | ENGL 2340, Study notes of English Language

Download Final: Essay Question 2 - American Literature from 1865 to the Present | ENGL 2340 and more Study notes English Language in PDF only on Docsity! Sweta Ghayal Final: Essay Question #2 Ms. Jennifer Wing August 3, 2006 The Ultimate Goal of American Literature: The Strive for One’s Identity Throughout American literature, readers constantly see one major and important theme brought to the artist’s audience. Americans strive for searching for one’s identity. Literary artists from different periods have had different strategies of finding one’s identity. These literary periods have been distinctly distinguished from one another through various literary themes used by artists. Each anteceding period always is found to be in reaction of the preceding period. For example, the realism era gathered literature from the 1830s to the end of the nineteenth century. Anteceding the realism era was modernism during the twentieth century. Like all literary periods, artists of the modernistic era are constantly reacting against the themes and thoughts of the realistic era. Realist artists, such as William Dean Howells, author of “Editha,” attempted to write the truth of everyday life in their literature to give further emphasis on what uplifted American spirit. Howells defined this literary era as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.” On the contrary, modern artists, such as Ernest Hemingway, author of “Hills Like White Elephants,” included historical events and symbolic meanings from other cultures to find oneself through the usage of the past. The story of “Editha” by Howells is situated during a period of war. Most of society has the American spirit and pride to win the war. Editha is a woman who loves her country and is willing to do anything to gain victory, even if it is to fight to her death. She lives her life through her fiancé George, an unenthusiastic soldier of the American army. Because of these differing views among the couple, Editha writes him a letter stating “But the man I marry must love his country first of all” (1446). By use of symbolic language, Howells portrays many Americans standing together in battle to win the war and to gain individual independence, even for their own personal reasons. In this story, Editha wants her fiancé to go fight into battle and win it for her in order to give her independence from the relationship. Fortunately for Editha, George bravely dies in battle and Editha gains her individual freedom. Similar to realism, artists of the anteceding era, modernism also write to find individualism but through a different pathway. In the story of the couple in Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” the couple is constantly debating over the issue of abortion and whether or not having a baby would have an effect on their lives as world wanderers. Philosophical ideologies carried on from the nineteenth century into the twentieth made abortion viewed by society as an untraditional and unethical alternative. During this time, many modernists wrote in rejection to these traditional ideas to find individualism. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” Hemingway states, “I wanted to try this new drink. That's all we do, isn't it--look at things and try new drinks?” (2). Using this line in his literature, Hemingway wants to gain individualism by rejecting traditional thoughts and trying new things, such as abortion. Besides contrasting the way of writing between two literary periods, the ultimate goal of artists in American literature was to find individual freedom and independence from personal everyday life. Hemingway’s modernistic writing and Howell’s realistic 2Ghayal