An American Tale

Des McArthur

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Long Essay - An American Tale

Survey of American Literature II

Mrs. Atalissa Gilfoyle

An American Tale

Throughout the history of literature e no nation's writers have been so tied to the actually changes going on in the nation as the many celebrated writers in American literature . America's short history in comparison to say that of English literature is well documented , but is surely in it's infancy . But what has made American literature transcend English literature is the depth of it's subject matter and the way it has intertwined itself with American history as well as the various social changes in that have occurred in America. Regardless if what American period you mention in the last one hundred fifty years , a writer has emerged to be the voice of a cause of a minority group, cause, or to just become the embodiment of an era as Langston Hughes became for The Harlem Renaissance , America has always been a wonderful must for artist to capture her growth. As I chose Langston Hughes to as a writer which highlighted Afro-American views and changes in the 1920's whit his stirring essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain", I have chosen four more prominent writers on the last century to give rise a particular viewpoint or bring awareness to an issue like incest with Dorothy Allison's " Bastard Out of Carolina " . Mark Twains later life anti-war sentiment in the short story "The War Prayer , which holds the same passion today as it did before the Spanish Ameren war fits in with the growing anti- war feelings ranging Vietnam thru today's wars in Iraq. Nineteen century writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman was am exceptional feminist of the time, when the mere term seems to not have a definition and became the idol for women of future generations. She was short story "TURNED" , about a women's unusual choice to stand up and become self sufficient became a well received story at a time when such talk was insane for women of the time . I chose Mark Twains and his short story the war prayer was it is a wonderful view of the true nature of war spent at time when romantics still donated the glory of the brave young fools who went off to war. Finally I chose William Faulkner for being the father of post civil war literature that death with many social issue of post Civil War South. I hope to use this essay to highlight the five special authors and poets and who have each provided a literary blueprint to not just the history of America, but almost act as an EKG to catch the pulse of a nation while young, has transformed the way the world viewed herself.

Mark Twain would make mush of today's wars with his poem the "War Pray", whis was published 6 years before his death , and two years after the start of world war 1 gave a reelaist view of what war really is. The crowds are shocked when the speaker , who many felt was insane , blunt and direct prayer for the total destruction of their enemies, but this is the true nature of war n o t the romantic views o brave men who make their parents and sweethearts proud , but of death and bloodshed and no mercy.

This year marks the centenary of Twain's death, which means he died before World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, and our current contretemps in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mixing politics with religion is always a gamble; sometimes what you say can have a powerful influence. However, at its worst, it can polarize and demonize you as both anti-American and un-Christian. Today anti-war voices are being heard more and more by God's faithful--as it should be. But there is still the threat that if you correlate God and war and American idealism as a bad thing, then you might be labeled and dismissed as either a crackpot, a heretic, or Satanic.

Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "Harlem was in vogue".Hughes was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was démodé. He stressed the theme of "black is beautiful" as he explored the black human condition in a variety of depths. His main concern was the uplift of his people, whose strengths, resiliency, courage, and humor he wanted to record as part of the general American experience. His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of the working class blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Hughes initially did not favor black American involvement in the war because of the persistence of discriminatory U.S. Jim Crow laws existing while