Gatsby and the Gilded Age

So this week in American Studies we have been discussing the Gilded Age, which was an era in America history where great wealth was gained through industry and economic expansion, but also through corruption and the self-promotion of wealthy rich white men. It was an era of glory and glamor and riches but left huge holes in the economy, eventually causing the system to fall through and for America to fall into the Great Depression.  In American Literature we also have been discussing the Gilded Age through the Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is a classic American novel discussing the life of those self-promoting white men and the society they lived in through the narrator, a middle-aged man named Nick Carraway. Nick describes the world of the glamorous as delicate and not as glamorous as it may seem from the outside. This is an accurate representation of the Gilded Age because the economy of the 1920s seemed strong and full of opportunity and happiness, but under that surface is was actually weak and not very happy. I think the connection between the Gilded Age and Gatsby is a very important connection to make because Nick's story of Gatsby and the fragile world of high society gives a first hand, although fictional, account of the Gilded Age and all its glory.

"American" Ethics

One of the key topics we discussed in class this week in the question "Should public schools instruct students in American values?". First of all, I think it is necessary to define the word "american" and what it means to have "american value". I think that "american values" should be any set of ethics that is present in any person living in America today, but society has, as society often does, manufactured a universal stereotype of what being american should mean. In my point of view the american stereotype often includes being financially stable, white, christian, and consumer oriented. Some may disagree with me but this is what I usually see throughout the media. This stereotype obviously nowhere near encompasses the culture of every american and it is unfortunate that this is considered the standard. Therefore, my answer to the question "Should public schools instruct students in American values?" is most definitely no because I believe there are no true American value, and only values manufactured by others and believed to be the values of all. If you were to teach the ethics of all of America you would not have enough time in a lifetime. I also disagree with teaching someone someones else's ethics because I believe that ethics, morals, and values are meant to be learned and discovered by the individual uninfluenced by those around them. I believe that it is someone's jurisdiction to determine their belief of right, wrong, and the purpose of life.

Harry Stout and George Santayana

So today in class we read the introduction to "Upon the Altar of the Nation" by Harry Stout. These couple pages discussed the premise of a book which questioned and discussed the way in which history, tragic history in particular, is viewed by historians and students. He stated that historians and students subconsciously judge the morality of the piece of history they are dissecting and that this judgement, while subconscious and in most circumstances justified, did nothing to further the analysis of the piece of history. I definitely agree with this statement because people tend to judge events too much rather than analyze the value and impact that the piece of history has on modern life or life in the time the event took place. You can make moral judgments, but don't let the moral judgments get in the way of a detailed and unbiased analysis.

The journal discussion we did today was centered around the quote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana, 1905. We were asked to reflect on this saying and what it meant to us. Most people responded saying that they agree with this statement and that studying history and learning its implications from daily life helps better our society and prevent us from making mistakes. I agree with these statements, mostly. I do think that humanity has learned from a number of mistakes that they made throughout history, but I do not think that simply learning about an issue that happened and ensued negative consequences prevents humanity from making this mistake again. For example, discrimination, hatred, and war have been a constant threat throughout the world as long as anyone can remember and learning about incidents like the civil rights movement hasn't prevented discrimination from existing today. This is because some mistakes are simply human nature, and even education and reflection cannot prevent people from being people.

Stories of the Civil War Era

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and " The Cask of Amontillado" are two very different stories of the civil war era with very different plots. However, they both carry the same underlying message, unrest. In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" the environment of sleepy hollow causes extreme anxiety for the main character. Throughout "The Cask of Amontillado" the main character is terrorized by his conscience's morality and the horror of the murder he committed. The message of these stories, both written in years close to the civil war, are a reflection of the civil war because the represent a time of unrest in America. The period of American history in the years leading up to the great civil war were filled with anxiety between political parties, genders, races, and people in general. American citizens (and also non-citizens since slaves were not considered citizens) throughout the country lived lives of unease that was reflective of the division of people in their culture. It is only natural that writers such as Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe would either consciously or subconsciously incorporate this American culture theme into their literature. These two works of literature, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820) and "The Cask on Amontillado" (1846), reflect this time through the emotions portrayed in their writing.

