American Literature

American literature is literature written or produced in the United

States of America and its preceding colonies (for specific discussions of
poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the
United States). Before the founding of the United States, the British
colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States were
heavily influenced by English literature. American literature, both in the
way it was practiced and the way it was perceived, came of age in the
period between 1870 and 1920. During these years American writing
distinguished itself stylistically and thematically from the European
tradition to which it had been dismissively compared for more than a
century. American authors also increasingly gained respect as serious
artists in the decades following the Civil War as literary critics inside
and outside the academy began to appreciate the intrinsic merits of
American poetry and prose.The American literary tradition thus began
as part of the broader tradition of English literature. The revolutionary
period is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin,
Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine. Thomas Jefferson's United
States Declaration of Independence solidified his status as a key
American writer. It was in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that
the nation's first novels were published. An early example is William Hill
Brown's The Power of Sympathy published in 1791. Brown's novel
depicts a tragic love story between siblings who fall in love without
knowing they are related. With an increasing desire to produce
uniquely American literature and culture, a number of key new literary
figures emerged, perhaps most prominently Washington Irving and
Edgar Allan Poe. In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson started an influential
movement known as Transcendentalism. Inspired by that movement,
Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden, which celebrates individualism
and nature and urges resistance to the dictates of organized society.
The political conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired the writings of
William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe in her famous novel
Uncle Tom's Cabin. These efforts were supported by the continuation of
the slave narratives such as Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. In the mid-nineteenth century,
Nathaniel Hawthorne published his magnum opus The Scarlet Letter, a
novel about adultery. Hawthorne influenced Herman Melville, who is
notable for the books Moby-Dick and Billy Budd. America's greatest
poets of the nineteenth century were Walt Whitman and Emily
Dickinson. Mark Twain (the pen name used by Samuel Langhorne
Clemens) was the first major American writer to be born away from the
East Coast. Henry James put American literature on the international
map with novels like The Portrait of a Lady. At the turn of the twentieth
century a strong naturalist movement emerged that comprised writers
such as Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack
London. American writers expressed disillusionment following World
War I. The short stories and novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the
mood of the 1920s, and John Dos Passos wrote too about the war.
Ernest Hemingway became famous with The Sun Also Rises and A
Farewell to Arms; in 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. William
Faulkner became one of the greatest American writers with novels like
The Sound and the Fury. American poetry reached a peak after World
War I with such writers as Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost,
Ezra Pound, and E. E. Cummings. American drama attained
international status at the time with the works of Eugene O'Neill, who
won four Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel Prize. In the mid-twentieth
century, American drama was dominated by the work of playwrights
Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, as well as by the maturation of
the American musical. Depression era writers included John Steinbeck,
notable for his novel The Grapes of Wrath. Henry Miller assumed a
distinct place in American Literature in the 1930s when his semi-
autobiographical novels were banned from the US. From the end of
World War II until the early 1970s many popular works in modern
American literature were produced, like Harper Lee's To Kill a
Mockingbird. America's involvement in World War II influenced works
such as Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948), Joseph
Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five
(1969). The main literary movement since the 1970s has been
postmodernism, and since the late twentieth century ethnic and
minority literature has sharply increased.
At this point we can see the main elements of American culture in our syllabus
contents:

