Wuolah Free Language and Culture II Classnotes

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LENG. Y CULTURA DE LOS PAÍSES DE HABLA INGLESA II
4º Grado en Estudios Ingleses
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Universidad de Granada
Reservados todos los derechos.

No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
Horario de tutorías: lunes y miércoles 17:30 – 20:30
Métodos de evaluación:
I. Interview: 20%
II. Final: 70%
III. In-class active participation, group work, oral presentations: 10%
Material a usar en clase:

I. Fotocopias.
II. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
III. Fences by August Wilson

1. Introduction: What does the word “America” suggest you?
Nation
Slavery
Multiculturalism
Immigration
Prosperity
Opportunity
Shopping malls
Excess
Community
Development
Consumerism
Filmography
Fast food
Progress
Economy
2. Talking about America.
 1864: emancipation. Black people achieved their full freedom.
 1898: America became and empire and Spain lost its last colonies (Cuba, Puerto Rico
and the Philippines)
 1921: the date that American historians point out as the creation of fast food. The
name of the first fast food restaurant that gave place to a chain was “White Castle”.
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The place was spotless, super clean, which was one of the reason of the economic
success.
 1927: first movie provided with soundtrack. These first movies with a soundtrack
used to be called ‘talkies’. The first talkie was titled The Jazz Singer.
 1940: two brothers came from the East and set up a new restaurant that provided a
menu with many things. Later on, they decided to shorten the menu to burgers, French
fries and drinks. After that, they created an assembly line. They decided everything
was going to be made of disposable paper so that they did not need to wash it all.
They also put a massive “M” lighted by neon lights so that everyone could spot the
restaurant from miles away. This is how McDonald’s was created. It has to be noted
that neither ketchup nor mayonnaise were created in America: whilst ketchup was
created in Malaysia, mayo was invented in Mallorca.
 The second amendment of the American constitution deals with guns and weapons.
It basically says that people legally own guns because they have the right to defend
themselves from wild animals and the Native Americans.
 Theodore Roosevelt. He was an American statesman and writer who served as the
26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He also served as the 25th Vice
President of the United States from March to September 1901 and as the 33rd
Governor of New York from 1899 to 1900. The importance of this man in the creation
of the nation is still up for debate. He was not a brilliant founding father, he brought

the imperialistic policies to the American nation.
 The American policy is “speak softly and carry a big stick”. They do not hesitate to
use violence when words fail.
 The first leg of the chair of American history is genocide: they killed the Native
Americans. Also, many of them died because of the illnesses that white people had
brought along with them since their immune system was not prepared for those.
 Americans do not put sugar in their coke, they put corn syrup.
 Silicon Valley: computers.
 Menlo Park: Facebook.
 California, San Francisco: they created denim during the gold rush.
3. Image page 2 class book.

 In 1886, the Statue of Liberty was erected. The French government gave it to the
United States. But who was that liberty for? It must be for the whites, since this was
the time of colonial empires. It was a time of mass migration from Europe mostly. In
fact, it’s been said that the statue had been made by a wop to welcome paddies. The
statue is a contradiction in those times when America was fighting to take over several
territories such as Puerto Rico, for example. Emma Lazaro wrote a poem that was cast
onto a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal’s lower level of the Statue of
Liberty is a very good propaganda but very poor poetry.
 Rubik cube: it was invented by a Hungarian professor.
 Chevy: that is how a Chevrolet car is called in America.
 Tailfins: projections very typical in 1950.
 Dobro: name of electric guitars in America. It comes from the name of the maker (the
Dopyera brothers). The original guitar had a resonator but then it has been modified.
 Cowboy: America is known for its the cowboy culture.
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4. Route 66 by Nat King Cole.
If you ever plan to motor West, travel my way
Take the high way that is the best,
Get your kicks on route 66
It winds from Chicago to LA,
More than two thousand miles all the way,
Get your kicks on route 66,
Now you go through Saint Louis and Joplin, Missouri,

And Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty,

You see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico,
Flagstaff Arizona, do not forget Winona,
Kingman, Barstow, Saint Bernardino,
Won’t you get hip to this timely tip,

When you make that California trip,
Won’t you get hip to this timely tip,
When you make that California trip,

Come on and get your kicks on route 66,
Get your kicks on route 66.
5. American driving routes.

 Route 66. A driving route from Illinois to California.
 US 61. Another route from Minnesota to the most important city in the South (from a
historical point of view) New Orleans, Louisiana.
Respuesta Coca-Cola Zero Azúcar. Demasiado bueno para explicarlo con palabras
 US 50. Road from Washington to San Francisco. It divides the nation in two and it is
called the backbone (espina dorsal) of America.
6. American Gothic, by Grant Wood.

It is a painting created
by Grant Wood in
1930 and currently
located in the Art
Institute of Chicago.
Its genre is a portrait
and that is the reason
why the size of the
painting is not big.
This particular
painting has become
an icon of the 20th
century American art.
The painting reflects

two middle-aged
individuals standing
in front of a
farmhouse, although
the background is not
really visible since
they are very close to
the foreground of the
painting, blocking
what lies behind them.
It is important to note
that Grant Wood used
his dentist and his sister to create the man and the woman featuring this painting. He did
not want to make a portrait of his dentist and his sister alone but use them as a potential
sign to reflect a certain lifestyle. There seems to be an age gap between the two characters,
which makes us doubt about their relationship: we do not know if they are a husband and
his wife or a father and his daughter, but we do know that the male character is a farmer.
He is holding a pitchfork and looking directly at the viewer in the eye, not smiling which
is really un-American. Indeed, he looks pretty serious for a portrait, he is adopting quite
a threatening uncomfortable look. The pitchfork can be understood as a weapon to protect
what, he thinks, belongs to him. On the other hand, she is avoiding eye contact and seems
to be too shy to look directly into the viewer’s eyes. Besides, the man seems to be a couple
of inches closer to us, whilst she is lagging behind.
They seem slightly frugal and conservative, a bit of a narrow-minded rigid family, a bit
out of the book, square-minded people associated with small-town culture. They may be
closely knit to that Puritan mentality, bearing in mind who the Puritans were: people that
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were expelled from England and wanted to find “The new Jerusalem” in America; they
believed they were the chosen people by God and had the motto “if one fails, all of us
will pay for it” which is one of the reasons why they were very vigilant people. The main
sins for the Puritans were sex and being vain pompons, together with the alcohol. It is
necessary to clarify that even though the characters are related to that Puritan mindset,
they are not Puritans themselves because they belong to the Mid-West, more specifically,
they come from Eldon. They must, however, be religious, and the clue here is to be found
in the church-like aesthetics of the house. It has to be pointed out that he is wearing an
overalls and the pitchfork seems to reappear on the main protagonist’s chest which
represents that he shares that kind of lifestyle. The pitchfork is a mysterious symbol that
makes us reflect on whether they are religious or evil.
The technique used by the artist is a symbolic duplication or symbolic doubling, a
technique used to make a critique; one of the things that is going to be repeated is the

material of the pinafore, which is identic to the window curtains, implicating that she is
condemned to be a domestic woman.
Setting  America is going through many big changes that started some decades ago: the
change of the country into a highly industrialized world, this is the time of the
mechanization of everything.
The man and the woman are representative of a lifestyle that is gone, which leads us to
think that the artist may be nostalgic of the lifestyle he has grown up in. Everything in the
painting is deliberately outdated: he is paying tribute to a bygone social class that is slowly
fading away, where we can see a very gothic idea  the characters are becoming ghosts.
That social class is nobility, since the middle class was taking over the social control.
They are representing a farming society.
The most important matter about this painting is the nostalgia: he wants to immortalize
this type of lifestyle. He is making a celebration of these people but, at the same time, he
also felt he had the right to criticize them. He is making a satire: the portrait is conveying
contradictory messages, it is an ambivalent work. There is a patriarchal society with a
strict gender division depicted in the painting.
Flemish painting. The woman’s face is oval. Critics say that if one has a look at Van
Eyck’s or even Hans Memling’s works, there are oval faces, too. The painting style is
characterized by a meticulous method and every single object is bound to be interpreted.
The woman is presented with her hair drawn together. Hair is a powerful sexual symbol:
hair not drawn in a bun or shown loose implicates some kind of sexual connotations.
Although the society depicted in the painting is not a Puritan society, it is possible to find
a Puritan mindset. At the nape of the woman’s neck we can notice a stray curl depicted
in a wavy nature, thus resembling a serpent (Biblical allusion to the serpent of Adam and
Eve) and symbolizing that women are evil, as evil Eve who tempted Adam to sin. The
name of the plant depicted in the painting is “Sanseviera”, but the way people refer to it
is “snake plant”. This snake plant highlights that women are the creatures that tempt
others to sin. The critic criticizes the moral values and narrow-minded strongly prejudiced
bigots.
The Bible Belt is an informal region in the Southern United States in which socially
conservative evangelical Protestantism plays a strong role in society and politics, and
Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's
average. People were led by fanaticism and intolerance, they were bigots.
Why is the painting named “American Gothic”?
 Carpenter house style.
 Gothic as a literary style representing the death of a social class.

It is also heavenly influenced by the Flemish School of Painting.
Mind map (also a kinda recap):
There are two contradictory messages in the same work:
A. Celebration of a bygone lifestyle. The encroaching urbanization and the changes
brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
- Hans Memling’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.
- Pitchfork, carpenter Gothic house.
B. Satire of a Puritan mindset.
o Patriarchy.
- Eve and the Garden of Eden, criticism of the Bible Belt and Puritanism.

- Sanseviera and the curl at the nape of her neck.
o Domestic role.
- Drapes in the upstairs room and pinafore.
7. Southern American dialect.

Spoken in the following states:
- Virginia  the 1st Pilgrim’s stopover.
- The Carolinas  currently divided in South and North Carolina. Originally, it was
one single state but then it split up.
- Georgia.
- Florida.
- Alabama.
- Mississippi.
- Louisiana.
- The Eastern part of Texas.
1607 is the year in which the foundation of the first permanent settlement took place. The
name of the town is Jamestown.
Native American population was going to decrease. They were unable to tackle the
viruses brought by European people that did not exist in America. They needed people to
work on the land since they exterminated the Native American population, which is why
it was the era of the slavery. Ecological destruction, genocide and slavery would come.
First crop plantations. The most typical crop was cotton, which was the reason why the
deep Southern states are going to be called “the cotton belt”, which is associated with big
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wealthy plantation owners and slavery. This is not a capitalist but a feudal society based
upon slavery and exploitation of the land resources.
Cliché: Southerners are very talkative and very good hosts. Another cliché image is that
because they came late to the Capitalist era, food is a traditionally very good thing in the
South. The typical tea in the South is iced tea (something that the British simply can’t
understand since they firmly state that tea has to be hot and with a drop of milk).
 Southern American English.
 Phonetical changes.
a. Conversion of the diphthong [ai] into a broad [a:]. In this sense, [ai] transforms
into [a:], for instance: mile [mail] becomes [ma:l]
“Can you give me a piece of ice?”  typical joke in parties because “ice” is
pronounced as “ass”
na:s wa:s ra:s  nice white rice
b. Pen/pin merging. [e] transforms into [I]. For instance, words such as ten, best, get,
pen, hen. They often say “ink pen” to refer to a pen in situations where there is no
clear context, so that no one confuses a pen with a hair pin.
c. Non-rhotic dialect. The “r” is dropped out, it is not pronounced. It happens in
cases following the structure “vowel + r + consonant”, for example: cart, party,
car key, etc.

d. Plural of nouns. It also applies to the –s ending, in words such as “stops”, “loves”,
“runs”, “swims”, “writes”. As a standard rule in English, if we have a voiceless
consonant, the –s will be voiceless too. If the consonant is voiced, the –s will be
voiced as well. This is equally applicable to the formation of plurals. (Please, note
that vowels are always voiced).
But, what is the problem in the South? Whenever we find a [z] + [n] sound, it is
going to transform into [d] + [n]. For example:
business  [‘biznəs] > [‘bidnəs]
isn’t  [iznt] > [idnt]
doesn’t  [ˈdʌznt] > [ˈdʌdnt]
 Morphosyntactic changes.
a. “Y’all”.
The pronoun “you” was used in situations with a highly formal context. However,
the pronouns “thon, thee, thy, thine” were used in informal contexts in the 18th
century, but they vanished.
Nowadays, we use “you” for both situations. The problem with “you” is that we
do not know if the speaker is addressing a single person or more than just one
person. In this Southern dialect, the pronoun “y’all” has been created so as to refer
to more than just one person. Also, we can find the construction “the car is y’alls”.
In the rest of the nation, the pronoun “y’all” is going to be replaced by “you guys”
in general terms.
It is also important to note that some people are going to be ashamed of using
“y’all”, since they can be seen as country bumpkins. However, some others are
going to use it as an identity mark to show that they come from the South.
b. Existential “it”.
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The word “there” can have several functions, such as: adverb and existential
“there” (this is the case in which it is used as “there is/there are”).
This function of the existential there does not exist in the South, which is why it
is going to be replaced by “it” or “they”. Sometimes they even use “it” with a
word in plural.
There is a cat on the corner  It is a cat on the corner
There are some kittens in the corner  They are some kittens in the corner
Also, it is important to highlight that they can use “yonder” in the case of “there”
as an adverb. For example:
I saw you there > I saw you yonder
c. Fixing to.
To be going to
TO BE FIXING TO
To be about to
They refer to actions that are going to be performed in no time. The three of them
coexist. In this sense, “to be going to” and “to be about to” are not going to be
ruled out. Examples:
I’m going to get married this coming November  I’m fixing to get married this
coming November

I’m fixing to get married in the long future  it does not make any sense, since it
must refer to something that is going to be done in no time.
d. Like to.
It means “almost”. You can find it altogether or separated. Sometimes they even
write it like “liketa”. It is related to “likely”. Examples:
I like to have a heart attack
That cat likes to fall
e. Use of auxiliary verbs.
It is possible to employ up to four auxiliary verbs at a time. For example:
“I might could do it” meaning “maybe I could do it”.
“I might should could do it”
It is very common in the South, being two modals the commonest option.
 Lexical field.
Co-cola: The creation of Coca Cola was in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia. In the South, the
generic word for any soda is “Coca Cola” or “Co-cola”.
Mighty: it means “very”
Branch: creek, small river
Tote: you can find it written in 1607 for the first time. It means carry and comes from the
word “tota” it was used for the slaves.
Carry: take. They can use take as well though. Ex: carry me to the restaurant, carry me
back home
Sack - bag. Ex: paper or plastic sack?
Chuck - throw
Spigot - faucet (that is “tap” in British English)
Reckon - think
Snack - in the north they might use “piece”. In England they use “bite”.
Skillet - fry pan
Mash on/mash off - turn on/turn off
Youngun - child
Ida Claire - whenever you are going to break a news. It simply means “I declare”. For
example: Ida Claire, my friend is pregnant!
She is pert intelligent - pert here means pretty
Purdy – it means pretty

