42) The Lost Generation: historical background and literary representatives.
We must remember who, where and why they were lost.
The term “Lost Generation” was coined by Gertrude Stein to refer to a group of American literary notables who lived in Paris from the time period which saw the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression.
the 1st war was called – World War. People used chemical and biological weapons. The main idea of the war – your death should be miserable. People went into the Great Depression because of it. A horrible fear of death. Then economical revival came. The New Era of technology started, then the Golden Age of radio.
1927 – one-man-flight over the Atlantic. New understanding of traveling around the world – without limits and borders. So people started to forget the horrors of the War. Then “The Jazz Age”.
Harlem Renaissance   
The idea of Jazz – the constant feeling of the beat of life.
Art Deco Style – Chrysler Building (pure, simple, geometrical, made mostly of glass).
New definition to womanhood.
They started to cut their hair short, they wore short dresses and skirts. They started to sing, to perform. Freedom. They were independent and cool.

Significant members included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, Waldo Peirce, Sylvia Beach, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein herself. The enriching gifts from the Lost Generation included: The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), The Waste Land (T. S. Eliot), The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway), Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis), The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner), “An American in Paris” (George Gershwin), the comedy routine of “Who’s on First?” by Abbott and Costello.
Ernest Hemingway
His distinctive writing style is characterized by terse minimalism and understatement and had a significant influence on the development of twentieth century fiction. The 1st period of his writing – he was very famous, his works became popular immediately after they were published. The 2nd period – it wasn’t very successful. The only pearl of it – “The Old Man and The Sea” (Noble Prize) (laconic style, short metaphors). An old man Santiago is trying to catch a fish for 84days. His ambitions are to catch the biggest one in this area and bring it to the coast. He has a friend – a young boy. At 85th day he manages to kill a fish. He calls it – his brother (fish – nature; Santiago – humanity; XX century – the humanity kills the nature). A man is not better than the nature, he is simply better armed. So at the end of his life he stays alone. Irony – you might be a hero for yourself but passersby will laugh at you.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. His heroes were handsome, confident, and doomed, blazing brilliantly before exploding, his heroines are usually beautiful, intricate, and alluring.
T.S. Eliot
He would go on to become a transplanted American poet, dramatist, and literary critic residing in England. In 1948 he won the Nobel Prize for literature “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.”
William Faulkner
He is a Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Though Faulkner’s works are sometimes considered challenging and obscure, he is regarded as one of America’s most influential fiction writers. Faulkner was known for using long, indirect sentences with painstakingly chosen diction. His work is known for literary devices like stream of consciousness, multiple narrations with varying points of view, and narrative time shifts. The most popular: The Sound and the Fury (1929), Absalom, Absalom! (1936).

47)  Theodor Dreiser’s “Sister Carrie”
The theme in Sister Carrie, a novel written by Theodore Dreiser, is materialism. The theme is primarily personified through Carrie with her desire for a fine home, clothes and everything else money can buy.
   The novel begins with Carrie boarding a train for Chicago. She is going to live with her sister in the city and find a job there. Things do not work out for her though, so when Drouet, a man she has recently met, offers to take care of her she accepts his offer. Carrie finds her life with Drouet quite pleasing, he buys her new clothes and takes her to the theatre. But when Carrie meets Drouet's friend, Mr. Hurstwood, she finds him much more elegant than Drouet and becomes engaged to Hurstwood too. Hurstwood is a wealthy man with a good reputation  who makes a bad decision that forces him to leave Chicago in haste. By telling a lie he manages to take Carrie with him and together they go to New York. Carrie is a woman who wants a good home and money to buy the things she wants, so when Hurstwood does not live up to her expectations she leaves him. Carrie manages to establish a career and a name as an actress while Hurstwood becomes unemployed and poor.
    I think that the novel describes the city as a strong entity that has power over people no matter if they are rich or poor. It is as if the city is a great entity that looks after its own best interests. A restaurant, for instance, is described as a "...strange, glittering night-flower, odour-yielding, insect-drawing, insect-infested rose of pleasure.", a description which I think symbolizes the power of attraction the city has over its inhabitants, and the promise of amusement a restaurant can convey in passers by. The people in the streets are also described in the novel. When it was raining, pedestrians with umbrellas made the streets look "...like a sea of round black cloth roofs, twisting, bobbing, moving." The people living in the city are the ones that make the city and therefore their presence is important in the novel. What would New York be if Carrie and Hurstwood were the only ones living there, or if there were no people there at all? It would be a dead city, a place where no one would like to go. In the novel the city life is presented through Carrie's and Hurstwood's eyes. For Carrie, who gives the positive view of the city, the city is a place full of possibilities, it is a "...whirl of pleasure and delight." As the other characters in the novel Carrie feels material desires that she cannot resist (Richard Lehan, Literature in History: An Intellectual and Cultural History). The city is therefore a place that requires money, preferably an endless supply of money, "all of the novel's characters are caught in an urban materialism..." (Richard Lehan, Literature in History: An Intellectual and Cultural History) and therefore for Carrie it is important to have money. Carrie's thought: "There it was, the admirable, great city, so fine when you are not poor." suggests that the city is not a pleasant place to be in when one has no money. This is a suggestion that is backed up by Hurstwood's life as a poor beggar. The poverty in the city is presented through Hurstwood's last year of life. As Hurstwood walks the streets, unemployed and homeless, he becomes familiar with the charities in the city and he meets other homeless people whom he reflects upon.
    As Hurstwood experiences what it is like to be poor he begins to see the life of his wealthy past as "...a city with a wall about it." If one has no money one cannot get in there since there are guards at the gates and the people who are inside are so merry that they do not care about the ones that are outside. While I was reading the passage where Hurstwood reads about his friends in the evening papers it became clear to me that there is some truth in his idea of a city within walls. It is the people who make the city; the city is divided into smaller cities -closed circles containing friends, family, careers and so on, and every circle of people experiences the city differently depending on social status and dreams among other things. If people have a high social status they also have money they can spend and thus participate in all the pleasure the city has to offer. Some, like Carrie, look at the city with pleasure, because it is a place of opportunities and there are a lot of things to do there. Others look at the city in the same way as Hurstwood came to do -a city within walls where there is only happiness for the rich people and where for beggars there is only cold and humiliation.
   Materialism, including the desire for money, is an important theme in Sister Carrie. The materialism is shown mostly through Carrie's character but also through Hurstwood, a man with a respectable life and money, who still wants more and for that reason commits a crime. The city in itself is also a place of materialism, it is a place that offers all kinds of amusements, pleasures and things to buy, but to participate in what the city has to offer one has to have money.

