MEG-06 AMERICAN LITERATURE ASSIGNMENT 2019-2020 (Based on Blocks 1-9) ‘Course Code: MEG-06/2019-20 Max. Marks: 100 Attempt all questions. All questions carry equal marks. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Discuss the narrative strategies used by the writer in The Bluest Eye. Examine The Scarlet Letter as an open-ended novel. Write a note on Black literary expression in nineteenth century America. Critically examine Death of a Salesman as a realist tragedy. “When Lilacs Last in the Doorway Bloomed’ by Walt Whiteman is as much a poem about life affirmation as it is a poem about death. Do you agree? Give a reasoned answer. 20 20 20 20 20Answer — The novelist uses several devices to make her narrative effective: an epigram of a white book, widely used to suggest the enveloping presence of the white civilization standards under which blacks live: the choice of a very foung black girl, Claudia, who She has bs Pecola schoolmate and she treats her arrator to complement Claudia's feminine children's point of view to ive but to prosper, in the face of white domination. Although in his later novels, Morrison broadens his themptic concerns to explore the relationships between women and black men, in the first two novels it is women who occupy center stage in the texts. In The Bluest Eye, she focuses on a poor, very young black girl who would acquire blue eyes that symbolize beauty in the racist and white United States. Morrison presents this search with the help of a carefully designed narrative. She takes the traditional sequential narrative framework and makes several changes to suit her purposes. Morrison modifies the pattern and chooses a very young black girl who is an observer participating in the survey as her main narrator. Barbara Christian says that Claudia's use of Morrison as a narrator is one of her "brightest strokes." This observation is true because the destructive myth of white beauty is particu- larly relevant for women. So, although harder than Pecola, and more fortunate than she to enjoy the love (th that permeates the black ison's narrative is that, although The Bluest Eye is a search novel, the ive of curiosity. Claudia's narrative begins at the end, summarizing the ment ad the breakup of the family Breedlove She also announces the approach of the narrative: "There really is Nathing more to say, except why. But since why is always difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how". Whi s that we are promised a report of the various stages in Pecola's life, which lead first to her pregnancy and then to the death of her baby. The narrative is dense and compact and also lyrical. The novel ends grimly on a tragedy note. Pecola was fooled into believing that she has acquired blue eyes, loses her sanity and is treated like an outcast who lives on the periphery of the town along with her mother. This tragic note sounds in the final words of Claudia. But the novel is not entirely hopeless. Claudia herself as a child was tough and did not succumb without reservation to the attack of the myth of white beauty. So, although he makes a commitment later and feels overwhelmed by the guild at the end, the novel is hopeless as long as there are characters like Claudia and Frieda to deal with the destructive idea of physical beauty.Panswer— The contemporary critics like Michael The Scarlet Letter as an open-ende: Charles Swann and Nina Baym look at recurrent dialogue between the past and the seventeenth century New England with so ind/of feminist utopia is obliquely visual- dness of thetext that forces the reader to interpret the tale differ- ity of the narrative is forcefully brought out by the contempo- to Nina Baym in The Scarlet Letter: A Reading was "recognized as a classic in". The original intention of Hawthorne had been to publish the work as a loose col- thorne ! who read the manuscript and urged the hesitant author to publish it as a single work. Field agreed with Hawthorne that the work was "not a mixture of bright and dark, sunshine and shadow, humor and pathos as the taste of the time preferred". In reality, Hawthorne's tale was a product of his brooding imagination and was "intense and single in its stress on the dark, the somber, the gloomy". Herman Mel- ville, the author of Moby Dick also referred to Hawthorne's brooding, melancholy imagination, "this great power of blackness is derived from that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free". Charles Swann is nearly of the same view, "she is genuinely subversive in that she desires and prophesies a rstand why the Old World. He is also of the view that Haw- ination. Bercovitch says, "Dialogics is the pro- of distinct voices" (The Office of The . If one were to sum up the contemporary relevance of The Scarlet jote Nina Baym, "Perhaps, then, the most exciting thing about The scaffold scenes that encompassed the romantic scenes in the forest. It was also seen as a romance novel in which allegory and symbolism played such a crucial role. The contemporary critics could discern a kind of dialogic imagination informing the text. The past and the future were embedded in the text inextricably. Each reader has to recreate the text in the light of his or her own experience, keeping in mind both the dominant voice and also the voices of the subaltern, marginal groups in colonial New England.he period between 1866 and 1877 is known as the period of Reconstruction when the South ravaged by the civil war was brought under the federal control and steps were taken to ensure civil rights for the blacks. However, the ‘facial tensions continued to plague American nation. The massive industrialization that went on throughout the 19" century altered the social structure of America completely. Clear divi- sions between the rich and the poor, the Whites and the Blacks, the industrialized North and the Agrarian South became visible now. The great expansion of American nation during the period between 1810 and 1865 had left a trail of violence in its wake. The Native American Indians were removed from their land forcibly, and on many occasions, extermi- nated. Slavery spread from Virginia to Texas deepening the racial divisions in the country. With the ad- vance of market capitalism the household economy characteristic of an agrarian society went into decline. American psyche had to come to terms with the violence and guilt engendered by these events. It has been argued that the growth of evangelical religion was a reaction to the deep-rooted anxiety that plagued American nation during its formative period. Evangelical religion gave rise to several reform movements and also led to antislavery sentiments. levelopments in socio-political field have their im- pact on intellectual domain. The remarkable expansion of the public forum is refleetéd in tHe spread of the print media. The number of magazines increased from 100 in 1825 to 600 if 1850. Commenting on the growing popularity of newspa- pers C.F. Briggs remarked in his Broadway Jo 1945 that 'nine-tenths of the population read nothing France or England. Through this