Citations

Citations for the works of literature that I mentioned:

The Open Boat by Stephen Crane:

Baym, Nina, and Robert Levine. The Norton anthology of American literature. New York, N.Y: W, 2013. 584-600. Print.

The Build A Fire by Jack London:

Baym, Nina, and Robert Levine. The Norton anthology of American literature. New York, N.Y: W, 2013. 628-639. Print.

The Goophered Grapevine by Charles Wadell Chesnutt:

Baym, Nina, and Robert Levine. The Norton anthology of American literature. New York, N.Y: W, 2013. 458-465. Print.

How To Tell A True War Story by Tim O' Brien:

Tim O' Brien, "How to Tell a True War Story," in Paula Geyh, et al., eds., Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 174-183

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair:

Sinclair, Upton. Jungle, the. New York, NY: Fine Creative Media, 2013.

Quotes From Weekly Responses

"...it in essence is the rallying call for freedom and equality for everyone. He didn't only mention that black people need their birthright freedoms but also that Asian people need it as well as every ethnicity in the world. Freedom is something that you are born with and it's cruel for anyone to take that away from you no matter your skin color or where you are from. This connects with my personal life because racism and oppression is all around us, even in this modern day and age. Parts of the world are still under oppression and people are not given their rights and freedoms that they should be awarded. In Africa, for example, many people die because different groups of people fight and commit acts of war against each other over simple disputes such as land and religious views."

- Me, April 15th, 2013

• This illustrates my point in how freedom is in essence the underlying theme and motive behind everything. People fight for and are murdered for freedom and most literature, if not all, definitely reflects the longing for freedom in one way or another.

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" Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” contains a philosophy of justice that is still prevalent in today's American society, and arguably for the rest of the world.  Although the majority of the his ideals and values can be applied to our lives as citizens of the United States, as well as human beings in general, there are several quotes that he references that hold true to the timelessness of justice, and the never-ending struggle against injustice... ...No matter what society you live in, you will come across some laws that make you question whether or not the proprietor of such laws actually had justice in mind, or if personal bias played into its creation.  Although it is impossible for a society to create laws that are perfect for each individual, some laws blatantly work against certain people in the community, and almost exonerate others from their crimes.  Even though we are beyond the ignorance of segregation, there are certain groups of people that often times appear to be above the law, and not within it or protectors of it."

- Daniel Newton, April 18th, 2013

• This particular quote from a classmates response to Martin Luther King Jrs Letter From Birmingham Jail also helps to prove my point in freedom being the intrinsic necessity for all of human kind to enjoy. Freedom is often not given to people, even where they should lawfully have it, and these actions are the actions that cause the deterioration of society from the bottom all the way up. 

Old Ideas Rejected/Adjusted and New Ideas Grappled

What old ideas have you rejected or adjusted?

What new ideas have you grappled with?

The only idea that I have adjusted and come to terms with is how much of an effect local colorism and regionalism has on literature. Before I took this class I had no idea how big of a factor local regionalism had on literature. In fact, I wasn't even aware I had an American accent until I went abroad to Europe where the first thing my British cousin noticed was my accent. I have grown up on the East coast of the United States of America and I had no idea different states and cities within this country even had different accents. The same goes for literature. I didn't know how big of an effect regionalism had on literature. 

New Questions And Perplexing Issues

What issues most perplexed you?

What new questions remained unanswered?

There aren't really any new questions I have regarding anything we covered during this literature course because we thoroughly went through everything we covered. Any perplexing issues that I had were also taken care of during class. The discussions we had during class really helped to answer all of my questions. In most classes many questions go unsolved because the teacher is directing the class and just keeps moving on but due to the nature of this class I had all of my questions answered during the discussions.

Class discussions

Just a joke, I did all of the readings!

Greatest Problem Encountered

What is the greatest problem you encountered?

The greatest problem I encountered within this literature course was probably being able to follow along in some of the regionalism and local colorist stories we were assigned to read. Due to the fact that a lot of these stories had dialect that I am not used to reading, it was difficult following along some of of the stories. Especially when the main characters would speak, I was almost completely lost.

Works Effective In Conveying The American Identity

Which works were particularly effective in conveying the American identity? How so?

I found four works to be particularly effective in conveying the American Identity. It is very difficult to define a big concept such as the American Identity. However, these four works that I found effective to define the American Identity are effective because they pull away from the dense ways of thinking about the concept. These four works go into the the basic natures of mankind and this is why I think they help define the American Identity the best.

> The Open Boat by Stephen Crane. I found this story to define the way that everything is structured within the United States of America. American society is structured into different classes: the lower class, the middle class, and the upper class. The same can be found within The Open Boat. Within this story, there were classes of people as well. 

• The injured captain acted as the leader of the small group of people
• The oiler was the working class
• The cook acted as the optimistic one
• The correspondent was the condescending one that was detached from the rest of the group

Just like these characters were structured within the boat, American society is structured into different classes of people. A social hierarchy within American society.

A social hierarchy within American society

> How To Tell A True War Story by Tim O' Brien was particularly effective in conveying the American identity during war time. Within the story, the reader finds out three different views of how war time is. We find out how seeing someone die in front of you can affect a person, how random acts of violence on innocent things is normal during war time, and how waiting for your own death can cause people to go insane. A large part of American history has been during wartime and war can not be omitted when talking about the American identity. We did after all fight for our independence. 

