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Today was our first day of American Literature II. We began the class by receiving exciting invitations to this very wiki and then proceeded to be inspired by artwork from the period we will be studying. The first image we examined was painted before the civil war in the late 1800s and used majestic scenery to illustrate the prevalence of hope in American society during this time. This image shows a path leading into beautiful scenery which is representative of the transcendental ideas of the period. Additionally, the men shown in the forefront of the image are a poet and a painter, representing another kind of cultural hope in America.
The second image was painted after the civil war and portrays a more bleak outlook on the American condition. The swath of gold wheat seems to block access to the sky and can be seen as a large amount of work that needs to be done. Because there is no path, this image represents the unknown future of America, a country that just experienced great loss in the Civil War and is now left struggling to assign new race roles in society. The future of America at this time is unknown.
We concluded the class by summarizing what we will be studying during this term. After the Civil War, America was left in tatters with a good portion of the population dead and another portion, the freed slaves, who must now find a new role in society. In this class, we will examine the way that the race narrative changed during America after the Civil War and how that influenced the texts written during this time.
Today we discussed Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman's differing views of circa-civil war America as conveyed in oral speech and written poetry, respectively. Several key aspects of their rhetoric led us to view Douglass as an 'emancipationist' and Whitman as a 'reconciliationist'.
Douglass is blunt; his only indirection is his disparaging sarcasm and foreboding analogies. He claims to have thrown his "thoughts hastily and imperfectly together," but he clearly draws upon a lifetime of reflection and when he continues to pepper his speech with the flowery language of nations as rivers and Shakespeare references, his message remains crystal clear (Douglass page 1). "Where all is plain, there is nothing to be argued," that is, slavery is obviously wrong (8). He goes on to say that "the existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie," directly criticizing the hypocrisy in fighting colonialism while disregarding and even defending the wrongs of slavery (17). Before aligning the truth in his ideals with Shakespeare's truth in Macbeth he addresses his abolitionist audience, saying that "your fathers stooped" (as opposed to "our fathers,") distinguishing himself and his brethren in bondage from the complacent recipients of unequally distributed freedom (16). Everything he says becomes even more dramatic when framed as a Fourth of July address, because this day "reveals to [the American slave]" that "your celebration is a sham" (9).
Whitman completely ignores slavery and focuses on the White North and South's ensuing problems following the Civil War and Lincoln's death. He points out that "the living remain'd and suffer'd" and he invokes the South's perspective when he calls the bird to sing its "loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe," implying not only that people continue to suffer after the war, but also that both sides suffer regardless of victory or loss (Whitman Stanzas 13/18). Whitman's approach to America's conflicts seeks reconciliation instead of justice, along regional lines instead of racial ones.
Day three we more closely examined two images from "Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War." The photos we dissected were "A Burial Party" and "Scene in Pleasant Valley." In each image, we first took stock of the physical elements of the picture and if there were any repeated visual patterns. Then, we asked ourselves if the photo suggested a particular hierarchy and what that hierarchy or lack thereof meant. Finally, we attempted to declare whether an emancipationist or reconciliationist viewpoint was represented in each image. Throughout we reminded ourselves that despite the fact Gardner's photographs are considered a type of photojournalism, they are all staged and carefully presented. Thus, every visual element is intentional and suggestive.
The most glaring visual in this image is the stretcher full of skulls. Behind crouches an African American man, and back behind him are men with shovels, either burying or exhuming the dead white soldiers. The repeated diagonals of the image suggest a kind of hierarchy, though in the end it seems that the African American men on a whole are not on top as they continue to work for white men even in death. We could not come to a conclusion as to emancipation or reconciliation, but we agreed that the image of the crouching man being barred by the stretcher seems to suggest that not much has changed after the war, after so much death and destruction.
This photo depicts a family, neatly arranged in a type of pyramid while their maid stands off behind them up against the porch. She belongs and yet does not at the same time as she is just outside the immediate focus, the family. The repeated pattern of the horizontal lines in parallel with the steps that only the white family have access to suggests that the maid is being barred from a certain way of life. She cannot easily climb a ladder of success or fortune like the white people can, she would have to take a giant leap to get up to the house to be on their level. Again, the question is posed if anything has really changed because of the war. We were also unable to place an emancipation or reconciliation label on this photo due to the conflicting opinions on the image's interpretation.
Today, day 4, we looked at the importance of the Mississippi river and how it affected the states surrounding it. The fist question Dr. Witt asked us was a simple one, "Why the Mississippi River?" As simple as the questioned seemed, there were multiple answers, one being that the river offered a trading connection between the states surrounding it which lead to the converging of people and cultures. The common interaction between cultures meant you would have diversity within the cultures. The Mississippi river was also a western expansion opportunity. In class a student also mentioned the fact how the further down you go the Mississippi the more brutal it becomes for slaves. While the northern states had abolished slavery, the southern states still had slaves; however, the way they treated them greatly differed the further down you went. States that were in close proximity to northern states treated their slaves good while states that were far south treated their slaves really harsh. After, we talked a little bit about Twain and twain's America, how he was born in Missouri in 1835 and died in 1920 which shows that he went through a lot, he went through the civil war, abolition, industrialization, and transcendentalism.
Following this long and interesting conversation we spoke a little bit about industrialization and how it working in factories made people use their head or their bodies, which was different in the old days because people would use both. To close the period of Dr. Witt spoke about the use of the "N-word" and how the N-word has alway been racist.
So today we mostly talked about the setting in which the book will take place and offered a little bit of understanding of the background of the book.