(1)-The Crucible
In Act1 we see that in the New England town of Salem, Massachusetts, the
minister Reverend Parris is kneeling in prayer at the bedside of his daughter Betty,
who is in a coma-like state. When the reverend’s niece Abigail Williams enters, we
learn that the night before, Abigail, Betty and a group of girls had gone dancing in
the forest with a black slave named Tituba, and that Betty had fainted when the
reverend discovered them. With rumors of witchcraft spreading through the
town, Parris has sent for Reverend Hale, an expert in the supernatural, to confirm
that Betty’s illness is medical rather than magical; although Parris insists that he
saw Tituba waving her arms over a fire, and a girl running naked, Abigail claims
that the girls were doing nothing other than dancing.Thomas and Ann Putnam
arrive with news that their daughter Ruth also appears to have been bewitched,
and Ann admits that she had sent Ruth to Tituba to conjure the spirits of her
seven dead babies in an attempt to identify their murderer. More of Betty’s
friends come to see how she is. Parris leaves the bedroom to try to calm the
crowd that is beginning to gather downstairs, and Betty wakes screaming that
Abigail had "drank a charm to kill John Proctor’s wife"; Abigail hits her, and warns
the girls not to admit to anything. Proctor himself then enters, and talks to Abigail
alone. We learn that until seven months ago she had worked at Proctor’s home,
where they had engaged in an affair which – though secret to the town was
discovered by his wife Elizabeth, leading to Abigail’s dismissal. She still desires
Proctor, and admits to him that there was no witchcraft, but he tells her forcefully
that their relationship is over.Betty wakes screaming again, and the crowd below
rush upstairs to her room. Their debate over whether or not her illness has been
caused by witchcraft quickly devolves into an argument over various social
tensions in Salem, mainly between Proctor, Parris, the elderly and quarrelsome
Giles Corey, and the wealthy Thomas Putnam. Reverend Hale arrives and studies
Betty, before questioning Abigail over the girls’ visit to the forest the night before.
As Hale gets more and more suspicious, and his and Parris’ interrogation
intensifies, Abigail eventually cries out that Tituba had called the Devil and made
the girls join in. After more questioning Tituba confesses, repents, and begins to
accuse other townswomen of having conspired with the Devil; Abigail and Betty
join in hysterically chanting the names of those they claim to have seen with the
Devil, and the crowd becomes frenzied.In Act 2 a week later, at their home,
Proctor arrives home late from seeding the farm, and Elizabeth tells him that a
court has been established to try witches; 14 people are already in prison
awaiting trial, and will be hanged if they do not confess. When Proctor refuses to
reveal to the court that Abigail is a fraud, Elizabeth suspects that it is because he
still has feelings for the girl, and Proctor angrily reprimands his wife for having
been cold and judgmental since the revelation of his adultery. Mary Warren the
Proctors’ servant and a friend of Abigail’s – arrives home from the court in Salem
with news that Elizabeth has been accused of witchcraft, and that the allegation
was only not pursued because Mary attested to her good character.Mary is sent
to bed, and Reverend Hale arrives to question Proctor and Elizabeth on their
Christian values, but is interrupted by Giles Corey and Francis Nurse – another
elderly parishioner – who have come to tell John that their wives have been
arrested, and are closely followed by officers of the court with a warrant to take
Elizabeth. The clerk of the court, Ezekiel Cheever, notices a poppet with a pin in it
which Mary had made for Elizabeth at court that day, but which Cheever takes as
proof of witchcraft the charge against Elizabeth is revealed to have come from
Abigail, who claimed to found a needle stabbed in her stomach. Elizabeth is taken,
and Proctor informs Mary that – despite her protests – she will be accompanying
him to court the following day to tell the truth about Abigail and the girls’ lies. In
Act 3 the next day, at court, Corey and Nurse plead with Judge Hathorne and
Deputy-Governor Danforth for the innocence of their wives, claiming that they
have proof that the girls are frauds. Proctor arrives with Mary and tells Danforth
that she will confess that the girls are lying, but the judge suspects that Proctor’s
motive may be less to free his wife than to undermine the court. Danforth
attempts to stop Proctor from proceeding by telling him, truthfully, that Elizabeth
is pregnant and will not face execution, at least until the baby is born, but Proctor
persists and Mary testifies. Depositions are also contributed by Nurse – who has
gathered 91 local signatures in support of his, Corey, and Proctor’s wives – and
Corey, who claims that Thomas Putnam accused local landowner George Jacobs
of witchcraft in order to buy up the land he would forfeit when hanged.The girls
are brought in to answer Mary’s accusations that they are lying but the feeling in
court turns against her when she is unable to simulate fainting as she claims to
have done in court. All of a sudden the girls begin to claim that Mary is bewitching
them, and a desperate Proctor reveals his affair with Abigail and points to her
jealousy of Elizabeth as the motive for her deception. Abigail denies ever having
slept with Proctor, and Danforth decides to determine the truth by summoning
the unerringly honest Elizabeth and asking her if Proctor is guilty of lechery.
Against her natural instinct she lies to preserve Proctor’s honor, and Danforth –
despite Hale’s protests that it was an understandable deceit – condemns Proctor
as a liar. Abigail and the girls again accuse Mary of bewitching them, and as their
hysteria mounts, Mary herself begins to scream and accuses Proctor of being a
witch. In a frenzy, Proctor furiously rails against the court, and he and Corey are
arrested, as Hale denounces the proceedings and quits the court. At the end in
Act 4,months later, the day arrives when Rebecca Nurse and Proctor are to be
hanged, both having resisted confessing to witchcraft. At the jail, Danforth,
Hathorne, and Cheever discuss the state of chaos that Salem has fallen into:
orphans and livestock roam the streets, and parishioners argue over who has a
right to the land of the convicted. Parris enters and explains that Hale has
returned to try to encourage Proctor and Rebecca Nurse’s confessions, to save
their lives and protect the court from the anger that may follow the hanging of
such respected townspeople. Parris also admits that he has been made penniless
after Abigail fled Salem, having stolen all of his money.Danforth convinces
Elizabeth to persuade Proctor to confess. Proctor and Elizabeth share a moment
alone and she tells him how Corey was pressed to death by stones for refusing to
plead either guilty or innocent, thus enabling his sons to still inherit his property.
Proctor wants to live, and agrees to confess, but changes his mind when he learns
not only that he must incriminate others, but have his confession made public –
pinned to the door of the church. He tears up the confession and, despite the
pleas of Hale and the court officials, follows Rebecca Nurse and others to the
gallows; the curtain falls as the drumroll that precedes a hanging crashes,
offstage.