Question 75
75. Modern Afro-American literature: T. Morrison’s “Beloved”.
Toni Morrison wrote Beloved on a foundation of real events. When in 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, a black woman murdered her children to prevent them from being recaptured and taken back to slavery. When taking part in editing a book on American history, T. Morrison came across this story and was inspired to write her own story based on this one.
The novel is about a black woman called Sethe and her daughter who try to rebuild their lives after having escaped from slavery. One day, a young lady shows up at their house, saying that her name is "Beloved." Sethe comes to believe that the girl is another of her daughters, whom Sethe murdered by slitting her throat with a handsaw when she was only two years old to save her from a life of slavery, and whose tombstone reads "Beloved." Beloved's return eventually gets Sethe to the point where she ignores her other daughter and even her own needs, while Beloved becomes more and more demanding.
The central theme in the novel is the concept of motherhood as an overwhelming love that can conquer all. After she escapes from the plantation, she struggles to stay alive because of her desire to keep the "mother of her children alive" and not from any personal survival instinct. Sethe's maternal instincts almost lead to her own destruction.
“Beloved” is a novel based on the impact of slavery and of the emancipation of slaves on individual black people.

Question 19:
19) Romance and Novel: differences in characters and style, examples.
Doubtlessly, the main difference between the novel and the romance is in the way in which they view reality. The novel renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail. It takes a group of people and set them going about the business of life. We come to see these people in their real complexity of temperament and motive. They are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past. Character is more important than action and plot, and probably the tragic or comic actions of the narrative will have the primary purpose of enhancing our knowledge of and feeling for an important character, a group of characters, or a way of life. The events that occur will usually be plausible, and if the novelist includes a violent or sensational occurrence in his plot, he will introduce it only into such scenes, where the reader is prepared for them.
By contrast the romance feels free to render reality in less volume and detail. It tends to prefer action to character, and action will be freer in a romance than in a novel, encountering, as it were, less resistance from reality. (This is not always true, as we see in what might be called the static romances of Hawthorne, in which the author uses the allegorical and moral, rather than the dramatic, possibilities of the form.) The romance can flourish without providing much intricacy of relation. The characters will not be complexly related to each other or to society or to the past. Human beings will on the whole be shown in an ideal relation--that is, they will share emotions only after these have become abstract or symbolic Where the novelist would arouse our interest in a character by exploring his origin, the romancer will probably do so by enveloping it in mystery. Character itself becomes, then, somewhat abstract and ideal, so much so in some romances that it seems to be merely a function of plot. The plot we may expect to be highly colored. Astonishing events may occur, and these are likely to have a symbolic or ideological, rather than a realistic, plausibility. Being less committed to the immediate rendition of reality than the novel, the romance will more freely tend toward mythic, allegorical, and symbolistic forms.
Examples of novel: “Anna Karenina” by L. N. Tolstoy, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neil Hurston, “Absalom, Absalom!” by William Faulkner.
Examples of romance: “Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov, “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving, “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
 