A spell - a very short period of time. Ex: I’m gonna read for a spell
Jackleg - not very good or efficient.
High falutin’ - it means pretentious, pompous. People that are always talking big n telling
stories in a pretentious pompous way.
8. Mount Rushmore National Memorial (page 14).
It is a memorial monument. We can see four faces that have been carved on a rock. The
name of the monument is The Mount Rushmore Monument located in one of the most
tragic locations of American History. It is located in the Black Hills, in South Dakota
(near Canada). The mountain is 2,207 m high. The monument was created in 1927.
It is a manipulation of the real monument for commercial purposes.
“They make rock come alive”. The advertisement uses the duplicity of the word “rock”
as well as “rush”.
The guy closer to the viewer is George Washington, the first president of the nation, which
is why he is one of the founding fathers of the nation. There is no doubt that he should be
included, because without him there would not be such thing as the United States of
America. He was elected the first president of the nation because he was a military man;
he was leading the army of the American Revolutionary War against the British
government. He defeated the Hessian troops crossing the Delaware River on the 25th when
the enemies were celebrating Christmas, obviously to catch them unaware. The Hessian
troops were German people that had been hired by the British government. This is going
to be the turning point of a successful American Revolutionary War. George Washington
is the face on the American one dollar bill note. When he was a child, his father gave him
an axe, when he was just ten he decided to cut down a terry tree; we do not know if this
is true but biographers have said it to give him a reputation as a guy that cannot tell a lie
as he promised his father he would not lie after the tree incident. He was the first image
being carved.
The second one that was carved was Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the
nation. He is the icon of the Civil War fighting for liberty in relation to the black slaves.
He was the president that decided that slavery had to be abolished, which is why people
against abolition, back in the 19th century said “abolition is abolition”, meaning “this is
an idea of that crazy man”. He could speak to an audience with no mistake and knew how
to persuade them. He was famous because in 1863 he was clever enough to say
“Emancipation Proclamation for black subjects”. They stopped being objects and
properties. Incontestable founding father.
(the second figure on the left side) Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the nation. He
gets along with many intellectuals. He was responsible for the drafting of the American
Constitution, which is the reason why he has to be included as another founding father of
the nation. He was, in a way, a pretty versatile complex guy with a very deep intellectual
background. He was in favor of separating the Church and Government, so that religion
should not interfere in public matters. He also bought the huge Louisiana territory, which
was a colonial possession of France by that time. In 1803, the biggest annexation to the
country took place. He was also an architect. Separation between religion and politics.
He collaborated in the draft of the American Constitution, the Bible of the creation of the
nation.
The last one is not considered to be one of the “great” presidents, he is considered to be

one of the “near great” presidents. He is the guy who decided at the end of the 19th century
that America should be for Americans. He is the first promoter of American imperialism.
He also invaded Central America (Nicaragua, Panama). Because of his imperialistic
policy, people has doubts about this president. His name is Theodore Roosevelt. He has
been a hero of the Spanish American War, he was a military man, a pretty tall being, the
typical macho man. He had the idea that the white American race was superior to any
other race. The teddy bear is related to Theodor Roosevelt because he was shown in the
newspaper (it all began when Theodore Roosevelt was on a bear hunting trip near
Onward, Mississippi on November 14, 1902; Roosevelt's assistants cornered and tied a
black bear to a willow tree. They summoned Roosevelt and suggested that he shoot it.
Viewing this as extremely unsportsmanlike, Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear. The
news of this event spread quickly through newspaper articles across the country). In 1906,
he was fully aware of the teddy bear photography and he wrote a letter, then the teddy
bear moved to Great Britain and it became quite a big thing. People were not sure about
his graveness. He is the first promoter of the imperialistic policy. The opinion about his
importance is not unanimous. Some people feel he was important in the sense that if he
did not make the nation greater, he made it bigger.
The Black Hills was a territory for the Lakota tribe. The name of the place is not obviously
“The Black Hills” but Paha Sapa. They consider this place to be the center of the creation
of the Earth.
10
9. The Last of the Race, by Tompkins Harrison Matteson.
In the painting, there
are just four people
but when we think
about a “tribe”, we
imagine hundreds of
people. In this sense,
the tribe has been
reduced. There is a
taller figure looking
a bit pensive, he is
having deep thoughts
and looking at the
Pacific Ocean. The
question is: “if they
keep moving us
forward, where is our
next destination?”
Because there were no more places to move over. That is the reason why the artist has

chosen this symbolic setting. The day time is sunset, which means that the day is coming
to an end (romantic cliché), and that means, in a metaphorical way, that Native Americans
are coming to their last days. There is a looming sun, with clouds rolling over which
means that there is going to be a storm, symbolizing that many problems are coming to
them.
Pretty much everything is symbolic. Even the dog is looking for an answer, it is almost
saying “problems are getting closer to them”. The year of composition is 1847, there has
been a huge ideological change in the mind of the Americans: there has been a change
about the traditional view of Native Americans as brutal, animal-like, wild creatures that
have to be trained and civilized, never to be trusted; we can use the tag of “ignoble
savage”. However, this traditional view of Native Americans is gone now and is not even
reflected in the painting: Americans are now compassionate, although there is no doubt
that Native Americans are still primitive, they now feel pity for them. They are no longer
ignoble savages but noble savage. They are not dangerous anymore since they have been
reduced to a small number. This is a genocide, but what about the people that are still
alive? They will experience a “cultural assimilation”, also known as “acculturation” in
the sense that they lose their own culture in order to be adapted to the hegemonic,
mainstream culture. The measures taken to assimilate Native Americans were:
 Reservation. Territory is perfectly demarcated. There is no more like a free land for
the survivors but a reservation land. The chief is not responsible anymore in the
reservation, he might decide small things but the fundamental things are going to be
decided by a BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs). The authority of the chief is being
eroded. They go from a nomadic lifestyle to a sedentary lifestyle. Before they were
hunters, not farmers. They were originally nomadic (teepee).
11

 In 1905. Half of the population is going to be declared US citizens, thus being given
citizenship rights and responsibilities. In 1924, the other half of the population. Now
they have a right, but also a duty, that is education. The language employed at school
is going to be English and the subjects are going to be US History but not the History
of Native American people. No tribal language at school, they were not allowed to
speak their own language so they were going to be forced to become English literates.
The Native Americans used to dress in a different dress code, but they were told not
to have long hair anymore, no beats, no feathers, they got to be dressed in an identical
way as the rest of the students. In addition, there is also something to be considered:
the schools were miles away from the reservation territory, they were boarding
schools, which means that they were going be separate from their own territory, they
would be only allowed to go there twice a year which is going to have an impact in
the following generation: they are not going to believe in the ideas the parents believe
in, they are going to be afraid to speak their own language, so here we have an
example of how education is used as a weapon of manipulation.
 Dawes Act (1887). The Allotment program consisted of dividing the land into small
plots of farming land. If a Native American happened to be single, he would be given
80 acres, but if he was a family member he would be given 160 acres. Once Native
Americans had been giving their own piece of land, the surplus was taken away from
them and given to white people. In addition, they were the owners of their land for 25

years; after that, their offspring had to buy this piece of land, they did not inheritance
it at a “pretty low price”. The second generation would simply decide not to buy the
land cause they were not farmers so they were not interested, which led him to be
citizens of nowhere, thus belonging nowhere. From a statistical point of view, school
dropouts, alcoholism and suicide figures are to be found with Native Americans.
 In the year 1988, they are going to be given the license to go to the gambling houses.
This might be one of the reasons why some of them became alcoholic, since by going
to the casinos they had access to alcohol.
The movement over the West meant fighting and killing Native Americans, basically.
Trail of tears. It is a metaphorical label. It was a series of forced relocations of Native
American people from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States, to
areas to the west (usually west of the Mississippi River) that had been designated as Indian
Territory. The forced relocations were carried out by government authorities following
the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The relocated people suffered from
exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their new designated reserve, and many
died before reaching their destinations. The phrase "Trail of Tears" originates from a
description of the removal of many Native American tribes, including the infamous
Cherokee Nation relocation in 1838.
After fighting the Indians, a document that said that the new piece of land over the West
that the Indians had been granted should be respected by the Whites was signed. However,
the whites could not fulfill the terms of the agreement, which meant another fight. This
needs to be necessarily kept in mind in order to understand the painting.
12

10. American Landscape, by Charles Sheeler.
American Landscape is
a painting by Charles
Sheeler, created in
1930 and located in
Moma museum, New
York. It is a
precisionist painting. It
expresses how
innovative American
industry was during
these years, how it was
generating a brand new

American landscape
and experience.
There is no trace of
humanity apart from the tiny figure scurrying across the railroad tracks. The placement
of this anonymous person suggests that he was included in the composition to lend scale
to the enormous factories, which dwarf even the train and displace every other living
thing.
The painting toys with our expectation, because in a painting of that title, we assume that
we are going to find greenish mountains and trees, but instead of that, the painting gives
us factories, silos, and smokestacks. The work expresses that the forces of human culture,
propelled by Industrialism, have overtaken the forces of nature. All that is left of the
natural world is the sky and the water, and not even those can escape the effects of mass
production: the smoke rising up from a smokestack blends into the clouds, transforming
them into another by-product of industry. The implication here is that the sky and the
water are dead elements.
Like many traditional American landscapes, this one is organized around a body of water.
Yet here, the water is contained in a canal, an artificial channel that controls its flow. The
water is also becoming part of the industry, it is getting controlled and does not flow
naturally since it is contained in a canal. The owner of the industry depicted in the painting
is Henry Ford. The ladder on the right side is symbolic, it is a Biblical reference because
Jacob saw it in a dream as an entrance to heaven. In this case, it would mean a way of
escaping this place so as to go to a better one.
Usually, we have two opposing views of the painting: the traditionally romantic critic
(our world is being destroyed by industrialization, and the machine cannot destroy
mankind) and the machine is taking us to a better world (even though they found small
things like pollution, they think these are going to be corrected; this is associated with the
fact of including a symbolic motive as the ladder, which has to do with the idea of the
technological sublime, meaning that we are going to improve and go better because of
technology). There is no expressive brush stroke, he removed any excess of painting, and
everything is straight and has geometric shapes. Industries are becoming our potential
churches and temples, we spend longer times with our gadgets than with anything or
13
anybody else. The sublime was traditionally related to either nature or God, so now we
can claim that the machine has power over nature.
11. Old world or American elements? (read pages 3, 4 and 5).
Hot pepper  American. A Portuguese brought hot pepper into Bali (India). Mexico is
the paradise for chili pepper.
Cigarettes  American, although the word “tobacco” is Arabic.
Turkey  American. It is the result of a grieving process. One of the founding fathers
suggested the turkey as the symbol of America instead of the bald eagle.
Roses  Old world.
Sugar  Old world. It is an African crop.
Coffee  Old world. It was taken from Ethiopia or Yemen.
Avocado  American. It comes from Mexico.
Banana  Old world. It is an African crop.
Tomato  American. It is Mexican and means “the apple of love”.

Potato  American. Incas, in Peru.
Palm tree  Old world.
Guava  American.
Mango  Old world. India is the birth place of mango. It is the only plant you can grow
in India for free.
Papaya  American.
Chocolate  American.
Horses  Old world. Arabian Peninsula introduced horses into America.
Pinapple  Old world. The Caribbean.
Hen  Old World.
Corn  American.
Cows  Old world.
Sunflower  America.
Wine  Old world. It is Iranian.
Olive Oil  Old world.
Peanuts  American.
12. History of the Black Hills.
Quotes:
14
“The land known as the Black Hills (Pahá Sápa) is considered by the Indians as the center
of their land. The ten nations of Sioux are looking toward that as the center of their land”,
by TATOKE INYANKE (RUNNING ANTELOPE).
“We want no white men here. The Black Hills belong to me. If the whites try to take them,
I will fight”, by TATANKA YOTANKA (SITTING BULL).
“One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk”, by TASHUNKA WITKO
(CRAZY HORSE).
“The white man is in the Black Hills just like maggots, and I want you to get them out
just as quick as you can. The chief of all thieves made a road into the Black Hills last
summer, and I want the Great Father to pay the damages for what Custer has done.”, by
BAPTISTE GOOD.
“The Great Father told the commissioners that all the Indians had rights in the Black Hills,
and that whatever conclusion the Indians themselves should come to would be respected.
I am an Indian and I am looked on by the whites as a foolish man; but it must be because
I follow the advice of the white man.”, by SHUNKA WITKO (FOOL DOG).
The so-called Black Hills:

Towards the 1868, there was a treaty named Fort Laramie Treaty. Pretty soon in time, in
the 1870s the whites are going to start moving across the land, mostly looking for gold
since there was a rumor that gold could be found in the black hills region (Gold
Prospectors), this was indeed a violation of the fort Laramie treaty that has been
mentioned above. The Lakota did not feel very happy so there were going to be small
quarrels and/or fights between each other.
1876. General Armstrong Custer, a military hero promoted as a general at the end of 25,
is going to be sent with troops to defend the gold prospectors. The situation became worse
and worse, and in no time the Lakotas are going to decide that white people should be
kicked out of their own land in 1876. The name of the battle is little big horn battle. What
happened in this battle is still pretty much in the dark. 268 white troopers died, the white
general was a hero because he knew how attack people by surprise. In this occasion his
strategy was not very successful though and he ended up being killed. This continuous to
be a ten thousand jigsaw puzzle that still remains a mystery. From then on, however, the
destiny of the Lakota was not going to be very exciting. After their victory, the US
government took very serious measures against Native Americans. All the Lakota villages
(or teepees) were going to be dismantled, a lot of men were going to be put in jail, guns
and everything were going to be confiscated, they were going to be expelled from the
Black Hills region, and, on top of that, there was going to be a cancellation of the treaty
and they were going to be forced to move over the West side of Missouri River. This is
going to have a consequence in the fate of the Lakota because “over the West” meant
settling down in a territory with no animals to hunt, which meant confrontations with
starvation. Their self-esteem is going to be seriously diminished.
1890s. Wounded Knee Creek (creek is the American word meaning “brook”). There was
a chief called Kicking Bear, most of the Lakotas were finally able to combine their own
beliefs with Christian ideas (as a result of the assimilation process). Kicking Bear had a
15
dream that Christ was going to be back to earth but this time as an Indian man. As he
explained, Christ had been poorly treated by the whites and then he was going to be back
as an Indian so the Lakotas needed to do something in order to speed up the 2nd coming
of Christ. To speed it up, they thought they needed to follow the principle of brotherly
love (this meant no violence) and to carry on dancing. The name given to that ritualistic
dance is the Ghost Dance (they were constantly dancing in circles, begging for the time
to speed up for Jesus Christ to come down to earth again). The ghost dance became such
a successful movement and many people became members of that movement. From the
crack of dawn to the sunset, Indians were dancing in circles and that was all. This ghost
dance movements were soon prohibited and the promoters of the ghost dance movement
were sent to jail. Sitting Bull is going to be killed in jail and people on the reservation
went mad and came with weapons to protest and find out who had killed him. The police
started shooting them in a panicky way as soon as they saw the weapons. This has been
called the Wounded Knee Creek massacre. These are the last days of the Lakota, the best
known group of the Sioux tribes.
13. Fight for the Waterhole, by Frederick Remington.
It is a painting created in
1903 by Frederick
Remington, and it is

located in The Museum
of Fine Arts in Houston,
Texas. We have a
certain number of
cowboys that are getting
together and probably
defending the water.
There are six horses but
just five men. We could
here guess our first
assumption: the sixth
man is dead.
The setting is located in Arizona, which is why water and the control of water is very
important since it is a desert zone. “Buckaroo” is the English word adapted from Spanish
for “vaquero”. The “sombreros” of these cowboys are waterproof since they could get
torrential rain in the dessert and they also used it as a container. The boy closer to us is
wearing a bandana handkerchief, he also got a six-shooter, and is wearing the typical bolo
tie. They are wearing Cordovan boots. There is a certain ideological fabrication of the
cowboy: they are supposed to be a masculine symbol, brave, alone figure, that is
ambitious not for his own benefits but for the sake of helping other people, kind of a
romantic hero, symbolizing chivalry, and embracing some principles that are never
forgotten. Immediately after the ending of the civil war in the 1870s, the figure of the
cowboy is going to be elevated and considered as a hero of individualism, a symbol of
honor. By the time more people are moving over the West, they are becoming farmers,
and the farmer lifestyle is opposite to the cowboy culture, that is why the number of
cowboys is going to be reduced until the cowboy culture is eventually gone.
16
The author created this fantastic idea of the West in such a way that when the emersion
of the industry of Hollywood appeared, they followed very closely what Frederick
Remington had begun. He was a New Yorker, an easterner creating the West. When he
was painting these pieces of artwork he went to the New York zoo, he did not travel to
the West. Then he traveled to Arizona and collected several pictures with a camera as a
tourist and bought Western artefacts. He was isolating and selecting themes that he
thought belonged to the West. He was the guy painting for the most important magazines
of the nation such as Collier’s, and Harper Bazaar’s. This painting is, as a matter of fact,
one of the front covers of Collier’s.
We know that the setting is somewhere in Arizona because we identify the mountains.
We also see small miniatures of Native Americans. There are small details in the
background reinforcing this literary idea of the West. The moment of the day is probably
a late afternoon because of the elongated shadows. The fact that the moment of the day is