(2)- Mourning Becomes Electra

The play opens with chorus praising the character of General Ezra
Mannon: "This town's real proud of Ezra." while his wife is criticized as
unworthy of him:

"Which is more'n you kin say for his wife. Folks all hates her! She ain't
the Mannon kind. French and Dutch descended, she is. Furrin lookin'
and queer."

Soon, we are well aware that the daughter, Lavinia, is not happy with
her mother's deeds. She seems to hate her mother, Christine, and is in
deep association with her father. Though every daughter loves her
father yet her affection for Mr. Mannon is a way too deep and lustful.
She is subject to the Oedipus complex of loving her male parent;
however, her father is completely unaware of her strange and unethical
feelings. In the very early part of the play we come to know that
Christine and Lavinia are at odds with each other.We know that
General Ezra Mannon and his son Orin are on the front, fighting for
their nation. While back home, the fights between the daughter and
mother reveal that Christine has been in an affair with a person named
Adam. While Peter, a cousin of hers, loves Lavinia. He wants to marry
her but she won't marry him because:

"I can't marry anyone, Peter. I've got to stay home. Father needs me".

Soon, Lavinia finds out details about Adam and takes advantage of the
feelings of Orin's jealousy. Orin kills Adam and Christine commits
suicide. This leads to another dirty situation wherein Orin is in lust of
his sister, Lavinia. He wants Lavinia not to marry Peter and stay with
him to fulfil his incestuous lust but Lavinia insults him to the extreme
that he is guilty and shoots himself. This leaves Lavinia to a lonely
situation where she is in deep psychological fixations. She wants Peter
to marry him instantly and love her. But while Peter loves her deeply
and passionately, she feels caught in the memory of the dead. The dead
seem to haunt her mind and her feelings. She decides to remain alone
in the house of the dead to pay for her sins:

"And there's no one left to punish me. I'm the last Mannon. I've got to
punish myself! Living alone here with the dead is a worse act of justice
than death or prison! I'll never go out or see anyone!"
(3)- A Streetcar named Desire

