Part 1
Different approaches to the start of American literature counter each other because they measure with different yardsticks: is it American literature that starts with the presence of the European settlers and their written works, or is it American literature that begins being described when a distinctly American identity and style of writing comes out (Levine p.38)? For example, one may focus particularly on the contributions of the first colonial-age writers like Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop, while others can support the inclusion of Native American oral history as part of literary studies.
The two texts we read in the semester are “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which are fiction and nonfiction, respectively.
An individualistic and self-improving ethos/set of values/beliefs was among those in focus during the Enlightenment period. Ben Franklin’s Autobiography illustrated this through his unwavering desire for personal development with the “Plan for Self-Examination” and the constant endeavour in morality by marking progress in the virtues.
A theme touched upon in “The Coquette” is the struggle between the demands of a society and one’s longings, especially in connection to how women are to be ruled and how much freedom they are to enjoy. Through Eliza Wharton and her riveting dilemma, where she ultimately chooses to marry Mr Boyer or just follow what she considers the heart’s desire regardless of people’s opinion, this theme is dramatically captured.
Individual experience and emotion are the defining elements of Romanticism. Douglass’s vivid imagery, for example, depicts his emotional journey from slavery to freedom, his reactions to physical abuse, and his emotional experience of the fight for freedom and equality.
Whitman’s poetics broke away from the traditional feet and rhyme lines and moved towards free verse. This deviation from traditional thematic structures that poets used before enabled Whitman to convey the extensive diversity of American life and experience in a much more fluid and organically built structure. Such an approach is clearly seen in his work “Leaves of Grass.”
Part 2
Quote 1
The quote “’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand that there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too: Immediately, though without knowing or care, by the redemption I recover, once again. Some with dubious lash naively gaze at our black race; his color seems Black Death. Not only will you Christians and negros be black as Cain, but you may also become white and join the angelic train.” is from the poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” by Phillis Wheatley (Wheatley p.721). Besides this, her poem also shows the steps she made from slavery to Christianity. By employing religious symbols and rhetoric, she confronts the concept of disease-based racism, underlining this spiritual equality for all, regardless of skin color. The terms “’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land” resonate with a conversion experience when pursuing Christianity, and a transition from Africa to America is presented as a miracle that led her to salvation. Through the interplay of her Africans with Christian salvation, she challenges the demeaning notion propagated in a colonial context that Africans only have limited capacities or are already damned. The quote, ‘Negros, black as Cain, may be refined, and join the angelic train’, sets the stage for Sing for Joy to forcefully challenge the stereotypes prevalent in her time, viewing blacks as capable of being “refined” and deserving of salvation. Furthermore, her strategic use of Biblical language not only reveals her personal faith but also becomes a rhetorical device aiming to counter the oppressive ideology of her generation, and Wheatley becomes a robust speaker of the volatile injustice Africa and its black Africans face.
Quote 3
The quote is from John Smith’s memoirs while recounting some of his interactions with native Americans, most notably Opechancanough, the paramount chief of the Pamunkey tribe, in earlier colonial days in America. Smith discloses in this paragraph what identifying and presenting a glass-covered compass meant to the Native Americans. They looked closer and continued to admire the device but were still unsure as to its workings. They were not able to freely touch the device due to the glass covering. Smith’s astonishment skyrockets afterwards when he demonstrates his excellent knowledge of the various theories by using his compass to explain different cosmological and geographical concepts, such as the roundness of the earth, the movement of the Sun and Moon and the coexistence of many different tribes and peoples (Campbell p.108). The passage touches on, in its way, the contradictions between European and Native American perspectives during the colonization period clearly enough. While Native Americans are astonished at the technological savvy of the Europeans and by the new kind of information transmission, they also can’t help but note the cultural differences and have problems associating the worldview of the Europeans with their own long-established understanding of how the world is. As well, the fashion of the use of Smith the compass as an instrument for the declaration of European supremacy and exploitation justification colonialism depicts how the hierarchies exist between the colonists and indigenous people.
Part 3
American literature from 1600 to 1865 is the embodiment of the time of great excitement and radical changes both in the society and politics of the country. This present study explores the historical theme of Revolution through the lens of race and how Rowlandson’s “A captivity and restoration of Mary Rowlandson” and Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative of The life of Frederick Douglass” draw the extraordinary historical revolutionary struggles that were faced by the marginalized communities especially the Natives and the black people. Through the analysis of these two works of literature, we will excavate how they embody the revolutionary thread behind the fight for independence and self-governance.
The publication that brought a Revolution in captive narratives was Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration”, where Rowlandson took the role of the white colonist who had been taken captive by the Native Americans during King Philip’s War. Though Rowlandson’s narrative kept feeding herself a stereotype and prejudices about Native Americans at the initial stage, nonetheless, the narrative further reveals to us the humanity of not only the native but also challenges the colonial notions of superiority (Rowlandson p. 271). Rowlandson’s apparent redeeming instant and being back to square announce a transformation of her realization about race and identity, where she begins now to understand belonging to the same humanity between the two enticing parties.
However, it was the differing feeling that “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” represents a kind of other Revolution and the type that the African Americans started in the fight against the coup down and the remainder of their signature importance. Douglass’s story eloquently takes the reader into the hell-like place of slavery, who get oppressed by racism every single day, but at the same time, it portrays enslaved people as well as their undying spirit (Frederick p.1070). Through his expressive writing and heaving condemnation of American hypocrisy, Douglass stirred everyone to go against the establishment and join the abolitionist cause for racial equality, which is one of the historical movements towards racial justice.
In both texts, the revolutionary character of race can be easily traced in the moments when the main character’s main characters embark on a journey of self-discovery and liberation. Rowlandson’s narrative portrays the slow realization that race and humanity are multifaceted and faceted things, whereas Douglass’s account demonstrates the unshakable will to cast off the shackles of slavery and prove that humanity remembered the actual thing. In this manner, the authors display how characters and protagonists transition their views of Indigenous people and that of black people as a consequence of events taking place in American society via close reading of the texts.
After that, in the end, Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration”, in addition to Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, gives us unforgettable facts about the main features of an ongoing revolution struggled by most discriminated groups in the early America. Here, we observe the very leading figures of the rebellion against power and their ongoing desire for their own autonomy and freedom in the face of oppression. This genre of texts could be considered as strong evidence of the fact that the African Americans and the Native Americans were so resilient and also had pride, and it is not against the truth that they contributed to promoting the campaign for racial justice and equality.
Work Cited
Campbell, Charles. History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia. Good Press, 2023.
Frederick, Douglass. Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass. Lerner Publishing Group, 2014.
Harriet, Jacobs. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. BoD-Books on Demand, 2023.
Levine, Robert S., et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Volume A and B. Vol. 1. WW Norton & Company, 2016.
Mary, Rowlandson. Captivity and Restoration. BoD-Books on Demand, 2023.
Wheatley, Phillis. Poems on various subjects, religious and moral. DigiCat, 2022.
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