a late afternoon is not accidental: the implication here is that they are not going to be able
to spot the Native Americans once the night comes, thus they are likely to be defeated.
This is again a way to try and reinforce those stoic virtues of the cowboy, who is able to
die in order to fight for the water. In Freudian terms, we can find male sexual organs in
the riffle which is a phallic symbol, whilst the water represents feminine sexual organs.
In this sense, cowboys embody masculinity. This painting is the subject of nostalgia for
that cowboy culture that was slowly fading away.
14. Walker Evans (1903-1975), pages: 46, 47, 48.
He is not an easy-to-interpret photographer, since we cannot find very big narratives in
his photographs. There is a story but it is not easy to retrieve. The book we are going to
be commenting upon is a book published in 1936, which was a part of a commissioned
work. He was hired as a reporter providing photographic documents, along with him
there was another fellow called James Agee, who is going to provide the texts in the
book, whilst Evans provided the photos. They are going to travel to the deep South, to
Alabama, more specifically to Hale County. The Farm Security Administration gave
these two guys the commissioned work, the first reason why they gave this job to them
is that people were going through really hard times so they wanted a documentary (that
is why they belong to the documentary movement) to see the working and living
conditions of people firsthand.
The South never recovered after the Civil War, it remained pretty much a farming
agricultural area. The droughts were pretty bad, there was no circulation of markets
(people were not interested in buying the products of the South) and boll weevil (it is an
African American name to refer to a plague that simply went into the flower of the
cotton buds and ate all of it, but no one could notice that with a naked eye, then when
you collected the cotton you would realise that everything had been emptied out).
1865. This is the moment when the Civil War came to an end. The South was pretty
much destroyed after those years of conflicts. How is the situation for black people
going to be like? Now that they are free citizens, the majority of them continue to work
on the same plantations. The agreement with the land owner is going to be pretty
simple: they have to give half of the benefits of the crop to the owner. These farmers
were living in a house that also belonged to the land owner, so they had to pay for the
17
rent, food expenses, medical/health expenses, etc. They were living in worse living
conditions than when they were slaves. The farmers were sharecroppers. In some cases
we could find a farm tenant, so it was going to be slightly different but still pretty tough
for the farmers in the South.
The result of visiting all this is going to be a book named Let Us Now Praise the
Famous Men. As a matter of fact, the title is taken from the Bible, concretely from
Ecclesiasticus 44. It is not an easy book, James Agee was a poet rather than a novelist.
The book was a flop, it caught very little attention. People of the nation did not care
about these underprivileged people. In the 1960s, the book would be resurrected and
become a little bit like the Bible for many people, the political commitment was going
to become a success.
15. Documentary movement.
We are going to find people doing their everyday tasks, but mostly documents depicting
social problems: demonstrations, people being unable to make both ends meet, social
riots, etc. The reason is first to depict social issues and second to arise some emotions to
get us involved in the problem so as to find a solution. Thus, there is some kind of
emotional movement in so much as it triggers social and political commitment.
There are some principles Evans follows:

a) No direct storytelling.
b) Avoid sentimentalism. Getting a quick emotional response is not the point here, they
aim to get an active participation.
c) Non-intrusive. The photographer does not tell anything to the subject, they can do
whatever they want to do. He does not want to orchestrate the subject’s movement.
This is something very different from the common photographic method.
d) Symbolic meaning of signposts, publicity. Symbolic messages in words in street
signs, billboards, etc. The clearest example of this technique can be found in
Damaged.
e) Isolate parts and bring them into focus
Some of his works:
Page 46  A simple pic showing that she is a hard-working, resilient woman.
Resilience and fragility are present. She probably worked out and felt the sun, wind and
so on and so forth and that is why she looks prematurely older. Probably she might not
be eating properly. She is smiling but not showing her teeth, other kind of photographer
would have probably asked her to show her teeth but he did not want to do it because
the girl is toothless, so he wanted her to look beautiful. Also, he gave her a lot of time to
get ready for the photograph, she is in her Sunday dress. She has got a beauty of her
own and has her own dignity, being poor is not the same as lacking dignity. He is going
to skip all those easy emotional aspects. He does not emphasise the weepy aspects. Her
real name is Ann Mae Gudger, though Evans named her differently in order to be
respectful with her.
A Graveyard and Steel Mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania  We get the impression that
there is some kind of symbolic meaning to be delivered. There is no direct storytelling.
18

In the looming background we see the steel plants, the factories. Also, there are houses
and a cemetery. He was probably telling us that is all American life is about, it is a slap
on the face of the American dream. These three spaces put together make the
photograph so interesting. He was using a pretty wide angle so that we get the feeling
that the three spaces are close to each other, even though they are separate. He gave no
title to this photograph. The photograph was the city of Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania. It
was included in a book called Land of the Free. This is a great example of that non-
direct storytelling.
Damaged  He found it appealing for its symbolic meaning.
Negroes in the line up for food at mealtime in the camp for flood refugee  The floods
ruined plantation and people’s houses. He realised that the camps for the victims was
divided into two cans: blacks and whites were separated. Black and whites were equal
by law but different. He took photographs of isolated parts. As we can see the human
body has been cut off and we do not see their feet nor forearms. He pays attention to
their hands holding a plate. It is a breadline. He is getting rid of everything that is
unessential. This technique was really original at that time. This is a clear example of
the principle of isolating parts and bringing them into focus. In this photograph, one
hand speaks volumes to the viewer.
19

Vocab.
To hold the mic - When a group of people are smoking weed and one person gets the
bowl. This person simply holds it and chit chats for five minutes instead of smoking it
and passing it, eg: Hey Andrea! Shut up, smoke that weed, and pass it! You are holding
the mic.
Crib (US) – cuna
Cradle (formal) – cuna
To hang a Louie – girar a la izquierda
To hang a Ralphie – girar a la derecha
Chevy – Chevrolet car (mainly in the US)
Dobro – name of the electric guitar because of its creators the Dopyera Brothers.
To break a horse – to be able to ride a horse that is wild
Rodeo – name of an American festivity. The name is Spanish because Spanish people
introduced horses and cows in America; that is why almost everything related to horses
tends to be designated in Spanish.

Pen/barn – it means “corral”. In American English they use “corral” as well. Also, the
word “lazo” which designates a rope that is used to catch a wild animal exists as
“lasso”. In the same way, “estampida” is said “stampede”. Another word would be
“pinto” to describe animals with spots on their skin, eg: “a pinto horse”. “Mustang” also
comes from the Spanish word “mesteño”, a horse that finally manages to break free and
becomes wild. “Bronco” is a very wild horse that never stops kicking. “Chaps” is
another word that comes from “chaparreros” as well as “ranch” is another Spanish word
that comes from “rancho”.
To get your kicks on sth – idiomatic expression related to African American since they
created it. It means “to enjoy” or “to have fun”.
Stagecoach – diligencia
Mighty – it means “very” in the South
Hepcat/hipcat – a man who knows and is in charge of everything
To get hip – understand, get to know, be aware of, listen to, pay attention to
[ai] becomes [a:] for African American speakers (black people) and the people from the
South
Hip [hip] (adj) – en la última, a la onda (dated)
Crooner – singer of melodic sentimental songs (eg: Julio Iglesias)
To have a rush – to have a very high feeling of happiness when you are high on drugs
Paltry (adj) – irrisorio, insignificante
20
Poultry (n) - carne (de ave)
Stetson hat, broad brim hat, and ten-gallon hat
Chaps - chaparreras
Unión/trade union – sindicato
 How to write an essay in the final exam.

Phonologically speaking,
Regarding the phonological aspects/ as to the phonetics of the text, I have
observed/located the following phenomena:
1. Conversion of the… as can be seen in the following examples: …

2. Pen-pin merging, as found in these words: help, get,…
3. non-rhotic dialect as illustrated in the following examples: (No explicar nunca ningún
fenómeno). Over, for (both possibilities: we can consider that the final –r is going to be
linked with the following vowel or not), early, better find, comfort
Note: En el vocabulario ponemos la palabra y entre paréntesis escribimos el significado.
Watch out: [e] is never found in unstressed syllables. In this way, “cabinet” does not
suffer from the pen/pin merging phenomenon. On the contrary, “net”, “bed”, “reckon”,
“veggies”, “get”, “better”, “else” do.
16. The Captive (1891), by Eanger Irving Couse.
Eanger Irving Couse (1866-
1936) was born in
Michigan in 1866, and
influenced by the
Chippewa tribe. He is
greatly recognized for his
paintings about Indians. He
was a founding member
and also the first president
of the Taos Society of
Artists.
In 1838, Dr. Marcus
Whitman and his wife came
to the Oregon Territory to
establish a mission to the
Cayuse Indians under the
sponsorship of the New England Mission Board. Everything was going well until a
measles epidemic came and affected the Indians. Although the Indians were treated by
the Whitmans, they did not respond well to medical treatment and accused Dr. Whitman
of deliberately poisoning them to get their land. In late November of 1847, they attacked
the mission and murdered most of the staff – including Dr. Whitman and his wife, whilst
21
a great number of others were taken as prisoners, such as Lorinda Bewley. Lorinda
Bewley was a seventeen-year-old teacher who was spared from death by a Cayuse chief
named Five Crows. When he saw her he decided that he would enjoy the novelty of a
white woman for a wife. Needless to say, this did not meet with a favorable response from
the captured girl, although she would be released after two weeks.
Main features: it is an anti-Indian painting, strong duality presented on the painting,
sexual implications and symbolism. This painting is a bit hypocritical: for one American
woman that was kidnapped, a thousand of Native Americans were kidnapped. As it was
forbidden to marry a person from another race, the painting suggests that these two races
can only be together by means of violence. Couse’s painting shows us a dramatic scene
in which Lorinda is lying on the floor of the chief’s teepee, unconscious with bloody
bonds testifying to a terrifying yet courageous struggle. Five Crows is sitting on the floor,
staring at her and unable to fathom her behaviour, her aversion to him.
The opened door of the teepee symbolizes her lost virginity. She has lost one of her shoes,
and her hair is loose (sexual connotations here). There are two social relationships in this
painting: Lorinda with the Native American, and Lorinda with the viewer.
The genre of the painting is captivity. This is the typical story about a woman who is
kidnapped by the Native Americans, which always gives place to emphasize the rescue

of her by a white man. Although the Native American is kidnapping the white protagonist,
there is usually a white male protagonist saving the woman in the nick of time. She is
lying, which means that she is inferior and represents “the savage”. The word “savage”
comes from Latin “silvacuss”. She is an example of mankind whilst he embodies
wildness, the evil. Purity and innocence are represented by the white woman, whilst the
dark colors of the man symbolise evil. The painter seems to support the white girl, who
is depicted as a very vulnerable and weak being. The painting is deliberately ambiguous
about the sexual encounter. She is not adopting a straight line but a diagonal one in her
position which gives us the feeling that something is not working properly, the idea of
lack of tranquility. She has crossed her legs, which implies that there has been some kind
of fight against the imminent abuse of the Native American. The structure is melodrama.
We got the feeling that the hunter is waiting for her to get back to consciousness.
17. List of words that American English has inherited from Native American
languages.
Tomahawk –
Kayak
Hammock
Barbecue
Moose
Skunk
Raccoon
Coon – offensive slang to refer to African American people
22
Squaw – Native American woman
Papoose – baby
Pow-wow – nowadays, it is used to refer to a meeting between very important people.
Traditionally it referred to a sort of ritual.
Totem
Maize
Cocoa
Moccasin – Native American shoe
Pecan – specific type of nut
Igloo –
Squash
Teepee
Wigwam – Native American dwelling (tienda india)

Cigar
Coyote
Hurricane
18. Second dialect: South Midlands.
Some people call it the “Upper South”. The mountain marking the Western point is the
Ozarks, this is a French word meaning “towards Arkansas”. This dialect is spoken in West
Virginia, the Southern part of Ohio, the Southern part of Indiana and Illinois, Missouri,
probably a bit of Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee.
 Phonetics.
e. Conversion of the diphthong [ai] into a broad [a:]. In this sense, [ai] transforms
into [a:], for instance: mile [mail] becomes [ma:l]
“Can you give me a piece of ice?”  typical joke in parties because “ice” is
pronounced as “ass”
na:s wa:s ra:s  nice white rice
f. Pen/pin merging. [e] transforms into [I]. For instance, words such as ten, best, get,
pen, hen. They often say “ink pen” to refer to a pen in situations where there is no
clear context, so that no one confuses a pen with a hair pin.
g. Non-rhotic dialect. The “r” is dropped out, it is not pronounced. It happens in
cases following the structure “vowel + r + consonant”, for example: cart, party,
car key, etc.
h. Plural of nouns. It also applies to the –s ending, in words such as “stops”, “loves”,
“runs”, “swims”, “writes”. As a standard rule in English, if we have a voiceless
consonant, the –s will be voiceless too. If the consonant is voiced, the –s will be
23
voiced as well. This is equally applicable to the formation of plurals. (Please, note
that vowels are always voiced).
But, what is the problem in the South? Whenever we find a [z] + [n] sound, it is
going to transform into [d] + [n]. For example:
business  [‘biznəs] > [‘bidnəs]
isn’t  [iznt] > [idnt]
doesn’t  [ˈdʌznt] > [ˈdʌdnt]
i. Whenever we find the combination st- or a -vowel + “sh” sound-. For example,
the word “past” ['pɑːst] would be pronounced “parst” ['pɑrst], as well as
“master” [ˈmɑːstə] would be pronounced as “marster” [ˈmɑrstə]. Other examples
may be “Washington” and “washing machine”. This is an affricate sound.
 Morphosyntax.
f. “Y’all”. The pronoun “you” was used in situations with a highly formal context.
However, the pronouns “thon, thee, thy, thine” were used in informal contexts in
the 18th century, but they vanished.
Nowadays, we use “you” for both situations. The problem with “you” is that we
do not know if the speaker is addressing a single person or more than just one
person. In this Southern dialect, the pronoun “y’all” has been created so as to refer
to more than just one person. Also, we can find the construction “the car is y’alls”.
In the rest of the nation, the pronoun “y’all” is going to be replaced by “you guys”

in general terms.
It is also important to note that some people are going to be ashamed of using
“y’all”, since they can be seen as country bumpkins. However, some others are
going to use it as an identity mark to show that they come from the South.
g. Existential “it”.
The word “there” can have several functions, such as: adverb and existential
“there” (this is the case in which it is used as “there is/there are”).
This function of the existential there does not exist in the South, which is why it
is going to be replaced by “it” or “they”. Sometimes they even use “it” with a
word in plural.
There is a cat on the corner  It is a cat on the corner
There are some kittens in the corner  They are some kittens in the corner
Also, it is important to highlight that they can use “yonder” in the case of “there”
as an adverb. For example:
I saw you there > I saw you yonder
h. Fixing to.
To be going to
TO BE FIXING TO
To be about to
They refer to actions that are going to be performed in no time. The three of them
coexist. In this sense, “to be going to” and “to be about to” are not going to be
ruled out. Examples:
I’m going to get married this coming November  I’m fixing to get married this
coming November
I’m fixing to get married in the long future  it does not make any sense, since it
must refer to something that is going to be done in no time.
24

i. Like to.
It means “almost”. You can find it altogether or separated. Sometimes they even
write it like “liketa”. It is related to “likely”. Examples:
I like to have a heart attack
That cat likes to fall
j. Use of auxiliary verbs.
It is possible to employ up to four auxiliary verbs at a time. For example:
“I might could do it” meaning “maybe I could do it”.
“I might should could do it”
It is very common in the South, being two modals the commonest option.
k. Many of the phenomena to be found can be accounted for the influence of Scottish
and Irish sources. The words “need”, “want, “require” normally take a passive
form (ex: the mess needs to be cleared up; the baby wants to be picked up). The
tendency in this dialect is to remove the verb to be as: the mess needs cleared up/

the baby wants picked up. The same phenomenon can be traced back to the Irish
and Scottish population.
l. Wh- words such as “whatever/whenever/whichever” are going to morph into
“everwhat/everwhen/everwhich”. There is also the adverb “everly”, meaning
“always”. This is the reason why they are called the “ever” land.
m. The marker ON- is mostly lost in Standard English. It is used as a progressive
marker as in “the man is on-hunting” (or even “the man is a-hunting”) meaning
“the man is hunting”. The “on-” changes into “a-”. Another example could be “the
kids are a-coming”; although it is completely archaic in General American, it is
still used in small communities every day, it may also be found in Australia or
Scotland even. There are some rules for its use: for instance, you cannot say “a-
discovering”, it would be wrong since the stress is on the second syllable. Also,
the verb should begin with a consonant not with a vowel.
n. Omission of unstressed syllables at the beginning of a word. This refers to the
tendency to omit unstressed syllables at the beginning of a word. The rule is that
you can get rid of the first syllable in words such as “imagine” and “important”
when you are in relaxed situations.
 Vocabulary.
Co-cola: The creation of Coca Cola was in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia. In the South, the
generic word for any soda is “Coca Cola” or “Co-cola”.
Mighty: it means “very”
Branch: creek, small river
Tote: you can find it written in 1607 for the first time. It means carry and comes from the
word “tota” it was used for the slaves.
Carry: take. They can use take as well though. Ex: carry me to the restaurant, carry me
back home
Sack - bag. Ex: paper or plastic sack?
Chuck - throw
Spigot - faucet (that is “tap” in British English)
25
Reckon - think
Snack - in the north they might use “piece”. In England they use “bite”.
Skillet - fry pan
Mash on/mash off - turn on/turn off
Youngun - child
Ida Claire - whenever you are going to break a news. It simply means “I declare”. For
example: Ida Claire, my friend is pregnant!
She is pert intelligent - pert here means pretty
Purdy – it means pretty
A spell - a very short period of time. Ex: I’m gonna read for a spell
Jackleg - not very good or efficient.
High falutin’ - it means pretentious, pompous. People that are always talking big n telling
stories in a pretentious pompous way.
Poke - sack