Blanche DuBois arrives to visit her sister, Mrs. Stella Kowalski, who lives
in the French Quarter of New Orleans. She is shocked by the
disreputable looks of the place. While a neighbor goes to find Stella,
Blanche looks around the apartment for a drink. When her sister
comes, Blanche quite frankly criticizes the place. She explains that she
has come for a visit because her nerves are shattered from teaching.
Noticing that the apartment has only two rooms, she has qualms about
staying but she tells Stella that she can't stand being alone. She explains
to Stella that their old ancestral home, Belle Reve, has been lost. While
Stella goes to the bathroom, Stanley, her husband, enters and meets
Blanche. He questions her about her past and especially about her
earlier marriage, which upsets Blanche to the point that she feels sick.
The following night Stella and Blanche plan to have dinner out and go
to a movie while Stanley plays poker with his friends. But before they
leave, Stanley wants to know how Belle Reve was lost. Blanche tries to
explain and gives him all the papers and documents pertaining to the
place. Later that night when Blanche and Stella return from their movie,
the men are still playing poker. Blanche meets Mitch, one of Stanley's
friends, who seems to be more sensitive than the others. While Mitch is
in the second room talking to Blanche, Stanley becomes angry over a
series of incidents, especially when Blanche turns on the radio. He
throws the radio out the window, hits Stella when she tries to stop him,
and has to be held by the other men to be kept from doing more
damage. Blanche takes Stella and runs upstairs. When Stanley recovers,
he calls for Stella to come down and she does. The next morning,
Blanche goes to Stella and tries to make her see that Stanley is an
animal. She is shocked that Stella could have returned to him. But Stella
assures her that Stanley was gentle when she returned and that she
loves him. As Blanche begins describing Stanley, he comes in and
overhears the conversation but doesn't say a thing. Some time later,
Blanche is dressing for a date with Mitch. She tells Stella that she wants
Mitch because she is so tired of struggling against the world. Stella
assures her it will happen. She leaves with Stanley to go bowling; just
before Mitch arrives, a paper boy comes by and Blanche detains him
long enough to kiss him because he reminds her of her young husband.
When Blanche and Mitch return from their date, Blanche explains to
Mitch how much Stanley apparently hates her. She thinks that Stanley
will be her destroyer. She tells Mitch about her past life, how once she
was married to a young boy whom she later discovered with an older
man. Later that night, her young husband killed himself as a result of a
harsh remark that Blanche made to him. Mitch tells Blanche that they
both need each other.It is later in mid-September. Stella is preparing a
birthday cake for Blanche. Stanley comes home and tells Stella that he
now has the lowdown on Blanche. It seems that she lived such a wild
life in Laurel that she was asked to leave the town. Even the army had
referred to Blanche as being out-of-bounds. Stanley then tells her that
Mitch won't be coming over and that Blanche will leave Tuesday on a
Greyhound bus. Later that evening Blanche cannot understand why
Mitch does not come. After a scene between Stanley and Stella, Stanley
gives Blanche her birthday present — a ticket back to Laurel,
Mississippi. As Stanley is about to leave, Stella has her first labor pains
and has to be taken to the hospital. Mitch arrives later that evening.
Blanche has been drinking rather heavily. He confronts her with her
past life. At first she tries to deny it, but then she confesses that after
the death of her young husband, nothing but intimacies with strangers
seemed to have any meaning for her. Mitch then tries to get her to
sleep with him, and Blanche demands marriage. Mitch tells her she is
not good enough, and Blanche screams fire so as to make Mitch leave.
Later that night, Stanley returns from the hospital to find Blanche
dressed in an old faded evening dress. He tells her that the baby won't
come before morning. She is frightened to stay with him, especially
when he begins confronting her with all the lies she has told. As she
tries to move around him, he decides that she wouldn't be too bad to
interfere with. After a scuffle, he rapes her.

Three weeks later, Stella is packing Blanche's clothes and waiting for a
doctor and an attendant to come and take her to the state mental
institution. Stella refuses to believe Blanche's story that Stanley raped
her. Blanche thinks that an old boy friend is coming to take her on a
cruise. When the attendant arrives, she doesn't recognize him and tries
to run away. Stanley and an assistant trap Blanche. The doctor
approaches and Blanche is quite willing to go with him, having always
depended on the kindness of strangers.