impressive reach of the print medium a nen sense of belonging was cre- ated in the reading community whjch comprised of workers, women, children, farmers and professionals from various fields. Issues of puslic interest found articulation in the powerful medium of the newspaper which,now helped the people to conmia together and formulate their views. The North and the South did not agree on many issues because of thelx separate histories and social structures. Garfison's Liberator, a journal which appeared first on January 1, 1831, soon became a platform for those who argued in favour of the abolition of slavery. By the 1850s the North-South divide on the question of slavery was deepening into a major conflict. The prose writings of this period such as diaries. Letters and newspaper articles prés {t the picture of a divided nation. It was during this period of American history thatthe myth of a lazy, decadent and barbaric South was born. As opposed to it, North was civilized, cul- The South was i ified with the Blacks. Charles Eliot Norton referred to the South as "transatlantic Af- rica". The Northerners saw both the White masters and Black slaves in the American South as black. The North was "progressive" while the South was "barbarous". These cultural stereotypes were reinforced during the middle part of the 19" century through historical narratives, travelogues and fictional works.Death of a Salesman as a realist tragedy - Traditional critics are not inclined to credit Death of a Salesman han tragic. Suffering has not earned him e end what he was in the beginning. Willy as a tragedyis a structure of affirmation of a cultural myth. In his Introduction to The Collected Plays, Miller sets out the ideas that went into making Death of a Sales- man. Firstly, he did "sot set out to write tragedy but to show the truth as he saw it". He meant the play "less a play than a fact". Secondly, the stature of the tragic hero is not dependent upon his rank in society but the availability of alternatives in whose choice he could play a heroic role. Miller's hero, Willy Loman, sets out as a salesman fighting out failure in his career, a failure determined in terms of the norms of suc- cess. The norms of success are set by the American cultural myths that are a part of his nationhood. Willy's problem is that in his mental make-up and aspirations, he is a quintessential American who could only live and die on Americanism. The failing salesman has to desperately and even hopelessly, struggle to succeed for, Miller says, success in American cultural myth is a right fo live 4nd "a jlure in society and business has no right to live". Additionally, success in society is an ideaf of fatherhood in family. A failure in society or business is a still greater failure in the family. The strength of Death of a Salesman as tragedy emer en attention of the protagonist, Willy to the impact of the play on the the significance of Death of a Salesman aj tragedy lies. d from the predicament dience. Thomas E. Porters points out where The tragedy of Death of a Salesman e cherished by Loman hold no more good in from the audience's critical recognition that the myths th century America and partly, from its empathy, not suffers both for wrong dreams and also for the lack of Cultural attitudes look askance at themselves in the march of time. Realism derives its strength and power in exposing the sheer irrelevance, if nothing else, of the persistence of the past, however recent it could be. The present and the realistic tragedy dramatizes the pathetic conflict between what has been and what requires to be. Death of a Salesman is a tragedy of 19" century individualism, in the mid 20" century capitalist America. Individualism succeeded in the making of the nation but in an impersonal culture of the highly developed capitalist, technocratic society, it is a tragedy.& walt Whitman wrote the poem in (1 865) after Abraham Lincoln's assassination by John Wikes Booth on April 14. While the North was full of black flags and a cry of vengeance filled the air, Booth's cry on the night of the assassination was-sic Semper Tyranis. Thats the tyrant had been justly punished. Whitman Bloomed. Along with a sense of mourntfg there is also a kind ef awareness of the return of spring. The poet's com- plex awareness of a sense of loss a fise of rebilth and rewakening is expressed by the juxtaposition of Venus in the western sky and the Blgoming of the lilacs in the dooryard. While Venus seems to be drooping in the western skyNthe lilacs ar&\in full bloom. In other words, nature is both in a mood of mourning and also undergoingsa subtle, somewhat hidden process of awakening and rebirth. Itis true that the ppem is full of melaacholy ahd anguish but right from the beginning the blooming of the lilacs has also been|pinpointed ky Whitnian. The title of the elegy is most appropriate and the reader is able to see be- yond|the gloom ahdyopelessness. It is the idea of "ever-retuning spring” that counter-balances the gloom Itis, hoWeVEF, in section three of the poem that the poet has described in detail the old farmhouse where the lilac bush stands. It is tall and has heart-shaped leaves. There are fragrant flowers and rich green leaves. The poet takes a small branch from the bush and holds it in his hand. It has delicate and fragrant flowers. There is also a songbird, thrush, that is singing a song. The thrush is alone, like a hermit, and is singing in darkness. The thrush is singing because there is an intense pain in his heart. The thrush is singing because it is unavoidable. If he does not sing, he would die. It has to be noted that the poet identifies him- self with the thrush. If the poet does not express his grief through his poem, he will die. He will not survive as a sane being. In section five of the poem, Whitman describes nature in full bloom. Spring has burst in all its vitality. Everywhere violets peep, grass grows, apple-trees turn pink and wheat fields turn dark brown. While nature is in full bloom, a corpse is carried in a coffin. In section six of the poem, there is a detailed destription 0f the coffin's journey through lanes, streets and states of the Union. A large number of men and women watch the coffin travel through the states of the Union. There is service in churches and the organ bursts in a\crescendo. As the coffin passes the poet, he places on it the lilac branch in his hand. In other words, Abraham Lincoln's death and martyrdom also contain the seed of spring, that is revival and (oint its sacred glory and life-affirmation. Whitman conveys the like Abraham Lincoln, in these words: "All over bouquets of eals to the drooping star-Venus to rise again and dispel the night. White has been singing in darkness, One is reminded of Keat's nightingale that is aa goddes\\that liberates us from the tangles of life. Itis in section sixteen of the poem that the song of deatl red. One is reminded of Keats's famous observation, "Death is the need of life." One can safely affirm that Death Carol is the most original and the most resonant section of the elegy.