Mangoes - green peppers
Anymore - at present/nowadays
Check - snack
A little jag - a little bit
Kindly - kind of
18. George Washington Carver (1864 – 1943).

George Washington Carver was an
agricultural scientist and inventor, he
was indeed one of the first African
American men who went to university.
He was born a year before the slave
trade was abolished, he left home at a
very young age to pursue his education
and finally achieved a Master’s Degree
in Agricultural Science from Lowa
State University. He found himself
teaching and conducting research at
Tuskegee University for decades and
soon after his death he was considered
a national monument, becoming iconic
even for white people.
26

He was born in Diamond, near Missouri. We do not know the exact date of his birth but
it is thought to be in 1864. Nine years prior, Moses Carver, a white farm owner purchased
George’s mother when she was only 13, although Moses was against slavery but he
needed help because he had a really big farm. When Carver was young, he was kidnapped
with his mother and sister and sold in Kentucky. Moses tried to get them back but he
could only have George back by trading one of his finest horses. In this sense George
grew up not knowing much about his family, he was bred with the Carver’s as if he were
another son of their own. As he was weak, he could not work the land so they taught him
how to cook, do laundry, and prepare herbal medicines, that is why he was known as the
plant doctor. He was also the first one beginning to experiment with the idea of crop
rotation.
When he was 11, he left the farm to attend an all-black school in the nearby town of
Neosho. He was taken by an African American couple who gave him a room in exchange
for help with the household chores. Disappointed with the school there, he moved through
different towns and he finally graduated from Minneapolis High School in Kansas, and
applied to an all-white university to which he was accepted but then rejected once the
administration realized that he was black.
He first studied the piano and then art but his professor was skeptical of black people
making a living as artists. He then studied botany and became the first African American

to earn a Bachelor of Science degree. Impressed by his research on the infection of
soybean plants, his professors asked him to stay on for graduate studies. With his Master’s
in Agriculture completed, he got an offer to study in Alabama.
He invented multiple edible products such as flour and vinegar as well as non-food items
like paint and ink. But his biggest success came from peanuts, he developed more than
300 food, industrial and commercial products from peanuts, including milk, cooking oil,
cosmetics, etc. He became the “Peanut Man”, after being the representative of the peanut
industry in a Committee of the United States.
In the last two decades of his life, he lived as a minor celebrity, but his focus, as always,
was on helping people. He traveled the South to promote racial harmony, discuss nutrition
in developed countries and release bulletins. He passed away on 5th January, in 1943;
soon after that, President Roosevelt signed the legislation for him to receive his own
monument, an honor previously only granted to presidents.
19. Bessie Smith (1894 - 1937).
She became iconic for African American people mainly because of her death in 1937.
She had an accident in US61 and landed on a creek (small river), she managed to get out
of the car and got run by a lorry. Rumour has it, that she never got medical treatment
because of the racial segregation, since there was a series of laws affecting a number of
services. However, it has to be said that this was just a legend of her death to make her
more famous. We are going to call these laws “Jim Crow Laws”, which can be
summarised as “Equal but separate”, this is going to be gradually passed by many
different cities and authorities in the South. This segregation is going to affect education,
drinking fountains, rest rooms, restaurants, medical services, hotels, and a long etc.
27
Her voice was too gritty, and even though it was powerful, people did not accept it, they
used to say she sounded too southern. Her song “Nobody knows you when you’re down
and out” became a massive hit during the great depression.
20. The Underground Railroad.
Traditionally, this has been the biggest racial minority. More or less, 13% of the
population is black in the United States. This makes, in gross numbers, 46 million people.
However, it is not the biggest minority anymore since it has been overtaken by Latinos
(16% - 18%).
1600s. The second decade was the one in which black people were carried from Africa to
America. 1808 was a turning point in relation to the story of African slavery. The vast
majority was taken to Brazil. If we consider the changes that were taking place, there is
something important: the price that had to be paid to have a slave was going to be
increasingly multiplied as we got closer to 1808, since there was going to be a progressive
change of mind. In 1865, slavery was abolished and considered as an illegal activity. After
this, the “Paddies” were going to be poor people working on plantations which was going
to change the panorama altogether.
It has to be highlighted that the slaves came mostly from the Western coast of Africa,
where we can find a number of countries pretty small compared to the rest of African

countries: Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone. This was going to be the Western coast or
the Slave Trade Coast. The languages spoken by these people are going to have their
impact on American English (for instance: “tote” comes from “tota”, a word in Bantu).
In this sense, Wolof is a language containing many words and some of them are still used
by not only black people in the United Stated but by the rest of the population: they have
been anglicised so as to fit in the phonetics aspects of American English. For example,
“dig” meaning “enjoy” or “understand” in Black English, comes from “defa” a word that
means understand in Wolof. Black people also use “cat” to refer to a male individual,
however, there is a male gender suffix in Wolof language that is “-kat”.
They took the slaves to a place named Charleston, the capital city of South Carolina, a
place where the vast majority of slaves came. It was the harbour city for slaves.
Sullivan Island is the island where slaves were confined and they stayed there for a
number of days, probably checking out their health conditions before being distributed
among the plantations. Many of the black slaves were going to remain in these islands
and were going to create a special language register named Gullah: a hybrid language
between English and tribal language. Gullah comes from Golla, the tribal language of
Sierra Leone.
1792. There were going to be some changes on the plantation that had to do with the birth
of a machine: the cotton gin, a machine that cleans the cotton, which implies removing
the unwanted parts of the cotton. The number of slaves was going to be fewer since they
were not needed for that. In this sense, there was a natural process of reducing the number
of slaves.
18th December, 1865. The end of slavery, no more slaves in the United States. In some
cases, some philanthropic mind bought the freedom for a slave, in other cases the slave
would have done a good deed for the community (such as saving the owners from a fire)
28
which would lead the owner to buy his freedom, but the commonest way to achieve
freedom was to run away. There was an organisation helping the slaves escape, it was
called “The Underground Railroad”. The Underground Railroad was a clandestine and
illegal organisation (some people called it “a terrorist organisation”) that helped slaves
become free. They used a language code to communicate. It started as an illegal network
of people but became something serious in the nation. People helping slaves were called
“conductors”. They gave them food, shelter, let them have a cart, and many other means
of transportation for them to move over up to the North, because once the slave had
reached the North they became free citizens. They called the points where the slaves were
going to be helped “stations”. This became a worrying situation for the Southern
plantation owners.
18th September, 1850. People in the South passed a bill saying that up to then they needed
to travel anywhere in the nation to get back their slaves to their plantation. By the Fugitive

Act, the owners of the plantations were allowed to travel anywhere in the nation to catch
their runaway slaves. Even in the Northern states, runaway slaves were not safe anymore,
they could get caught and taken back to their “original territory”.
Quilting methods of helping runaway slaves:
Quilting: On plantation, slaves who could do a bit of sewing, they were highly
appreciated. They were likely to stop working on the fields and became house niggers.
Quilting motifs had a special symbolic meaning, since there was a quilting language code
that was specifically created to help slaves reach the North. Some people put on their
windows and on their front doors those quilting motifs and then slaves would get a
message, some of them were:
- Monkey wrench: its meaning is “this is a place where you can get some tools”, those
tools where ropes, pocket knives, etc.
- Wagon wheel: the message conveys “this is a place where you can find some
transport, I can lend you some means of transportation”.
- Log cabin: it meant “this is a place where you can sleep but remember that this is
illegal so you have to be here secretly”.
- Flying geese: this message meant that it was the season for birds to fly so maybe most
of the times, slaves managed to get away during summer time because during winter
time, things became far more difficult, so they followed the movement of the
migratory birds since they did not even have a compass. Birds in summertime moved
to the North.
- Bear Paw: this meant that it was a closely inspected road so do not follow the road,
follow the mountain pathway.
- Drunkard’s path: it meant “never follow a straight line”. Black people believed that
evil followed a straight line.
- The crossroad: this is a nickname for a place (Cleveland, the gateway to Lake Erie),
which takes you to Canada, a safe nation.
- North Star: if you follow the North Star you will not be heading back to the south,
you will be following the right track. If you spot the big dipper (Ursa Major), then
you simply have to look at this star and follow a diagonal line in which you will locate
the Polaris or the North Star.
29
(Isolated definitions, they do not belong to this section)
Fugitive Slave Acts: The Fugitive Slave Acts were a pair of federal laws that allowed for
the capture and return of runaway slaves within the territory of the United States. Enacted
by Congress in 1793, the first Fugitive Slave Act authorized local governments to seize
and return escaped slaves to their owners and imposed penalties on anyone who aided in
their flight. Widespread resistance to the 1793 law led to the passage of the Fugitive Slave
Act of 1850, which added more provisions regarding runaways and levied even harsher
punishments for interfering in their capture. The Fugitive Slave Acts were among the
most controversial laws of the early 19th century.
Underground Railroad: Northerners did not want to accept the Fugitive Slave Acts.
They acted in a clandestine way, making resistance groups that were made of complex
networks, safe houses and many other mechanisms to aid fugitives.
Abraham Lincoln: President in 1861, he opposed to the spread of slavery. He made an
emancipation proclamation, through which he granted freedom to the slaves of the
segregated states. It only applied to states seceded from the United States.
The Slave Coast: The Slave Coast is a historical name formerly used for parts of coastal
West Africa along the Bight of Benin. The name is derived from the fact that it was a

major source of African slaves during the Atlantic slave trade from the early 16th century
to the late 19th century.
Tribal language: they have an important impact on Black English, also influencing
English in the rest of the nation.
Player: in African American English, it means a boy that is always dating girls.
Fool: it can mean either “silly” or “friend”.
21. Margaret Garner or The Modern Medea, by Thomas Satterwhite Noble.

In 1867, the
American artist
Thomas Satterwhite
Noble portrayed a
notorious incident in
the history of slavery
– the discovery of the
fugitive slave
Margaret Garner in
Cincinnati in 1856,
moments after she
had murdered one of
her children and
attempted to kill the
others. In depicting
the recapture of a
30
runaway slave and the aftermath of her desperate act of infanticide, the artist indicted the
practice of slavery. However, the image is more ambiguous than it appears in the first
place: the painting seems to oscillate between two discourses, one exposing the horrors
of slavery and the other heightening the spectacular horror of Garner’s act itself.
There is nothing particularly striking from an artistic point of view. It is a frontal image,
frozen in time: there is no dynamism in the image. The composition strategy is quite
simple: it captures the moment when the police, the so-called Marshalls, entered the house
and she committed filicide. It is an example of an “inferior rage”, they highlighted this
case as a proof that she was an inferior individual, from the point of view of pro-slavery
people. The against-slavery people, depicted her as a heroine that preferred to kill her
own children instead of going back to the horrible plantation. Her subversive act is
therefore seen as a way of resistance. This is subversive in the sense that it dismantles the
myth that life was happy and easy for the slaves in the plantation. As a matter of fact, she
is showing that life in the plantation was a nightmare, so she prefers her children to die
rather than taking them back to the horrors of the plantation. Her daughter was a mulatto
daughter, and probably Margaret’s master was the father, but the artist’s deliberately
hidden this fact since miscegenation was a taboo subject, although he used the title
Modern Medea. He was commissioned to paint something about this famous case. His
illustration was published in Harper’s Weekly. Margaret’s case was followed by the

newspapers: it made a huge impact in society and became the basis for a novel named
Beloved by Toni Morrison. There is also an Opera based on Margaret’s story. Toni
Morrison is one of the best American writers of all times.
It has to be pointed out that there is no similarity between Medea and Margaret: Medea
killed her child as a way to show revenge because her husband was going to leave her for
a whiter woman, and she did not want to see her children with another woman. There is
no similarity other than killing their child.
Another controversy that was tidied up was that if we consider the first interpretation,
then she must be returned to her owner and no trial can be held, since she is considered
an animal. In the second case, if she is seen as a human being, able to think and resist the
horrors of slavery, she must be brought to trial. The case became a tag of war. Behind
this, there is the argument between pro-slavery states and anti-slavery states. In this sense,
Margaret shows how the nation was divided by this issue.
She is a vision of the suffering and hard life of the slaves but also a vision of the possibility
of resisting slavery: one is a slave as long as they submit themselves to the law. Margaret
can be regarded as the first person that shook her chains. She made a small yet important
difference, which is why she has become so iconic for black people in America.
22. African American Vernacular English (AAVE).
o Phonetics.
- Monophthongization [ai] [a:]
- Pen/pin merging.
- Non-rhotic.
- Omission of the last consonant in consonantal clusters. Yet you cannot get rid of p, t,
k, after a nasal. For example: post, desk, lift, old are going to be pronounced as pos(t),
31

des(k), lif(t), ol(d). What about “desks”, then? In this case, it is going to be
pronounced as [desiz]
- [ð] > [d] INITIAL POSITION. For example, there
- [θ] > [t] INITIAL POSITION. For example: three
- [ð] > [v] FINAL POSITION. For example: both
- [θ] > [f] FINAL POSITION. For example: tooth
- MIDDLE POSITION: both are possible
- Metathesis. It is the case of grasp and ask. In this sense: grasp [ˈgrɑːsp] > [ˈgrɑːps],
ask [ɑːsk] > [ɑːks].
- L-lessness. For example: self [ˈsɛlf] > [ˈsɛf]. Same applies to help, fool. However, it
is important to note that this phenomenon does not happen when a “l” is placed at the
beginning of a name.
- [ŋ] > [n]. This happens with words such as ring, and long.
- [str] > [skr]. This is the case of street [ˈstriːt] > [ˈskriːt] and strong [ˈstrɒŋ] > [ˈskrɒn].
- [tr] > [tʃ]. Because of this, true sounds slightly like “chew”, whilst trial sounds like
“child”.
o Morphosyntax.
- Cluster of modal auxiliaries (more than one modal auxiliary, though two is the
commonest).
- Existential it