Sort of like the phrase "You're never more alive than when you're close to death," war shows a person, countries, or any entity's true emotions.

> Two more works that were particularly effective in defining the American history are To Build A Fire and The Jungle because within these works the reader can find the characters wanting to survive and find freedom.

The bald eagle is a symbol of freedom for USA

Re-evaluation Of My Perceptions

How have you re-evaluated your perceptions of the world and the American Identity?

After taking this literature course, I realized many things regarding the world and the American Identity that I did not know much of before. I now realize that Americas 'melting pot' society is not just a mix of different cultures,  races, religious views, and traditions but it is also a mix of different literary themes. I found these different themes to be dependent of many things:

• Time period in which the literature was written in
• Setting
• Major events happening
• etc...

Prior to this class, the only differences I truly realized between different forms of literature was the genre. I knew this story was different from that story because of the differences in genres. For example fiction vs non-fiction. I now realize that these different genres can be further subdivided into themes such as imagism, post-modernism, naturalism etc...

Although I have a new found knowledge of literary works and the things I mentioned above, I still believe that the underlying concept found behind most, if not all, works is the yearning for freedom. The constant struggle for freedom is what has driven mankind from it's early days to more contemporary times and it still has a huge impact on literature.

The famous vase/people kissing illusion

How you see the world depends on your particular perception but that doesn't mean there aren't other ways of looking at things and people often miss the underlying theme due to their insufficiency to see concepts more diversely. 

Important Thing Learned

What was the important thing you learned in this class?

The most important thing I learned in this literature course is about the different themes that can be found within different works of literature. Another thing I learned regarding the different themes that can be found within different works of literature is the fact that these themes are dependant on many factors. Among these factors are:

• Time period in which the work was written
• The setting in which the work takes place
• The major events that are occurring when the work is produced and being written
• The geographic location of the author when he or she is writing the work of literature

> One example I found of a theme that depends on the place in which the author is grown up or lives in is regionalism. Regionalism depends largely on the characters dialect, customs, history, and landscape and all of these come together to create the whole attitude behind the story. 

> Naturalism is another example of a theme that can be found within literature and this particular theme is dependent primarily on the setting. Naturalism can be dominantly found within The Open Boat by Stephen Crane, To Build A Fire by Jack London and many more stories. Within The Open Boat the setting the characters find themselves within is a boat in the middle of the ocean after they are ship wrecked. Win To Build A fire the main character finds himself in the freezing lands of the Yukon.

The Open Boat

To Build A Fire

The fact that there are so many themes found within literature and they depend on so many different factors is the main thing I learned within this literature course. I learned about an assortment of different themes  and how they were affected by things such as time period, major events of that time, setting, and much more. Thanks to this literature course, I will always have an idea of what exactly I am reading and I will always try to seek themes like naturalism, regionalism etc... within stories. 

Persistent Themes

Do you discern some persistent themes or patterns in your postings?  What are these themes and patterns?  Why do you think they preoccupied you?

More than anything I found one theme to constantly come up no matter what we were reading in class. This theme is freedom. Freedom is the most dominant and persistent theme that came out through out most of the works of literature we read. 

The signing of the Declaration of Independence 

The concept of freedom preoccupied me the most throughout this literature course because it is the one thing that every human being desires more than anything else in this world. The compulsion for freedom is evident throughout most of the stories we read in literature in one way or another. Whether the theme of freedom is hidden within the context of the paragraphs or clearly visible in the stories, it is there. In one way or another, characters from the different stories we read through out the literature tried to find freedom in their own ways. 

> One example of a character attempting to find freedom is the main character from The Goophered Grapevine by Charles Wadell Chesnutt. He attempts to keep possession of the vineyard by telling interested buyers about a take of a witch who cursed the grapes so that any one who eats them would die within 12 months. This is a example of a man trying to find freedom through property. 

The Goophered Grapevine

> Another example of the underlying theme of freedom can be found within The Open Boat by Stephen Crane. In this story, the characters find themselves trying to survive in a small dinghy after being shipwrecked. The number one thing on the characters minds is to survive and seek salvation from the ruthless ocean by finding land, but what is it that the land offers these characters? Freedom. Freedom from the cold and harsh oceans, freedom from the elements of nature, freedom from having to watch each other die slowly on the boat, and most importantly, freedom from death. The average reader might see the struggle of the characters to survive from the relentless forces of nature to be the ultimate theme, and it is, but underlying this entire fight is the struggle to find freedom from these circumstances.

The Open Boat by Stephen Crane

> The underlying theme of freedom can also be seen in Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle. Within this novel a family of European immigrants travel to the United States of America in hopes of finding prosperity and being able to live better lives than they had back in their home country. What they find is something completely different. The main character, Jurgis Rudkus, barely gets enough compensation for all the hard work he puts into his job to put food on the table for his family. Rudkus really suffers throughout the story and fails to find true prosperity. Now, this can be seen as the ultimate struggle between man and his surroundings or naturalism, but it is also the main characters attempt at finding freedom. Back in his home country of Lithuania things were not going so well so he attempted to find freedom and prosperity within the borders of USA. Freedom, in my opinion, was the main thing Rudkus pushed for after immigrating to the United States of America more than anything else.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair