Finis

I can't believe that another quarter is coming to an end. Looking back over these last ten weeks in Early American Literature I feel that I have learned so much. At first I wasn't sure how I was going to like this class with the blogging aspect. I hadn't blogged before and was a little worried about it. However, it has certainly grown on me. I like being my goofy self while writing about what I have learned, read, or discussed in class. I was pleased that the readings were all interesting and easy to read. What I loved most about this class was the actual class discussion. I know that I didn't say a lot during these sessions (I always feel intimidated) but I was listening and coming up with my own conclusions. I'm glad that I was in this class with so many great thinkers!!! Hearing so many different viewpoints on the subject that we were discussing helped me think more deeply (thinking deep juicy thoughts!) and make my own observations. Here are my juicy thoughts on the conclusion of this class and of my blog...

The American origin story will continue forever. We have ritualistically told the same story over and over and over again. And yet, we never tire from hearing it. Its like a child's favorite bed time story...minus the dragons, fairies, and princesses. Some of the common themes that were found throughout all the readings were control/dominance/power; captivity, struggle, slavery, freedom; self-reliance, perversity, and survival. Why are we so obsessed with these themes that haunted early America? Could it be that we are still haunted today with these same exact themes? Perhaps, it has something to do with how the American origin story appears to be composed of nothing but paradox.

We began this class with Cotton Mather's On Witchcraft and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown. The Puritans had escaped overseas from the persecution that was happening to them. They had to learn how to be survivors in their new found freedom. It seems rather ironic then to think of the things that they later would do. The Salem Witch Trials were a dark time in the early history of our country. There seemed to be a great paranoia to all things that were unknown and could not be explained by God alone. Many innocent women and men were accused of making compacts with the Devil, killing livestock, and torturing children and women. Those who refused to confess to being a witch were executed. Those we confessed were to be helped out of the claws of the Devil. There definitely is some kind of perverse undertone to this time. People were basically ordered to confess and conform or refuse to admit to a lie and be punished for it. I was also shocked at the amount of sexual undertones that could be found in these readings. We learned in class that women's bodies would be searched for witch marks by men of the church. This disgusts me. It seems to me that once the Puritans had their freedom they seemed to be "enslaved" by their religion and their religious leaders. There also seems to a strong idea of leaders of the community having a great dominance over the rest. Nothing new here, huh? Moving onward...

From On Witchcraft and Young Goodman Brown we moved on to Women's Indian Captivity Narratives and The Conquest of New Spain. It was in the narrative of Mary Rowlandson that we see the Puritans as the "bad" people, taking over the land that had once belonged to the Native Americans. Here is an idea of control and dominance over others. She was captured and held against her will, away from her home, her husband, and her children. However, she showed great strength by keeping her faith and surviving the situation that she found herself in. I believe that she is a good example of the transformation of new religious ideas that may have occurred during this time. Mary did not follow in the Puritanical beliefs that if something bad happened to you, you must have deserved it. She believed that the bad things that were happening to her were signs from God that she was a "chosen one." Not at all of the Puritan religion. An interesting point that was made in class discussion was that Mary may have found her "freedom" in her captivity. As a woman she would not have been able to see or experience the things that she had if she had not been captured by the Native Americans. The Conquest of New Spain continues with the before mentioned control and dominance over others. Diaz and his men captured Montezuma and Mexico. It was here that we discussed how the themes of violence, sex, and dominance seemed to be interwoven. Masculinity was also another giant theme in this book. Diaz and his men were trying to show their masculinity by dominating over these others and using violence against them. In class we discussed a lot about what it means to be a man. We learned that the themes of this book still continue to dominate (haha) our society today. And next...

The next couple of readings that we explored were The Coquette, Emerson's Self-Reliance, and Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government. In The Coquette Eliza Wharton is a woman held captive by her society. She wanted to flirt and have a good time. She wanted to have some control over her life. However, this was greatly frowned upon during this time. Her story turns tragic as she refuses to conform to the ideas and standards that society has set. Eliza becomes known as a "fallen woman" and breaks the hearts of her mother and friends. The tones of this book tie in nicely with the ideas of Emerson and Thoreau. Boy, we really talked about their ideas on non-conformity, relying only upon yourself, and having true freedom from the government. One of my favorite quotes from these readings was from Emerson: "To be great is to be misunderstood." Love it. And...

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and In the Heart of the Sea were the next two books that we read for class. Incidents tackled the themes of control, dominance, slavery, freedom, self-reliance, perversity, and survival. Wow. Linda was a young slave girl, dominated and controlled by her master. She found her "freedom" in her self-reliance and choice. Perversity could be seen in the fact that she slept with a white man to make her master angry. Linda was practicing her "freedom" and the control over her own life here. In the end we learn that Linda is indeed a survivor. She finds her freedom and is united with her children. In the Heart of the Sea was one of my favorite books that read this quarter. This book also explored all of the themes mentioned before. The masculinity of the men on the whale ship...the control and dominance over the whale...the perverseness of eating your friend...Um, yeah...In class we discussed the difficulties that would arise from being trapped on a boat with little to eat...besides each other. In the face of starvation one cannot really say what one will or will not do. For my own personal beliefs and morals, I could not kill another so that I could live for another day in agony. This was a great book. I learned so much about whaling...I had never even thought of it before. Finally...

The last couple of weeks we read Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, specifically The Black Cat and Ligeia, and Emily Dickinson's love poems. Poe's work has always fascinated me. He was such a strange guy! The themes that could be found in his work was mostly the idea of freedom, slavery, perversity, and survival. Poe explored the inner recesses of the mind and what it meant to be free or a slave to the mind's abilities. He believed that we can never fully know the self or the mind so therefore we must be slaves to it. Perversity is every where in his work. This is Poe we are talking about. Need I say more? Emily Dickinson had this theme of perversity within her work. She also had strong themes of self-reliance, freedom, and control in her poems. Both Poe and Dickinson wrote some incredible stuff. They are the literary figures that I most associate with Early American Literature. So...

These themes of the American origin story just continue to be remolded to fit every possible situation. We as a people are transformed as well. We like to believe that we have control over ourselves, and though we hate to admit, control over others as well. We like to believe that we have freedom in everything that we do and say. We like to believe that we are, to a certain extent, self-reliant. We would like to believe that we are all good and kind and pure; and yet perversity lives deep within us. Above all things, we like to believe that we are survivors. I believe that we are all of these things AND their opposites. There is no way to be completely free, to have complete control, to be completely good...We need to learn to be satisfied with the situations that we find ourselves in, look for our flaws to fix, and find a balance between being self-reliant and depending on others. At least, this is what I have concluded... And so this is the end of my blog. But not the end of the American origin story...so don't worry...