- Like to/liketa > almost
- Gonna/wanna/gotta
- Fixing to/ fixinta
- Completive done (a word that comes from “doon” or “too “, it is a marker of aspect
that simply tells us that the action has been carried out/completed; I have already told
you > I done told you)
- Omission of Copula/zero copula (for permanent qualities): you be dirty/you dirty, I’s
a fool, they’s (they are)
- Invariant be (habitual): he’s working when the boss comes in/he be working when the
boss comes in (in this case the action is uttered as if it were a habit)
- Double negation (ain’t no money)
- Ain’t (am not, is not, are not)
- Lack of subject - verb agreement
- Possessive and pronouns: I had me a family > I had my family/ its they book
- Past tense: irregular verbs treated as regular verbs
- Remote been (pronounce like [bin] instead of [bi:ŋ]). For example: I been started the
paper so don’t ask/ I been married/ I been shot the bird
o Vocabulary
- Wolof: DOON (>done); banana; cat (suffix indicating the masculine gender); jam (ja
means slave), jamboree (celebration on the plantation where everyone played an
instrument); hep, honkie (hong) (honkie tonk is a night club, it is related to the word
“hong” that in Wolof means “light red or pink”, it is a word for whites and it is used
to refer to white people) a honkie tonk is a club frequented by white peope ; yam
(nyam) (it a sweet potato, the original word is nyam, meaning eating or tasting); jive
(it means be aware, listen) (it means speaking...? Black people jive a lot so that they
werentunderstood by the whites); chick (jigen) (it means girl); sock (it means a strike,
un golpe, which is probably related to a word used in Wolof, since socking was
32

striking on a pestle, it also has a sexual implication). “Done” is used as a marking
aspect by black people.
- Mandingo: TOON (>done); bad; jelly (roll); jitterbug (jito)
- Bantu: Tote (tota); jiffy (tsipi: short); hullabaloo (halua balualua); okra; gumbo;
pinder; goober; jambalaya; jigaboo; poke; jigger (nigga); bozo
- Sierra Leone: zombie (jombi); bogus
- Harlem Jive. It is one of the districts of NYC where black people live. Fifth Avenue
divides Manhattan into two parts. We call this language “jive”, only people in this
community can fully understand it.
a. Beat it/blow/split (darse el piro, pirarse)
b. Blip/groovy/solid/frantic/mellow (it means “cool”)
c. Long or short bread/benjies/cabbage/cheese/cholly/paper/bones/chips/cake
(money, if you have long bread you got a lot of money, and the opposite goes for
short bread/benjies/.. etc)

d. Dead presidents/bank
e. Dude/bro/ace/foo (“foo” is foo, but the l-eness rule has applied here) (a way to
refer to someone who is a friend of yours or you want to grow familiar with).
Dude used to be somebody who was supposed to be a gentleman dressed in fancy
clothes, it was originally used by black people to refer to the whites, who were
supposed to be the gentleman. Foo can also be used to address somebody who is
your friend or someone that is stupid.
f. Drape/threads/sky piece hat??
g. Benders (knees), choppers (teeth), peepers (eyes), grabbers (hands), hookers
(fingers), frame (body), top(head), map (face)
h. Spiel (the original meaning referred to the long and winding speech that people
made use of when they wanted to sell something: black people were sold at an
auction and then the owners went on a long spiel about how good the slaves were.
Anyway, spiel nowadays means simply “talk”). Also “lay the spiel on” means talk
about something.
i. Chimer/slammer.
j. Lush/juice. They are words for “booze”. Booze is a Dutch word for alcohol, it is
not originally American
k. Side/box. “Side” can mean “record”, whilst box is the machine you use to put your
records on.
l. To leg/to bone/to smash: they mean to have sex with somebody. To make cookies
is also a reference to have a sexual intercourse, it is the expression you use when
the kids are around so that they will not understand.
m. Candy. It means “sex”.
n. Kitchen. It is a difficult word to understand, it is the part of the back of your neck
where you can have some grown up hair.
o. Breezy- bopper - ho - hoochie- hoochie mama - chicken head
p. Man-ho
q. Dog - short. To dog your way usually takes more time, if you do not want to dog
yourself back home, you use your car, you short yourself.
r. Call
s. Tore up - plastered - stoned - folded - juiced - lit up (drunk or high on drugs,
usually booze).
33
t. Oreo (a black guy with a white soul, a traitor, someone that is black but behaves
as if he were white) - cracker (white person) - Ofay (white person) - patty (white
person) - splib dude (this came into being during the Vietnam War) - chuck dude
u. Brick (it means cold) - hawk (cold wind) - jump salty (to get angry at somebody,
ex: don’t jump salty at me) - motherfucker (offensive slang or a welcoming
greeting) - mofo (euphemism for “motherfucker”)
v. Hustle - grind - chill out (get my chill on). The origin is to be found in the
expression “hot under the collar” which means “going through a hard or stressful
time, not doing very fine”; the opposite is “chill”, the opposite of stressful time.
w. Shucks! (Expressing that you are annoyed or you do not like something). The
word comes from the corn shucks, everything that is not eatable in the maize.
x. Bae. It means “baby”.
y. On fleek (something that is cutting edge.
z. Strapped – pusher
aa. T Jones. It is the mother or the grandmother.
bb. Holla. To give a holla means to communicate via phone.
cc. Jiggy. Someone that is hot, sexually alluring.
dd. Keep it real. In African American context it simply means “take it easy” or “calm
down”
ee. Kicks. To enjoy, to have a good time.

ff. Crib/pad. Crib and pad mean my house, my hood. Crib is a small bed, so, by
extension the place where the bed is.
gg. Player. It means picaflor, el ligón de la fiesta.
hh. My bad! It means “my mistake”.
ii. Yo. It can mean “hello”, it is just another way of greeting.
jj. Spent. It means “tired”.
kk. Whack. It can be either negative (it can be something showing poor quality, a bit
crappy) or positive (it can be something that is really good “black is whack”).
ll. Whip. It is like “short”, that means a mean of transport that gets you everywhere
in short time.
mm. Saddity. People who want to show off they are the best. It means
pretentious or snobbish
nn. Stay. Live or be frequently in a place.
oo. 187 when a cop calls another cop immediately, it is a case of murder. “Im gonna
187 you” means “I'm gonna kill you”.
pp. 211 is the code number of robbery.
qq. “Dis” means “disrespect”. (“Why you dissin me?” means “why are you
insulting/disrespecting me?”).
Exercise: Analyse the following dialect.
I won’t mask my true feelings. I dig a bath with cold water early in the morning.
34
23. Bill Traylor (1853 – 1949).
A black man born into slavery in Alabama, he was an
eyewitness to history: the Civil War, Emancipation,
Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, the Great Migration,
and the steady rise of African American urban culture in the
South. Traylor would not live to see the civil rights movement,
but he was among those who laid its foundation. His paintings
sometimes look sort of sketchy, they look like a primitive rock
drawing. He grew up as a slave and became a free citizen when
he was 11. Mr. Traylor was his owner, who had a plantation
in Benton, Alabama. Benton was a huge never-ending forest
area, with 7,000 population. Once slavery was abolished, Bill
Traylor was a sharecropper in his family. He decided to move
to Montgomery, the capital city of Alabama, thus moving from a small town to a big city
to make a living. In 1939, he is working as a shoe maker despite the fact that he was
suffering from rheumatism. He spent a lot of time outside hanging out and became busy
drawing everything he saw. He said “I paint what I
see”. Charles Shannon discovered Bill Traylor and

said that Traylor was carrying Africa on his drawings.
Later on, he became the first acknowledged African
American artist. He painted camels, lions, which got
Shannon believing that he was keeping the memory of
his African ancestors, since he could not have ever
seen camels. He recollected a farming lifestyle with
his paintings. Also, there are some scary scenes of
black people running away among his paintings.
However, there is nothing really sophisticated,
sometimes it reflects a little bit about the slave
lifestyle back in the 40s. There are also a lot of people
portrayed while drinking, which is related to that
cliché that black people were alcoholics. He produced
1,500 drawings, he was quite prolific although his method was a bit sketchy. He was the
first African American artist impersonating the history of black people.
24. Jim Crow (page 57).
The philosophy of his laws is “equal but separate”. In any southern city or small town,
we would see blacks and whites using different means of transports, hospitals, toilets,
everything. If they do not comply with those regulations, they will end up in jail, it was
compulsory by law. Segregation. The quality of public services was far inferior when we
were dealing with the facilities offered to black people. In addition to segregate black
people, one of the probably strategies black people wanted to avoid was becoming a
victim of lynching (the victim would be beaten up), which could usually conclude by
hanging the person and then burning the body. Lynching was a common phenomenon
widespread in the South. This is what this song by Odetta is about.
35
25. African American icons.
 Gris-gris. It is a voodoo practice. It consists of a
leather bag with a number of charms, where you
can find teeth, clipped nails, hair, etc. The gris-
gris may speed up the recovery of a sick person,
in some cases it can bring safety to the family or
it can also attract love. It can also bring bad luck
to somebody, in this case you have to put pepper
in the bag and hide it. You can find this practice
in Louisiana, New Orleans (NOLA). This practice
consists of small bags containing something
inside which can bring good or bad luck. (We can
find this word either in the defining exercise of the final or in the dialect exercise so
that we have to connect it with African American Vernacular English).
 Gumbo, offal and goobers. Goobers are peanuts, which we associate with Washington
Carver. Ochre makes the soup thick, it is one of the basic ingredients that came along
with the slaves. The slavery tradition of cooking offal (which is everything that is
rejected, aka what the slaves were given to eat, after three centuries eating it, it became
part of their cuisine).
 Chitterlings (cortezas de cerdo). Fatty skin of the pork that once it is deep fried, it

becomes crunchy. Black people eat a lot of fats, the explanation is to be found in the
plantation once again; by that time a lot of animals were killed, and then the unwanted
parts of these animals were given to black people (feet, ears, heart, skin, offal). They
were highly nutritious for the slaves to have the energy. Most of the black recipes are
based on livers, etc. The same happens in Cuba: “menudillo”, the typical dish, is a
slavery recipe; and same goes for Brazil. There is nothing trendy about black cuisine
in nowadays US.
 Nat King Cole. He was a pianist that used a chemical product for his hair. This product
was intended to make his hair straightened out. The name of this product is
“congolene”, one of the registered brands used in the 1950s. From “congolene”, we
got the expression “conked hair”, which refers to the hair that has been treated with
congolene (and later on with several different brands appeared). They wanted to
subdue their African features, which is why black people used this for their hair: they
wanted to be as white as possible. Malcom X, a true revolutionary leader and advocate
of African rights stated that the expression “get your hair conked” was “the first step
towards the self-degradation”. For instance, Michael Jackson tried to get rid of
everything that could identify him as a black man. Another example to illustrate this
quotation is the fact that in the Dominican Republic, they call “pelo malo” that kind
of Afro-textured hair, which is a clearly racist component.
 Bottle tree. It has something to do with voodoo practice. When it is autumn, they
usually fill up the tree with bottles whose typical colour is cobalt blue, with the idea
that spirits get attracted by this colour and then get into the bottle. Once they are inside
the bottle they cannot find their way out. In this sense, the spirit gets caught and they
can do no evil – they say that when the wind blows, it is the spirit that is crying because
they want to leave the bottle. The bottle tree was commonly practiced and still is, it is
a kind of charm against the evil spirits.
36
 Maroon. The word “maroon” comes from the Spanish word “cimarrón”. It simply is
an animal that has broken free and gotten lost in the forest or mountains. This is the
idea that was applied to creatures that were regarded as animals: fugitives running
away from the plantation, they got away and probably managed to make a living in
an isolated wilderness area. Sometimes the maroons that got away were many, so
when they were many, they say it was a “marronage”: they live together, they have
children in a swampy and marshy area, and they kind of create a community.
 Pickaninny. In the South, the “pickaninny” was a wild child, a primitive kind of
creature. “Pickaninny” was a name given to the slaves’ children. It is a racist
stereotype, usually seen as a happy, lazy, and dirty child.
 Jim Crow. It is the name given to these laws that were passed to segregate people.
The name Jim Crow is the name of a theatrical character. It was a Kentucky slave that
got a problem: he was a crippled guy, he was very happy and danced for his
performances, which became hilarious due to the disability he suffered from. There

was a song that became very famous before the Civil War. Minstrel show, a theatrical
show where black people impersonated by whites were the protagonists, of course
with a strong racist ideology was a place where the whites tried to imitate the way
that black people talked, their speech manners. In a way, it was a mockery of black
people. Initially, the parody was serious but then, as time went by, the parody became
offensive. The plot line was that black people were primitive creatures: they were
seen as promiscuous, lazy and superstitious people (as an anecdote to give an idea of
how superstitious they were, black people did not even mention death because that
would be calling death; instead, they said “rocking chair” to refer to death). They were
represented as being happy in the lazy South in this theatre. In the city, the name given
to these people was “zip coon” (note that coon is a pejorative term to refer to black
people; this term comes from “barakoo”, which is the place where black people were
locked up). According to the people from the South, if you let the slaves become free,
they became corrupted and greedy, started selling drugs and getting involved in all
kinds of criminal acts.
 Aunt Jemima. The slave that the family had as the family cook. There were “field
niggas” (the guys that worked in the plantation) and “house niggas” (the people
working in the house). Aunt Jemima stereotypes: she raises the white kids, tells
stories, she is completely devoted to the creatures of the family. She is a motherly
figure embracing all the children.
 Uncle Remus. Stubborn, faithfulness and loyal to the family. Illiterate, completely
devoted to the white family, reading for them, telling stories.
 “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” I’m bound for
Canaan land. One of the Biblical family line is Noah-Ham-Canaan. Something
happened between Ham and Noah: Ham saw the naked body of Noah (his father),
which meant transgressing an ethic rule. Noah realised it and therefore became mad
and cursed his son. In relation to this, we need to bear in mind that black people
embrace the Bible literally. When reading the Bible, black people identified
themselves with Canaan: they thought they were the sons of Canaan and were being
punished because they had done something wrong. They thought they were slaves
because they were the offspring of Canaan. Also, it is interesting the fact that we find
many Biblical allusions in black language.
37
 Marcus Garvey’s Pan-African flag. Marcus Garvey
did a lot to improve the situation of black people in the
1920s. Garvey got the idea that black people must be
together and build up their African nature: he thought
they must get back to Africa in order to redeem their
ancestors. They had been separated from their
motherland, they were the sons of the diaspora, so he
thought that they must return to Africa and build up a Pan-African nation. The flag he
created was the flag that represented every black person. In the flag, Red stands for
blood, black for the colour of their skin and green is a symbol for Africa.
 Ku Klux Klan (KKK). In 1865, there were a group of six like-minded friends whose
initial role was to scare away black people, taking advantage that they were very
superstitious. They got the idea of wearing sheets to frighten them out by the belief
that death had come. Why “ku klux klan”? The name in Greek is “kuklos”, which
means “circle”. In the 1880s, KKK was almost gone
but at the same time these are going to be the years
(1880s-1920s) where Southern states are going to
give way to a number of Jim Crow Laws. Pulaski,
Tennessee. In the 1920s, the KKK society started
coming back to life so there was a revival of the

society supported by entrepreneurs, in cahoots with
politicians, and wealthy people with a purpose: they
were going to terrify the black population. They
used a code language: “klonversation”
(conversation), “klavern” (local unit of the klan),
“kloran” (handbook of the Ku Klux Klan). They were using the words “Mr. Ayak”
and “Mr. Akai”, which were part of the code language and they would use them as
“I’m looking for Mr. Ayak” which would mean “are you a klansman (ayak)” and Mr.
Akai (a klansman am I) to know whether the people were in their society or not. In
the 1950s, the KKK were going to be vanishing all together. In the 1959s, after
researching this topic, a book about the organization’s code language was published.
 The Frown Movement. It was a movement of people who wanted to help black
nationals and they showed their disapproval, they were proactive and this movement
was anticipatory of the civil right movements.
 Beale Street is a street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee, which runs from the
Mississippi River to East Street. It is considered the birthplace of blues music. It is a
very charismatic and iconic street.
26. Civil Rights movement.

