Unseen American.

The American Dream

"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’

American idiology

 modern liberal democracy and free-market capitalism.

freedom, personal choice, individualism, social mobility.

Thomas Jefferson

• established these principles and promoted the idealised characteristics exhibited by modern Americans: 

• self-determination, independent, industrious, morally just

Post civil war

unification of america, abolishment of slavery in 1865, disruption between north and south due to different econocmic, cultural and ideologies.

Trans continental rain roads

  The invention of the railroad was a huge catalyst for western expansion- the trans-continental railroad was completed in 1869, having taken just 6 years to build. 

homesteading

The Dawes Act (1887) essentially ended land rights for Plains Indian populations

broke up native american land to give to white americans, homesteaders.

Migration from europe to america

• scape: crop-failure, prejudice and discrimination, lack of land-access due to governmental control and ‘enclosure’ (the feudal system), avoiding restrictive class structures. 

• Natural resources and free land were a major draw for migrants to America. 

• The concept of Manifest Destiny (the idea that white Americans were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of North America.)

American mythology

Hard work = success

migration

• Huge numbers of black migrants moved north to more ‘tolerant’ environments (esp. Chicago). 

• In 1880 20% of the population lived in cities.  In 1920 68% did.  

• “The business of the American people is business”  President Calvin Coolidge, in January 1925…

• 1900-1930: On average 6 million people arrive in America every decade. 

American work

• Transition from a agricultural economy to an administrative one- modern metropolises like Chicago, New York etc. 

• This transition propelled huge numbers of women into the workplace.

• By this time America was the world’s biggest economy…rampant capitalism and a fixation on private industry + profit informed American home policy. 

• 1914-1918: manufacturing of weapons, economies of Europe were crashing, European people required additional food + resources. 

Attittudes towards race

• Attitudes to race: Jim Crow laws create a culture of racism + segregation (white/black).

• Legislation (1900-1930): numbers limited entering the country: Chinese, Japanese, Romany, ‘Balkan’  

Inter war era

The post-First World War exchange rate meant comparatively poor American writers could live very cheaply in Europe, a transatlantic bohemian community. Most of these young men had served in the War, this meant they had plenty of raw, often brutal experience to fuel their writing. The most distinctive stylist among them, ‘simple declarative’ sentence that is still held up as an American model, hinting at emotional turbulence under a calm, even elliptical exterior.

Reconstruction

post-civil war country attempt to reckon with the social, cultural and economic legacy of slavery, as well as find ways to reabsorb the Southern states who had seceded

Gilded age

a period of immense economic growth, flashy materialism, and stark social inequality in the United States from the 1870s to the late 1890s

wall street crash

stock market crash of 1929, a sharp decline in U.S. stock market values in 1929 that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Great Depression lasted approximately 10 years and affected both industrialized and nonindustrialized countries in many parts of the world.

rural to urban migration

1880-1920, change from predominantely urban to rural areas due to a rise in cities.

agricultural depression of the 1920s and the ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s

1910-1940, great migration

Main aim of texts.

• Many texts from the period 1880-1940 present individuals or groups pursuing better living circumstances.  

A04

Many texts from the period 1880-1940 present individuals or groups pursuing better living circumstances.

writing sytle

The romanticism of the early c19th gradually gave way to realism, naturalism and modernism

Romantists

transcend the immediate to find the ideal in their writing. Realists centre their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the consequence"

Realists

write about individuals tested by circumstance.

Diction

(speaking/dialogue) is natural and vernacular, not heightened or poetic.

Naturalism

was a literary movement or tendency from the 1880s to 1930s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character.

american modernist and social realist literature

• was a dominant trend in American literature between World War I and World War II. The modernist era highlighted innovation in the form and language of poetry and prose, as well as addressing numerous contemporary topics, such as race relations, gender and the human condition. 

a02

• Paragraph lengths.

• Sentence forms: length/fluency.

• Dialogue.

• Shifts in focus.

• Language form: specific/concrete vs conceptual. 

• Setting.

• External vs internal. 

• Genre + style (characteristics of naturalism or realism)

• Position/placement within the novel (some guesswork here) 

• Perspective.

• Narrative voice.

• Sequencing + ‘progress’ of the extract (beginnings, middles, ends)

• Style (reach for carefully selected adjectives here) 

• Tone/mood/atmosphere.

Scott Fitzgerald

American dream failings and corruption of those in power, prohabition and post ww1

John Stineback, Grapes of wrath

Steinbeck wrote "California novels" and Dust Bowl fiction, set among common people during the Great Depression.

Kate Choppin

novel's blend of realistic narrative, incisive social commentary, and psychological complexity makes The Awakening a precursor of American modernist literature.