Romanticism and The Civil War

The era of romanticism is defined by individuality and powerful emotions in literature and in the minds of many people. The civil war was a fight for individuality based on powerful emotions concerning slavery and the way America was run. Coincidence? I think not. The social turmoil leading up to the civil war was caused by many things including political and economic difficulties, but also by the freedom of the emerging ideas of romanticism. During the time of the civil war romanticism was just beginning to settle into the world. It encouraged expression and discarded previous rules centered around faith and structure. This mindset had a hand in bringing about the civil war because it encouraged people to express their emotions, no matter how violent or angry. Since the civil war was a war based on emotions and anger between the two sides, romanticism added to the flame of the feud between the north and south. As Drew Gilpin Faust states in The Problem of Confederate Nationalism southern men of power "read widely in the literature of European romanticism" (10) which built their ideals towards a individual nationalist society that challenged the rule of the Union. Therefore, the era of romanticism helped bring about the civil war through the expression of emotions and individuality.

 

Distraction in the Slave Industry

Throughout the history of America, the slave industry used the tactic of distraction to diminish the immorality of the slave trade. For example, in Robert Hayden’s The Middle Passage he describes the captains of slave ships to use “bright ironical names” (51) such as “Jesus, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy” (48). These slave captains used these cheery and completely false names to distract citizens of America from the horrors that occurred on these slave ships and on the southern plantations the slave ships were traveling to. Another tactic of distraction was included in a book titled The Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson. In this document on the economy of the south Jefferson describes slaves, or rather all colored people in general, to be “inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind” (3). He writes further to say that colored people are to be regarded as “different species of the same genus” (Jefferson 3). These opinions written by Thomas Jefferson created a notion in the minds of many that slaves were mentally and physically below blacks and not even in the same branch of humanity as whites were. This belief distracted people from the reality of the inhumane treatment of the enslaved because they were no longer considered people and were not given the same level of human rights as the rest of the American community, and the violence against them was pushed to the side. Therefore, leaders of the slave industry distracted the public with false information to hide the immorality of slavery.   

The European Code of Possession

At the time the New World was discovered, Europe was the most powerful region in the entire world. They had weapons, resources, writing, and most importantly, an established government for each region (country) within Europe. Naturally, powerful and rich countries such as these would want to expand their borders elsewhere in order to gain more money and resources for the fast-growing nations. Between these European countries, a code of possession was established. The leaders of these nations decided that whoever claimed the land first, gained control of the resources and people that were included in that plot of land. As Chief Justice John Marshall says in a court case on March 10, 1823 that European discovery of land in the New World gave “title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title may be consummated by possession” (Marshall 1).  This is a complete degradation of human rights and liberty because the European conquerors simply waged war upon these indigenous people and forced their way onto their land. This code of possession justified immorality by giving a right to Europeans to wage war upon people they had no fight with. If this code of possession had been different, the world may not be divided in the way it is now. If the European nations had honored the moral code of possession and taken into account that the land belonged to its original inhabitants and instead decided to seek out the few pieces of land that were not inhabited at all, they would never have gained control of the land in the first place and the organization of today’s world may be very different.

Religion and Political Power

Throughout history, religion has been used to support peoples’ pursuit of power. Leaders would use religious beliefs and the “views” of God or another deity to manufacture support for an action, no matter how moral or immoral. For example, John Edwards uses religious beliefs and The Bible to justify the conversion of the Israelites.  This is an immoral action because it is taking away their religious freedom, and yet he receives support from the Puritan community because of his connections to the will of God. In John Winthrop’s Speech to the General Court in 1645 he used religion to corrupt the idea of democracy in the minds of American people. This is not necessarily an immoral action, but people who may have considered being democratic now will not because Winthrop convinced them that it was against their religion. Thomas Jefferson takes a similar approach when trying to convince the public to abolish the slaves despite their so-called racial inferiority. Jefferson claims that his conclusion of the Africans’ inferiority would “degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them.” (Jefferson 3). He connected his claims to religion and God, which would cause people to support his motion of abolishing slavery and having the slaves be integrated into society (but also segregating them). Therefore, these three power-seeking leaders used religious meaning to coax support out of the general public to their get the political position that they wanted.