The civil rights movement was a struggle for justice and equality for African Americans
that took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. The end of the Civil War gave freedom to
black people.
- 1951. Montgomery, the capital city of Alabama. It is going to be the first setting to
the first fight against Jim Crow laws. The protagonist was Rosa Parks, one of those
leaders of the Civil Rights movement. On 1st Dec, she left the work for the day. She
was working as a seamstress in a department store. The buses and trains were divided
38

in normal seats for white passenger and the Jim Crow section. She had a lot of
shopping bags and decided to sit on one of those seats for white people, the driver
shouted “niggas to the back” as the bus started to fill up, and so they did. But Rosa
refused to stand up and said “I won’t move, this is my seat”. Automatically she was
committing a criminal act, since she was violating the laws of transportation in
Montgomery; she was arrested and brought to the police station since she refused to
give up her seat. Following her arrest, there was the first organised boycott on
transportation: everyone in town refused to get on any bus. This was all fully
orchestrated. This was one of the turning points in history.
- 1954: Linda Brown. She was eight years old. Her enrollment in the all-white school
named Sumner Elementary School was blocked, leading her family to bring a lawsuit
against the Topeka Board of Education. She could not go to that school because that
was a school for whites according to the Jim Crow laws. She was denied admission,
she had to ride 8 miles to the closest school. The father, Oliver Brown decided that he
was going to sue the highest institution (The Board of Education) in Topeka, Kansas.
Linda Brown became a celebrity. Finally, the Federal Court solved the case in favour
of Linda Brown. She was the first black girl to win a case against Jim Crow Laws.
After that, she could attend school.
- September 1957. There were nine children in a place named Little Rock (Arkansas).
Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were

initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the
Governor of Arkansas, who was obviously disobeying the Federal Court. The
president sent 100 soldiers to Little Rock and they remained in town for a whole
year checking out that the children could go to school without any kind of problem.
People could even watch these children on TV every evening.
27. The Problem We All Live With (1964), by Norman Rockwell.
This is the first
girl who was
admitted to a
traditional
school for
whites. This
painting was
installed in the
White House
when Barack
Obama was
president so it
became kind of
iconic. It is a
painting based
upon something that Americans could watch in their everyday life. They could perfectly
see a black girl being escorted by the Federal Marshals on her way to school. She was
eligible for this school, even though some parents did not want their children to be at
school with a black girl. The original target of the tomato thrown against the wall was the
girl. KKK is also written as a graffiti message on the left side of the wall. The girl is
completely devoted to her studies. She is the good character in this narrative and this is
39

represented through her white dress since white is the colour of innocence and purity. The
faces of the Federal Marshals cannot be seen, since the painting has been deliberately
cropped to preserve their anonymity because bigots could see their faces could shoot them
dead, since they did not want the blacks to be integrated. This is the first girl stopping
discrimination in the field of education. The combination of the centrality of the
protagonist, threatening messages on the wall, offensive derogatory words, and the
redness of the tomato.
There was going to be a multiplicity of many different cases all over the nation. They
were still discriminated but not by law.
28. New Kids in the Neighborhood (1967), by Norman Rockwell.

From then on, black people could come and rent a place in the so-called white
neighborhood; the two African-American children are standing closer to the houses,
suggesting that they are the ones moving into the neighborhood. The painting is realistic.
Its tone is not too bright or too dark but resembles natural light on a regular day. A bit of
tension between the two groups of children can be felt through the work. In the painting,
both children play baseball, which means that they share the same interests. In this sense,
the game is to be interpreted as a message: they belong to the same nation, to the same
team. Black people are the minority in this painting, and this is reflected in the number of
black children in contrast with the number of white children. In the background we can
see a bunch of houses and there is someone peeping out of the window, who may be an
old lady probably thinking “what is the world coming to?” For that generation of old
people the change was not going to be possible. Also, we have to analyse the presence of
the cat and the dog, two animals that do not tend to get along with each other. However,
even though it might appear difficult, it is not that difficult: this difficulty between a dog
and a cat can be overcome, and same applies for black and white people.
40
The painter, Norman Rockwell, was mostly linked with a beautiful America with no
problems, an optimistic view far away from politics. On this occasion, however, he is
feeling committed to paint reality and to talk about the racial problem still dominating
present-day America. The painting leads us to think that this is a terrible problem affecting
the whole nation.
In his illustration of suburban integration in Chicago's Park Forest community, Rockwell
was secure in expressing his philosophy of tolerance. We can see the children will soon
be playing with each other, but the face peering from behind a window curtain makes us
wonder how the adults will fare.
It is also important to pay attention to the fact that both children are wearing the same
clothes. Also, both girls are wearing a pink tie. These aspects illustrate the commonality
between the two raced groups. I believe that Rockwell used these subtle techniques to
portray the state of the nation at the time and his belief that both race share common

values and together make up the nation.
Rockwell used many different techniques to draw attention to the issue of segregation.
First the physical separation of the two races is illustrated through the gap between them.
The center of the painting is an empty space and the main characters are facing each other
from the opposite side. This amplifies the tension between the groups. He used the
suburbs as the setting to illustrate the fact that segregation is not only a problem in the
urban area, but extends throughout the country, including the suburbs. The artist’s
decision to use children was deliberate as a way to suggest innocence.
29. David Hammons (page 64).
He took a picture of
Jesse Jackson and
blew it up. He
changed the colour
of this guy’s skin
and got him looking
like an average
white man. Jesse
Jackson was a
Baptist and had a
powerful speech to
address white
people. What he said
hit upon the nail of
African American’s
discrimination. He did not only address the black community but also the rest of the
nation. His speech was so powerful that he got a lot of support. After the primaries he
appeared decreased and finally did not become the presidents. Many whites started to feel
panicky. The only thing that kept him out the presidency was his race. The bottom line is
that his race is the only reason why he was not elected president. Jim Crow Laws were
not left behind, they just had adopted new ways.
41
Another work of art by Hammons: He isolated different
hoods. The hood as a way to say that they are pretty much
the hood they come from. White people would not enter a
hood. This is a visual metaphor.
He also redid the American flag painting it in red,
black and green, the pam-African identity flag
colours.
Why spades? “Spade” is an offensive word for an African-American.

He was called a spade but he did not even know that it was an insult.
This is a metonymic simplification. On this occasion, the spade stands
for slavery. Spade with Chains (1973), where the artist employs a
provocative, derogatory term, coupled with the literal gardening

instrument, in order to make a visual pun between the blade of a shovel
and an African mask, and a contemporary statement about the issues
of bondage and resistance.
The prior work of art named Spade with Chains was part
of a larger series of "Spade" works in the 1970s, including
Bird (1973), where Charlie Parker is evoked by a spade
emerging from a saxophone. Charlie Parker was a jazz
musician. In this sense, we understand that the critique
here is that black people are only respected if they are
either musicians or athletes.
42
Higher Goals (1986). If
you go to Brooklyn, in
Cadman Plaza Park, we
can find this. The
sculpture is made of
telephone pole covered in
bottle tops. The criticism
is that they are only seen
by whites as someone
important either when
they become musicians or
athletes. According to
him, they should aspire
higher goals, they can do
so much better.
Hair (1992). Dreadlocks, Rastafari
sort of style here. He defends that they
should not be ashamed of their own
hair, since that just goes to show an

internalised phobia. The standard was
provided by the white cannon, so
everyone that was not close to that
cannon, feels inferior.
There was a number of insults such as boy, nigger,

coon, spade, barbecue bones (this is connected to the
food eaten by slaves, the offal). “Train” is a word that
is metaphorically very close to black people, eg: the
Underground Railroad. But also the “A train”, which
is the train taking you to the hood in New York
(Harlem). Black people live “on the other side” of the
railway track, which usually divides the city into the
Negro ghetto and the white town. The Night Train
is a kind of bum wine, the alcohol bought by white
people because it is very cheap. The ABV is 17.5%
which is extremely high for wine. Hammons created
a kind of a wheel of a train with bottles as a certain identity meaning that they have been
defined by poverty.
43
Bliz-aard Ball Sale (1983). This was performed in Cooper Square, New York. he piece
has become iconic, the single ephemeral work – a work that is essentially about
ephemerality – that has come to stand for his entire practice. As it comes down to us in
documentation, it is a portrait of the artist as an anonymous and disreputable pedlar, an
absurdist street hustler. Hammons’ notion of an artist includes a constant flirtation with
notions of the illicit and the fraudulent – the ever-present suggestion that the whole
business might be a scam. What, after all, could be more of a scam than selling snowballs
in winter?
44

45
Vocabulary.
Miscegenation – mestizaje
To panhandle – pedir, mendigar
Bootlegger – contraband
Risqué – sexually suggestive
Bawdy blues – blues obscenos
Bawdy house – prostíbulo
Gridiron – rejilla
Husk – cascara
Pushover – somebody that does not require an effort to bring them to bed, alguien facilón
“Hood” – it is the word by which black people refers to their neighbourhood.
Shop-soiled – deteriorado/dañado, gastada (una palabra)
Cholly – in Black English, it is a slang term for a dollar bill

Buck (slang) – it means one dollar. A buck is a male deer or a ram. They talk about bucks
when they talk about money but there is an historical explanation to it; we need to go
back to the fur trade where they gave the skin of dead animals in order to get something
in return, there was no money by then and people simply exchanged goods. The dollar
came so much later, some people say this word comes from the South of Germany, others
speak about the Czech Republic. It comes from “thaler” a very valuable money. The
symbol of the dollar is the result of writing a U and a S meaning United states, though the
U converged into two vertical lines since it was so much easier to write.
Some people claim that “cool” was originally said as “hot”. When a song was really good,
they used to say “that song was hot”.
Patron – sponsor, patrocinador. Cuando se usa en plural (partrons) suele significar
“clientes”. Saint Patron es el patrón de algo.
Freight – cargamento, carga
To have sb’s hair processed - tener el pelo alisado permanente con productos para que no
sea rizado
46

30. Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap, by George Caleb
Bingham.
The author of this painting is George Caleb Bingham, who was born in Augusta County
(Virginia) in 1811. His portraits generally show prominent 19th century Missourians. He
was called “The Missouri Artist”.
This painting depicts Daniel Boone escorting settlers. The historical episode took place
in the 1770s. However, the painting was composed between 1850 and 1851, which means
that there is a historical gap between the date in which this happened and the date in which
this painting was produced.
Daniel Boone is wearing a hat, holding a rifle upon his shoulder and occupying the central
position of the painting. The settlers occupied a portion of the territory, but as the time
went by, the population grew up and they needed to move westward. He accounted the
settlers to the new land they were going to occupy. Settlers are going to be farmers. Daniel
Boone is one of the founding fathers of the nation but he was also a trapper (someone that
killed animals and sold them to get some kind of economic profit). He is also going to be
an infamous Indian Native American killer and a land speculator. On the positive side, he
was a hero accompanying Americans on this expansion, but in order to do so, he got rid
of many “obstacles”.
“The wilderness” as opposed to civilisation. In order to build up the nation, Americans
needed to get rid of the Native American population so the genesis of the American nation
is to be found in a graveyard: genocide is the first stepping stone to the homogeneous
American nation. The painting shows a landscape covered up in a rainforest area. There
is something symbolic about nature, it seems that by the time these people are moving
forwards, the natural elements have been in a way destroyed; this is not a symbolic
47
element but something that testifies to the coming of civilisation. They needed to cut
down trees in order to move on, it was something destructive along with its movement
forwards.
There is a contrast between the forest and the road (aka wilderness vs. civilisation). The
road implies the annihilation of nature. The word “savage” comes from Latin “silvacus”,
which means forest. The so-called “silvacus” are naturally inhabiting the forest and the
forest here has a pretty negative connotation: the darkness of the brute and primitive
Native Americans. In that sense, this people are bringing light and, along with them,
civilisation (this is one of the messages of the painting).
Ten people moving from Virginia to Kentucky, a historical episode that is connected with
the origin of the nation. The first obstacle to overcome were Native American people.
Back to the painting:
The painter is depicting these people in a very positive way, the characters have the
spotlight upon their faces so that the attention is drawn to the faces of Daniel Boone and
his wife Rebecca. The colour of the hair is white, the colour of innocence. Rebecca looks
alike Virgin Mary, there is a parallelism with a biblical scene. They came in America with
an errand: to build up a New Jerusalem. The fact that his wife is depicted as a
reincarnation of Virgin Mary is not accidental. One of the earliest sermons also

emphasised this idea of the “errand into the wilderness”.
There is another Biblical parallelism which is that of Moses accompanying these people:
it connects with the idea of Moses leading his people back to the Promised Land, with the
red sea as an obstacle, which he parted and overcame in order to lead his people back to
where they belonged. There is also a Biblical episode that is going to be repeated in the
present, this is a typology since there are two historical events in a row. Also we can
notice that they are getting closer to the light, the light of reason and civilisation. A
typology motif is the image of Daniel Boone based upon a Greek model: he is standing
but at the same time he is about to move, he is almost moving and progressing. This
combination of serenity and tranquillity but then movement seems to be conveyed into
this idea of perfect manhood. Also, according to the Greek canon, there is a spear bearing
a model of masculine beauty, and there is also a slight resemblance with this since the
artist is holding a rifle. This is important because the artist has given the protagonist the
aura of being a hero. We could also discuss the idea of the cowboy in America in the
Western wilderness. “Nice rifle, nice horse, and very low on the list: nice wife”.
Manifest destiny: it is not about what we want to do but about what the providence wants
us to do. The British monarchy did not want these people to move westwards. Bearing in
mind the date of the composition, it is not very difficult to work out what the artist had in
mind “another violent episode of American history”: the Mexican-American war, the US
troops were invading New Mexico, Southern California, and several lands part of Mexico
back in time. The painter is justifying the Mexican-American war.
The protagonist is escorting men against wild animals and Native Americans towards
somewhere in Kentucky. They thought they needed to fulfil the providential mission.
48
31. The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, by Grant Wood (1930).
It
is in the
Metropolitan
Museum of New
York. The date of
the composition is
1930 and the author
is Grant Wood. The
title is an excuse to
introduce the
American
revolutionary war
against the British.
We are talking

about the moment
in which the nation
is no longer a child,
but an adult. Paul
Revere is riding a horse in the painting, it is night time, and this is the historical
reinterpretation by Grant Wood.
Historical context:
- 1765. This is the day when the British parliament passed the Stamp Act. Every printed
material in the colony must be on a special kind of paper produced in Great Britain.
Any other printed material was illegal. Great Britain had control of any kind of
publication, which is of paramount importance.
- 1767. They were going to introduce new taxes on every imported product. The
reaction of people living in the colonies was negative, this was a ground of protest, in
some cases riots and violent acts that were going to perpetrate the authorities. The
British parliament was going to subdue these rebellion acts sending special units of
the army, named “The Redcoats”. Americans made up a derogatory term to refer to
these soldiers “lobsters” and “bloody backs”. In Boston, they were going to be
controlling every movement in and out of the city. Something happened and the
episode was not really tragic, and they called it “The Boston Massacre”, in which
young people threw snowballs to the Redcoats and the Redcoats shot five people dead
on response. Boston was going to be completely surrounded and monitored by the
British army, because the situation was becoming really bad, they decided to remove
the army and the taxes, only keeping one tax on tea. They were going to dress up as
Native Americans (note to self: look it up for further information, its kinda
incomplete), and this historical episode is called “The Tea Party”. At the same time,
Americans were already intellectually independent, they were ready for undertaking
a revolution. So many intellectual people were going to create a secret organisation
“Committee of Correspondence”. A committee of correspondence was a clandestine
association of people who corresponded with each other; the kind of messages that
they were going to send to each other was information about the movement of the
soldiers, where they were, to tell them to hide the ammunition, they wrote to each
other (and there was nothing like a post office, so they needed a messenger to
49
physically hand in the letter to the right person (this guy was going, to be called
“courier”). Samuel Adams is one of the intellectual guys knowing the tactics and
movements, he was one of the founding fathers but he made a lot of money because
he owned a brewery. However, John Hancock was a merchant, some other historians
say that he was a smuggler. John Hancock was the wealthy man who gave the money
and Samuel Adams decided the tactics, whilst the courier would be Paul Revere. John
Hancock signed the Constitution, his signature was so beautiful that it has become an
expression in American English: “can I have your John Hancock?” Means “can I have
your signature?”
- 18th April, 1775. It is the date of the night depicted in this painting. The battles were
fought from Boston to Lexington (Massachusetts), in no time the first fighting episode
took place: we are talking about the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War,
these are the preliminary pages of the war. Paul Revere was writing and shouting to
arms, since the British were getting closer, he thought that they needed to start
fighting. Longfellow wrote a poem about that night and named it “The Midnight Ride
of Paul Revere”. Paul Revere became America’s first forensic dentist when he was
given the task of identifying the body of Dr. Joseph Warren, the man who sent him
on his famous “midnight ride.” Paul Revere came from a French family, because he
was shouting to arms, this name has been very easily connected with a rifle and arms
association.