(4)- Fences

Fences is divided into two acts. Act One is comprised of four scenes and
Act Two has five. The play begins on a Friday, Troy and Bono's payday.
Troy and Bono go to Troy's house for their weekly ritual of drinking and
talking. Troy has asked Mr. Rand, their boss, why the Black employees
aren't allowed to drive the garbage trucks, only to lift the garbage.
Bono thinks Troy is cheating on his wife, Rose. Troy and Rose's son,
Cory, has been recruited by a college football team. Troy was in the
Negro Leagues but never got a chance to play in the Major Leagues
because he got too old to play just as the Major Leagues began
accepting Black players. Troy goes into a long epic story about his
struggle in July of 1943 with death. Lyons shows up at the house
because he knows it is Troy's payday. Rose reminds Troy about the
fence she's asked him to finish building.Cory and Troy work on the
fence. Cory breaks the news to Troy that he has given away his job at
the local grocery store, the A&P, during the football season. Cory begs
Troy to let him play because a coach from North Carolina is coming all
the way to Pittsburgh to see Cory play. Troy refuses and demands that
Cory get his job back. Act One, scene four takes place on Friday and
mirrors scene one. Troy has won his case and has been assigned as the
first colored garbage truck driver in the city. Bono and Troy remember
their fathers and their childhood experiences of leaving home in the
south and moving north. Cory comes home enraged after finding out
that Troy told the football coach that Cory may not play on the team.
Troy warns Cory that his insubordinant behavior is "strike one" against
him.Troy bails his brother Gabriel out of jail. Bono and Troy work on the
fence. Bono explains to Troy and Cory that Rose wants the fence
because she loves her family and wants to keep close to her love. Troy
admits to Bono that he is having an

affair with Alberta. Bono bets Troy that if he finishes building the fence
for Rose, Bono will buy his wife, Lucille, the refrigerator he has
promised her for a long time. Troy tells Rose about a hearing in three
weeks to determine whether or not Gabriel should be recommitted to
an asylum. Troy tells Rose about his affair. Rose accuses Troy of taking
and not giving. Troy grabs Rose's arm. Cory grabs Troy from behind.
They fight and Troy wins. Troy calls "strike two" on Cory.Six months
later, Troy says he is going over to the hospital to see Alberta, who
went into labor early. Rose tells Troy that Gabriel has been taken away
to the asylum because Troy couldn't read the papers and signed him
away. Alberta had a baby girl but died during childbirth. Troy challenges
Death to come and get him after he builds a fence. Troy brings home
his baby, Raynell. Rose takes in Raynell as her own child, but refuses to
be dutiful as Troy's wife. On Troy's payday, Bono shows up
unexpectedly. Troy and Bono acknowledge how each man made good
on his bet about the fence and the refrigerator. Troy insists that Cory
leave the house and provide for himself. Cory brings up Troy's recent
failings with Rose. Cory points out that the house and property, from
which Troy is throwing Cory out, should actually be owned by Gabriel
whose government checks paid for most of the mortgage payments.
Troy physically attacks Cory, then kicks him out of the house for good.
Cory leaves. Troy swings the baseball bat in the air, taunting
Death.Eight years later, Raynell plays in her newly planted garden. Troy
has died from a heart attack. Cory returns home from the Marines to
attend Troy's funeral. Lyons and Bono join Rose too. Cory refuses to
attend. Rose teaches Cory that not attending Troy's funeral does not
make Cory a man. Raynell and Cory sing one of Troy's father's blues
songs. Gabriel turns up, released or escaped from the mental hospital.
Gabe blows his trumpet but no sound comes out. He tries again but the
trumpet will not play. Disappointed and hurt, Gabriel dances. He makes
a cry and the Heavens open wide. He says, "That's the way that goes,"
and the play ends.
In shor, it is no doubt to say that American Literature is too much rich in
every context of literature.