About the painting:
The perspective of the painting is a bird’s eye view. There is a long winding road, and
also an outhouse (because there was no plumbing). The horse was modelled on a rocking
horse and the houses look like doll houses. It is like a toy city, even the perspective looks
a bit like that. Everything is very small and, as a matter of fact, Grant Wood took a rocking
horse as a model for the house he painted. There was no power so houses were lit with
candle lights, but there is an anachronism in the picture because the reflections from the
houses are power-like reflections, which is inaccurate. Also, the painting does not look
like New England.
The reason of this is that the painting is his interpretation of the historical event, not a
historical accurate representation. He wanted to get closer to the mental idea that he had
when his mother read the poem by Longfellow to him. The point of view is the point of
view of a child but, at the same time if you think about the historical moment, this is also
a nation that is an infant, the nation is about to be born. In this sense, there is this
parallelism of somebody that is flashing out his idea of the nation as a child and the nation
being ready to be born. The painting is completely artificial, there is no moon projecting
the spotlight, everything is a bit theatrical. The nostalgia dominates the painting: we find
a nation divided by antagonisms due to the Great Depression, the idea that they belonged
together had vanished.
In this work, Wood is looking back at this historical event as if he felt some kind of
homesick for the times when they fought together for a single cause and they believe in
America as a nation with them all together. Now, nobody believed in the idea of the
common house where they were sharing the same destiny.
50
Recap: It is how a child, Grant Wood as an infant, imagined the historical episode to take
place. There is a bit of nostalgia about how things happened back in those days when they
believed in the ideal of a nation that they must defend and build up together. At the time
Wood was painting this masterpiece, America was going through a crisis; in the
nationalistic agenda people did no longer believe in building up a community and the
country seemed to be divided into antagonism (fighting probably for the wrong rights).
We can see some nostalgia for the bygone days fighting against the common enemy. Even
the horse looks like a toy. Theatricality dominates the whole painting, another example:
the giant-sized moon. It was impossible to leave the city of Boston because it was
surrounded and monitored by the British. However, rumour has it that he was disguised
as a foreman and could escape to Massachusetts. Metropolitan Museum of New York.
The artist is looking back in time and feeling that the crisis is disrupting any serious faith
in the nation.
32. American inventions.
Morn’s Michton. Teddy Bear.
1891. Wilkcomb and Judson. Zipper.
Dishwasher.
1912. Leston Wire. Traffic light.

1957. Alfred Fielding and Mark Chavannes. Bubble wrap.
Toilet paper.
33. Dialect: New England.
We have planters in the South, traders in New England and businessmen in New York.
This will influence the different dialects.
This dialect is spoken in: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, and Connecticut.
As one moves west to the river, the dialect looks like German, and East to the river is
going to be more like New England.
 Phonetical features.
a) Non-rhotic. This feature did not exist in England until the 18th century, it was a
linguistic innovation.
b) Broad [a:]. Along with the lack of “r”, we are going to have “a:”. In New England,
they keep this specific phoneme in specific contexts:
-ss -st -nt -nc -sk -nd -th -ft
-ns
glass blast aunt answer mask Sandra bath after
class cast plant France ask demand draft
pass hasty Grant chance basket slander path craft
fast can’t glance laughter
pastor
Sometimes also with ð. For example: father, rather.
Also: every word containing an –r. For instance, park, yard.
51

c) Intrusive R. Consider the phrase “Let’s take the car and drive to Canada”. In this case,
Canada would be pronounced as “Canadar”. Also “the idea is” would be “the idear
is”. The trick for this sound is either a vowel at the end of the sentence or between
two vowels belonging to different words. Also: “today Cubar is lost to freedom.”
“Chinar and Indian tea”.
 Morphosyntax. Nothing.
 Lexical field. (ALSO: page 116)
Widow’s walk – that kind of platform where one can have a sight of the sea usually to
spot the arriving boats
Scrod – the most affordable fresh fish that has been caught in the day. This speaks
volumes about New England because it is a region of sailors. Puritans were the first to
arrive in New England.
Common / green – can be used to refer to the square in town
Number plate – license plate
Cellar – basement
Elastic – ruber band
Gam – the original meaning referred to when a number of big fish (usually dolphins or

whales) got together. By extension, “gam” is now also a get together of people, a social
gathering
Carriage – it is a shopping cart
Spa / packy – spa is a Latin acronym. It is a local convenience store. It is open 24/7. Packy
is the place where you get your booze from.
Barney – A Harvard student
For a spell – for a while
Pissa – good, great, cool, terrific, fabulous
Wicked – it means “very”, extremely, mighty
Barrel – the place where you deposit your tray to get rid of your plastic and paper garbage,
the trash bin.
Hannah Cook – it means “hand or cook”. Wherever you are signing in to get a job in a
ship if you do not have any high qualification you are likely to be hired as either a hand
(someone that does unimportant chores in the desk) or a cook. You are likely to take the
lower positions in the hierarchy of professional life if you are a Hannah Cook. It is also
used to refer to something or somebody that is pretty boring or unskilful, unprofessional,
very poor quality, etc. For instance: that book is a Hannah Cook/ the teacher is a Hannah
Cook.
Tonic – co-cola, soda
52

34. Ship of State, by Saul Steinberg.
This is a long-standing tradition, it was Plato who coined this metaphor in order to refer Reservados todos los derechos.
to the nation. If something goes wrong, the ship is going to sink down.
1959. We are in the Cold War, a tense political period against The Soviet Block,
The artist is Romanian-American but his origin is Jewish. He is one of those people who
migrated to the States during the WWII. Ashkenazi is the Hebrew name for the Jewish
from Germany and central Europe. If a Jew comes from the Iberian Peninsula, they are
called Sephardic. However, Mizrahi are the ones from Palestine, from the Middle East.
These are the three branches of Jewish. Yiddish contains many words of Slavic languages
but it is medieval German (language spoken by Ashkenazi).
Ladino is the language of Sephardic, it’s like an old Spanish.
The New Yorker. “Grabbing a New Yorker” means being an intellectual, being well
informed and highbrow.
The painting: There is a new modified version of the Statue of Liberty at the prow of the
boat. It is a belligerent Statue of Liberty, the implication is that it is a model of liberty
53
that is not shared with the rest of the nation, it is a liberty that has been imposed. They
have to take that imposed idea of liberty, they better do. The Statue of Liberty is a gift
from the French. Bartholdi joked “statue made by a Wop to welcome Paddies”, because
the Irish were coming in big numbers in the 80s.
There are two guys with cups that have two letters: “R” standing for republicans, and “D”
standing for democrats. On the R guy’s arm there is an elephant. The message here is that
Americans see Politics as a game. Between democrats and republicans, the result is going
to be practically the same, it doesn't really matter who wins.
There is a giant-size figure behind the political parties: he is Abraham Lincoln, the
incontestable founding father of the nation. He is responsible for the 13th amendment of
the Constitution (it deals with the end of slavery). On his shoulder there is the bold eagle,
a symbol that the Native Americans also worshipped, they loved it because it is an eagle
capable of overcoming any difficulty since it can fly really high. “E pluribus Unum” one
of the nation’s mottos, it means “one nation out of the many different nations”, it means
America has been made from people coming from many different countries.
The popular name for this flag is “Stars & Stripes”. Probably, at that time when the
cartoon was created there were like two states incorporated to the statehood (Alaska and
Hawaii incorporated in the 1950s).

There is also a number of people with messages across their chests: these are going to be
the values of the nation from then on. The first value is business, the hat is the one we
associate with College education, so the implication is that knowledge is important in the
nation as long as it brings some money. (Some historians say this is because they live
very close to the frontier, which makes us somebody able to survivable and gives us a
practical mindset. They are really practical down-to-earth pragmatic people). This is
something they probably inherited from the British.
After business comes “order”. This order is one of the basic ideas of American history:
the frontier and the wilderness is too messy, if we don’t impose a rigid order, it is gone
become chaotic. American public civil life is full of regulations. The hat is something we
identify with Muslin people: it is called a fez hat. The implication here is “Islam means
submission to God”, so order here implies a complete submission of citizens: we need to
obey many more rules than anyone else in this country. Order is more important than law,
order should be based upon law and not the other way around.
The girl with the peace message is a majorette, someone that accompanies the military
parade with dancing movements. The message is “peace is based upon a full military
display, peace is an empty show”. We believe in peace but because we are carrying
weapons, that is our kind of peace.
Next to this figure, there is a sheriff, the symbol of authority in the West. He is holding
the word “law”, but it is a law that is imposed because he's carrying a shotgun. It is a law
based upon violence and the use of weapons. The implication of the Sherriff is this is a
corrupted model of law.
Freedom occupies the final position, the least important of values is freedom, it has been
pushed to the back and it is incarnated by an invisible figure: a native American. Freedom
54
is more like an idea rather than an actual notion, Native Americans are sort of ghosts since
we killed them.
Two figures trumpeting the values, this is a ship that makes a lot of noise. One of the two
values that are trumpeted all over the world: science (we need to see the science as the
notion of American people creating new devices and technological gadgets to make our
life easier) and fiction (understood as Hollywood, the movie industry, not as literary
texts). If we put the two words together, we get science-fiction, which is completely
different, and then we get the name of one of the best sci-fi writers: Jules Verne. Two
titles by him is Around the World in 80 Days (this implicates the idea that this values are
going to be spread around the planets). The other title is Journey to the centre of the Earth,
which implicates that chances that the ship is going to sink down are pretty high.
We need to pay attention to the sea creatures moving around and close to the ship. There
is a mermaid, the point here is that in the mermaid’s body is written fun but the American
idea is profit. They’re selling their products to us as offering fun but they’re making
money out of it at the same time.
There’s a swan with the word “who” and a monster eating the swan and with a word
“what”. What is going to end up the battle so what is a reference to any kind of institution
(traditional institutions play a far more important role than individual Americans) since

the monster is wearing a crown. The thirst for individualism is paralysed by conformity.
Conformity means go with the rest of the people. The message is that individuals count
less than institutions.
Two fish, a small one with the word why and a bigger one with the word who.
Appearances are the core. We are more preoccupied about how we do things rather than
the reason why we do things.
Taking all in one, it is a very critical cartoon knocking down at the bottom of many
powerful symbols of the nation. In a nutshell, freedom is a myth and a disappearing value.
We sell objects that provide them fun as long as they are going to give us some kind of
economic progress.
America was going through the cold war. Communism was completely banned.
35. William Eugene Smith (1918 – 1978).
This is our second photographer. He is pretty different from Walker Evans.
Photo-essay is a combination of different photographs all of them connected with a
particular topic.
He was basically taking photographs of airplane as a job, he was introduced to this world
by his mother. Something that is going to be a turning point in his life is the Great
Depression, since his father was a businessman and lost it all, so he committed suicide,
which would make an impact on his life. After this, he is going to move to New York in
1937.
55
He is declared inapt for military service because of his poor eyesight but he is going to
be hired as a war correspondent by Life Magazine. He was transferred to Japan in WWII.
Many of his photographs focus their attention on human beings suffering in war times.
Finally he gets wounded in Okinawa and is transferred back to the States. He remains
disable not only physically but also emotionally.
1946: The Walk to Paradise Garden. A very well-
known photograph. Most of his best photographs
are going to be built up upon the principle of
chiaroscuro. The protagonists are his children.
The photograph is to be interpreted in a symbolic
way: this is the ending of the world, out of
darkness, if you keep walking, you can see the
light bringing hope for the future of mankind.
Children are recovering the Biblical paradise
where innocence and good deeds are possible.

His principles: size is important (he was pretty meticulous about the real size of his
photographs; he got mad at the interpreters whenever they cropped out any element, he
did not want them to reduce the elements of his photographs), chiaroscuro, no detail is
insignificant, blocking (theatrical term employed by stage directors when they're working
with actors; he highly manipulates the position of the subjects, he is an stage director
telling them where and how to stand, he is an intrusive photographer), he also manipulated
the negatives (sometimes he uses chemical substances and bleaches his photographs, he
manipulates it carefully to reach a particular goal), his intention was to move away from
realism to create symbolic photographs (he is a myth-maker).
1950. He travels to Spain and publishes a photo essay in Life magazine. He travels to
Deleitosa, Cáceres because he read an article by Gaspar Gómez de la Serna. He wanted
to portray rural Spain struggling to make a living.
He shots Guardia Civil, Common Bakeries, The Wake (the father is dead, he has used a
flash bulb). The Wake is one of the best photographs by him, a symbol of Spain agonising
during the post war period. He rectifies the eyes of the daughter in this picture.
56
57
Tomoko Uemura in her Bath. It was published in Life magazine in 1972. She is holding

her daughter in a bath. Tomoko Uemura is the daughter, she died when she was 21. She
was going through serious problems affecting her body and the publication was retired
in order to respect the family’s right of privacy. Minamata is a town in Japan, he was
commissioned this work in order to investigate the so-called “Minamata disease”. The
Chisso Corporation Factory was throwing mercury into the bay, something completely
illegal. If you drink water with mercury and you are pregnant, your daughter is going to
be born with serious problems, and this is what happened. For three decades in a row,
this non-stop poisoning was carried out without no government control. We can see an
intimate relationship between the mother and the daughter, but everything has been
orchestrated by the photographer. We have a spotlight whilst the rest remains pretty
much in darkness. The idea of Madonna holding the body of Christ like in La Pietà by
Michelangelo is present. He takes every possible decision in order to get what he wants
and what he has in mind.
36. New York dialect.
1880s - 1920s. There is a wave of Irish immigrants which is going to give the New York
dialect a number of features. Also, the Italian presence cannot be ignored. We have to
bear in mind the Jews, more particularly those coming from Central Europe and speaking
Yiddish, they are called “Ashkenazi”, and they settle down in the lower East.
“New York” is pronounced like “[nu:]” “[yɔ:k]” (according to the New Yorkers
phonetics).
 Phonetical features.
a) Non-rhotic.
b) [θ] > [t].
c) Initial [h] is going to be dropped out.
58

d) [ʒː] > [ɔɪ] / [ɒɪ]. This is the case of words such as “girl”, “bird”, “bury”, “work”.
Phrase to remember this feature: thirty working girls in an early birds nursery school.
e) Final [s] sound is going to morph into [ʃ]. For example: serious, office, that’s.
f) [ŋ] > [ŋk]. For instance: Long island.
 Morphosyntax.
a) Inverted use of “isn’t he”. They are going to say things like “he is a genius, he isn’t?”
instead of “he is a genius, isn’t he?”. This is a result of a direct translation from
Yiddish.
b) “Wait on line” stands for “wait in line”.
 Lexicon.
Bodega – this is what we call “spa” or “packy” in New England.
40 ounces – una litrona
Kibbitz – it may have a negative connotation but not necessarily. It can be a verb meaning
to offer advice or commentary when it’s not been asked. It means “chat”, it can also mean
a gossip, or a meaningless talk.
Glitch – a computer failure or a mistake
Maven – it means expert, although it is not a positive word, it can be used to talk about
someone that thinks they know it all

Schlock – it means cheap or inferior
Action – it means sex
Schlong – a man’s penis
Schlep – useless or not very intelligent. As a verb, it means to drag something on the
ground, for example, one can schlep their suitcase.
Schmuck – jerk
Egg nog – it is a traditional New York drink. It does not contain any egg, it is just a dairy-
based beverage made of milk, cream and sugar. It is very sweet.
Slice – a pizza portion
Chutzpah – it can be translated as the nerd or the arrogant
Nosh – snack. It can also be used as a verb, as in “I am noshing on peanuts”
Goy / goyish – a non-Jew. It is not offensive in the United States but it may have a
derogatory meaning in Israel. Also, notice “goyish” as an adjective, for instance:
croquettes are such a goyish thing to eat.
Kosher – it means “ready to eat”, something that the community can eat, and complies
with the eating standards of the community. It is the same as “halal” but for the Jewish
community.
To be 404 – it is an idiomatic expression meaning that you do not have a clue about what
has been asked.
59

37. The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, by John Singer Sargent (1883).
The author is John Singer Sargent, he was born in 1856 and died in 1925. He belongs to
the impressionist movement whose main technique is oil canvas.
There is barely furniture in the painting. There are two tall blue-and-white Japanese vases.
The girls are considered possessions of their parents and they are presented just as
material objects.
One of the girls is Marie Louisa, 12 years old, she is tense.
The oldest of the sister is Florence, she’s 14 years old, and we cannot see her face.
In the centre of the picture there is Julia and she is kind of smiling and looking at the
viewer in the eye.
The lighting plays a very important role in the painting. The younger ones are the ones
wearing white, and the spotlight is put upon Julia.
60
The author is portraying the psychological conflicts he saw in these girls. It was a
dysfunctional family and they took the girls with them wherever they had to go, they
travelled a lot. The girls therefore had no place like home which would be the root to their
internal problems in the future. None of them got married and rumour has it that they had
another brother who was autistic.
This painting is located in the museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Las Meninas by Velazquez
was the main source of inspiration for the author. The contrast between light and darkness
which stands for the psychological conflicts.
Mauricio’s discourse:
This is not a conventional portrait. The artist has been traditionally portrayed as a
superficial portrayer with lack of psychological content. The resemblance with Las
Meninas by Velázquez is quite striking, he was fascinated with the way Velázquez treated

light and darkness in a reasonably bare room. The gap between the girls automatically
triggers potential sense that there is something disturbing about this family. The father
was a very close friend of the artist, which shows that he is moving a far cry from the
rules of a traditional painting. This was not a commissioned work, he decided to paint it.
Their mother was the spirit of every party in Boston, so we got the feeling that this is
pretty much based upon speculation, they did not have the chance to become rooted in
one single place.
There are more brush strokes of white on the dress of the one that is sitting in the middle.
Julia is confident, she is not avoiding eye contact. Mary Louisa’s position gives us the
feeling that she is a bit like about to sneak outside of the room at the drop of a hat. It is
also important to notice the rigid frozen position of Jane showing that she is feeling
uncomfortable because she is being observed by the painter.
Some of the girls later on would have severe psychological bounds. They are treated as
objects, scattered in the room for the painting, among Japanese vases. By placing the girls
in a bare room around objects of art, we get the feeling that the girls are treated as objects
that need to be carried from one place to another. Probably the girls grew up with a feeling
of vulnerability or lack of protection. This painting is proof that he was not a traditional
facile highlife painter as he was traditionally regarded.
38. The North North.
The weather conditions here are extremely cold and this just goes to show the kind of
European people that came from Europe: Scandinavians and Germans.
Deer season: It is full winter time, and school children are excused, they do not go to
school.
Glorified rice: Dessert salad typical in Minnesota but also in other States in the upper
mid-west. Contains rice, cream and little marshmallows, probably topped with a cherry
Location of this dialect: Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming.
 Phonetics.
a) No vowel glide.
[əʊ] > [ɒ]. For example, OK.
61
[eɪ] > [e]
b) [aʊ] > [ʊ]. For instance, words such as “about”, “mouth”.
c) B, D, G. These three voiced sounds occupying the final position are going to take their
voiceless counterparts. In this sense: B, D, G > P, T, K. For example: tab, head, dog.
d) Use of “eh” at the end of the sentence. This also happens in Canada and is the reason
why Americans call them “the ‘eh’ team”.
For example: It’s brilliant, eh?
 Morphosyntax.
 Vocabulary.
Brat – hot dog
Uff da! – depending upon the context, it can either replace either the “oops!” or the “ouch”
expression
Otskaka – “Ots” means “cheese” and “kaka” means “cake”. Altogether it means
cheesecake.
Lefse – this is a Norwegian word. It is like a tortilla or crepe that contains potato and
flour.
Spendy – expensive

Stop-and-go lights – traffic lights
Bubbler – drinking fountain
Pop – this is the word for soda
39. The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, by Ben Shahn (1931-2).
Historical context:
The Judicial system was not working properly. If you were wealthy you would get a
different kind of justice, but if you belonged to one of the second grade races, chances
that you were going to get the same treatment during the tribal were very little. A hold up
robbery took place: there was a couple of guys wearing masks and pointing at the people
with a shotgun in a place called Braintree in Massachusetts. Nobody was able to identify
who were these two people. It was payroll day, there was an estimated amount of 30
thousand dollars in that specific place. The only piece of soft evidence was that they were
speaking something similar to Italian but it was a very poor conclusive information
because they were not completely sure. April 1920, we are talking about the ending of
the First World War, American was going through a very active political momentum,
many strikes, anarchists using bombs, and this is the beginning point of the so-called Red
Scare: if you were a communist you were a dangerous suspect. There were robberies day
in and day out, and American people wanted to solve this robbery and they urgently
needed a scapegoat. Because of this badly needed urgency to find somebody, the police
officers arrested these two guys Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Nicola was a
fishmonger and Bartolomeo was a shoemaker. They were Italian working-class people
and also anarchists that had been organising strikes, they were rank and file (ordinary
people who constitute the body of an organization, society, or nation as distinguished
from the leaders). Everything in the investigation progress proved to be ill-conducted,
everything seemed to be wrong, the eye witnesses were contradictory, ballistics reports
62
were completely false, and the Judge was a
bigoted guy against everybody who happened to
be related to communism, so he pretty much
wanted these two guys to be executed no matter
what. People automatically realised that
everything was being misconducted and the work-
class movements organised into demonstrations
all through the world. Eventually they were
executed in 1927, so there is going to be a long
judicial process. After being executed they are
going to become the martyrs of the working class
revolution. Being poor meant committing a crime
in America.
About the painting:
It is not a realistic painting. The painter was not
interested in providing a realistic portrait. The
technique employed is expressionism. Vanzetti
wrote letters from jail that showed that he was
definitely innocent and a guy with a profound

mindset: although he was not an intellectual, he
was a very much educated guy with a strong idea
of what justice is (Vanzetti is the one wearing a moustache).
There are three men standing in the picture and they are holding lilies. We have to bear
in mind that the white lily is a symbol of innocence, so these two lilies mean “we know
you were innocent but they did not care”, so this is the first motif introduced. These three
men are the Lowell Committee. The two defendants went through a retrial, and this is the
committee elected to play the role of the judge in the second trial and this is called the
Lowell Committee: the government chose the president of Harvard University (Lawrence
Lowell), Robert Grant (a former probate judge), and Samuel Stratton (president of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology). They wanted to give American people the
impression that the trial was going to be carried out by the most intellectual Americans.
The two top hats show a symbol of money, which is telling us that these people have a
particular sense of justice related to wealth, this is another symbolic motif to attack a
heavily corrupted judicial system (justice and money go hand in hand).
Lowell is the central figure standing above Sacco and Vanzetti. The president of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology stands to his left.
The building is another cleverly introduced political symbol. The first judge has his hand
lifted, we do not know if he is about to take the oath or he is doing the fascist salutation.
The pillar looks pretty similar to fasces, which is a collection of rots bound together with
an axe and this in ancient Rome was a symbol of authority of the magistrate (Mussolini
recovered this symbol and used it in order to give importance to his politics). The judicial
system is closer to a fascist position, than to being just.
63
The author was worried about the declining conditions of the rights of working class
people in America.
The title is related to crucifixion. These Italian guys were crucified for the sake of this
fascist system. Vanzetti, before being electrocuted said: “I would like to forgive what
these people are doing to me”.
Mauricio’s power point:
April 15, 1920: Hold-up robbery in a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts. It was
considered a prima facie case of murder. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti arrested.
They were arrested on a hunch. The defendants were left-wing people, immigrants, trade
union representatives, organizers of three strikes, and anarchists.
“The case that will not die”. The case has been resurrected and opened up over and over
again through the 20th century. The governor of Massachusetts declared that the case had
been conducted in the wrong way and gave an official apology.
The case became very famous all over the world. People protested against this not very
clear case and they demanded that the defendants were released from prison and not sent
to the electric chair.

Everything about the trial was very dubious: unreliable testimonies, ballistics reports
missing, false eyewitnesses, no hard evidence, the Lowell Committee (Robert Grant
became the new judge in the retrial and the Lowell Committee was made of the three
people in the painting, the new judge, the president of the Massachusetts institute of
technology and Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard University).
August 23, 1927. The date of the execution.
It is almost like a mural painting. The technique is definitely not realistic, this is
expressionism. Many symbols that have to be decoded some of them are political. The
first judge is in the background, he was called Webster Thayer. Top hats indicating that
probably justice is based upon wealth. White lilies symbolise that they definitely know
that they were innocent. In the background a bigoted judge with the position of the hand
appointing to the traditional oath upon the Bible, however, this has also been interpreted
as a sign of the fascist salutation. Running parallel to this there is a pillar made of rows
bound together and this is an ancient Roman symbol called “the fasces” that was
recovered by Mussolini. The implication being is that this is a judicial system inspired by
fascism.
The title is Biblical. The word “passion” is to be interpreted here as the agony and pain
gone through these two innocent people before being electrocuted.
Vanzetti wrote extensive letters from jail saying “I’d like to forgive what people are doing
to me” in a way resembling Christ’s last words. The revelation here is that they are
working people martyrs and they inspired much of the revolutionary spirit of the working
class people in a very tough time for workers in general, they became iconic symbols after
all.
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40. The Automat, by Edward Hopper (1927).

The Automat (1927) by Edward Hopper. This does not look like New York, what we find
here is that message of “one is company and two is crowd”. Some critics say that Edward
Hopper is telling us about the loneliness of big cities. His painting has been interpreted
as a pictorial metaphor of the city life in America pointing to loneliness. If you go to
America you see bars crowded with people but no one talks to each other, there is a
mysterious silence in a way dividing the world with a gap. We do not reach each other,
there is no physical contact, etc.
There is a female protagonist, it is a portrait of the painter’s wife, named Jo. The place
seems to be cold and it seems to be winter. She is still wearing one of her gloves (the
implication or the message in here is that we are always rushing from one thing into
another, running out of time). She is suspended in time and seems about to leave. She
seems to be lost in her thoughts, and it seems like there is a kind of mysterious aura
surrounding her. There is a huge window and if you look at it, it gives us a reflection if
the interior, which is quite claustrophobic since it seems that there is no way out. She
seems to be dominated by darkness but there are some exceptions: critics have pointed
out that many of the colours the artist has used reappear on the fruits on the window sill.
The yellow of her hat and the intense red of her lips reappear in the fruits of the bowl.
The fruit bowl is an example of still nature and then probably this is a way of telling that
we human beings are a bit like living dead in the big city (message: there is no feeling of
65
being alive when you are in such a big metropolis such as New York). Everything is pretty
much reinforced if we take into consideration the title, it can be interpreted in two
different ways: an automat is a robot-like creature and this can be a reference to this
cafeteria as a place where you just go and get your food or drink and leave. But it can also
be understood as the woman being having become an automat herself. We need to pay
attention to “Horn & Hardart”, a food service company operating the first food serving
automats. It was set up in New York in 1912 and it became so popular because it was not
necessary to do a long line to get your food. Horn & Hardart were the first to introduce
the automat in New York. He is interested in playing with symbols so he is using the
place as a kind of symbolic space with the two meanings discussed above.
Two main ideas:
Pictorial metaphor, the artist is interested in giving light to a metaphor of the city light.
This painting has been interpreted as a “catalogue of absences”. What we expect to find
in it (crowds, lights, traffic congestion, and the typical things characterising New York
City) is not found. The lack of communication and loneliness become the motif of his
artwork.
The title is Nighthawks. It is a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people
sitting in a downtown diner late at night. It is Hopper's most famous work and is one of
the most recognizable paintings in American art. It also depicts the loneliness in a city.
41. Reverse of the one dollar bill.
“In God we trust” is one of the mottos of the nation. It is made of cotton with a bit of silk.
The dollar is a currency that is always a dollar. On the right hand side we have the bold
eagle, it is a symbol for the Delaware Native American tribes. The talons (the feet of the
eagle) are holding arrows and a branch of olive tree. The olive tree is a symbol of peace
and the arrows are a symbol of war. Message: although the eagle is facing the direction
66

of peace, it is not going to hesitate to resort to arrows if required. The philosophy here is
very Puritan: we are very peaceful people but if we need to, we will get in a fight.
“E pluribus Unum” one of the nation’s mottos, it means “one nation out of the many
different nations”, it means America has been made from people coming from many
different countries.
The number of stars above the eagle is 13 and the number of letters in “E pluribus Unum”
is also 13. In this sense, 13 is the cabalistic number for the making of the nation. There is
an unfinished pyramid, there is no top in this pyramid meaning that they are not close to
being finished (this is connected to the idea of expansion, they believe they are constantly
growing into a larger nation). There are 72 bricks, which stand for the number of names
given to God in the Jewish tradition. On top of the pyramid there is an all seing eye, which
is God, meaning he is watching us all. Also this God is the subject of the Latin phrase
“Annuit coeptis”, which means God favours (annuit) our undertakings (coeptis).
“Novus ordu seclorum”. It means “a new order has begun”. All of the things are Puritan
symbols: one man cannot make it alone but a group of men can make it with the aid of
God.
The familiar word for a dollar is “buck”, which is a male deer. Fur traders did not have a
proper currency, so they would just say “gimme a buck” which literally meant “give me
a dead animal”.
Dollar is a silver currency coming from Europe “thaler”. From the word “thaler”, it
morphed into “dollar”
67
42. Appendix: Walker Evan’s works.
A Graveyard and Steel Mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
We get the impression that there is some kind of symbolic meaning to be delivered. There
is no direct storytelling. In the looming background we see the steel plants, the factories.
Also, there are houses and a cemetery. He was probably telling us that is all American
life is about, it is a slap on the face of the American dream. These three spaces put together
make the photograph so interesting. He was using a pretty wide angle so that we get the
feeling that the three spaces are close to each other, even though they are separate. He
gave no title to this photograph. The photograph was the city of Bethlehem, in
Pennsylvania. It was included in a book called Land of the Free. This is a great example
of that non-direct storytelling.
68
Damaged. He is toying with irony
in this one, since it is a photo of
workmen loading a giant sign
reading “Damaged” onto a truck
early in the Depression.

Negroes in the Lineup for Food at Mealtime in the Camp for Flood Refugee. The floods
ruined plantation and people’s houses. He realised that the camps for the victims was
divided into two cans: blacks and whites were separated. Black and whites were equal by
law but different. He took photographs of isolated parts. As we can see the human body
has been cut off and we do not see their feet nor forearms. He pays attention to their hands
holding a plate. It is a breadline. He is getting rid of everything that is unessential. This
technique was really original at that time. This is a clear example of the principle of
isolating parts and bringing them into focus. In this photograph, one hand speaks volumes
to the viewer.
69

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LENG. Y CULTURA DE LOS PAÍSES DE HABLA INGLESA II

4º Grado en Estudios Ingleses

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