Question 29:
“Self-reliance” is an essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American thinker. In this essay, Emerson conveys his Transcendentalist philosophy and belief in self-reliance, an essential part of which is to trust in one's present thoughts and impressions rather than those of other people or of one's past self. This philosophy is exemplified in the quote: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Emerson stresses the need to believe one's own thoughts, while actively searching one's internal mind in order to capture the flash thought that may or may not come across. However, Emerson articulates that although one has unlimited potential in oneself, few actually possess the confidence to develop his mind fully. Emerson then writes, "Trust yourself," for God will not have his work made manifest by "cowards". Immediately afterwards, he asserts that everyone has the innate tendency to express independent, genuine verdict when young. But, when young men become adults, Emerson argues, they will become "clapped into jail by his consciousness."
The essay states that "To be great is to be misunderstood," illustrating this by showing how enormously influential historical characters (Jesus Christ, Pythagoras, Copernicus) were fiercely opposed during their lifetimes, while time later demonstrated their genius.
Emerson also stresses originality, believing in one's own genius and living from within. From this springs the quote: "Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide."
Truth, if it agreed with an individual's intuition of truth, must be indeed truth.
His basic philosophical faith (one shared by many Americans) is that the ultimate source of truth is within ourselves. We recognize truth outside ourselves, in nature or in others, and the key word here is "recognize," even if only very dimly. We are often not "in touch" with ourselves or trust ourselves enough to find these truths and so must often depend on others, books, etc. to express it for us, but it is somehow within us.
However, this is not necessarily self-centered, because the truth which lies within is universal, shared and recognized by all (if they only knew it) and generated by Self (God, Over-soul, whatever). All we can really know is within us, but we must assume that other people have the same potential as we do--and assume that they do, in fact, exist (although you really can't prove it!) Presumably, trusting oneself means much more than that; it means trusting that somehow or other we have an innate wisdom which is a projection of the god within, and that every person has that wisdom, although few have much access to it. Those few we often call poets and prophets (but never politicians!) and we cherish the insights into our own truths that we glimpse through them. Theoretically, then, to believe in our selves and our deep capacity to understand and recognize truths is to believe in every self, though we have no access to any other self besides us. Practically it may be another matter, but Emerson is a bit of an idealist and not terribly practical (we can't all be everything!)
One characteristic of Emerson's essays is the gaps he leaves the reader to fill (or to flounder in); it is probably their greatest strength (because you may personalize what you read) and greatest weakness (it can be confusing). For example, at the beginning of the essay he speaks of verses he has read which are original, but he does not tell you what those verses are. You have to imagine what "original" might be. His emphasis is not on these particular verses, or even the definition of originality in poetry, but a discussion on originality and recognizing your own ability to be original and not imitative. After all, he can't say what would be original for you, could he? But he wants you to imagine what that might be. This will happen repeatedly through the essay. Try your best to fill those blanks in ways that make sense to you and your experience, and if you can't, ignore them and keep going.
It is hard for us to see the original force of this in 1838, when people felt far less secure about themselves, as individuals and as Americans (whatever that was). In many ways, this is as much a cultural/intellectual declaration of independence as it is an exhortation to believe in yourself. Its major power today is probably directed toward the younger reader, struggling with the very powerful forces toward conformity that seem endemic in American high schools.
For one thing, he gives a lot of credit to innate goodness, and almost totally ignores the very crucial environmental shaping factors. He and his readers were raised in an extremely "moral" environment, and though they might rebel against church doctrine, they were deeply "indoctrinated" with those moral codes. This is not necessarily the case in the "murder capital of the world"! Another problem is the extreme "masculinity" of the essay--one of his favorite words is "manliness." I can just visualize this very assertive and muscular male as an underlying ideal
Maybe all we can know is what is within us. In a sense, we may be imprisoned within our own perceptions and experiences, and can never really know what might be true. We can't even be sure if anyone or anything else exists, because all we can know is what's in our little individual heads.
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions.
You could interpret this in several ways. When you look at your life, especially when you are young, if you follow your "inner gyroscope" and do things and take courses that just "feel right," it might look to others (parents in particular) as if you just can't make up your mind and are zigzagging all over the place. The coherence will be an inner one, perhaps not even visible to you, but over time, it will probably make sense, just as you have to zigzag when sailing to reach a point most directly. One difference, of course, is that you (unlike the sailor) often haven't a clue where or what that "point" might be, and have to trust that by following your instincts and strengths, you'll actually reach some kind of point.
ccording to Emerson, people who rely on themselves also find more contentment throughout their lives. “A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.” On the other hand, individuals who focus on external influences and seek contentment from external sources find no personal fulfillment.
When an individual in a community gains happiness and productivity, the living conditions of all people in that community improve. Individuals who feel content and productive treat others with more kindness and respect than do people who feel disgruntled with life. Emerson believed that “nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” Many contemporary Americans constantly seek peace with other individuals of different cultural and social backgrounds. If they followed Emerson's prescriptions for a self-reliant philosophy, perhaps they could discover a peace within themselves. Only when individuals become confident in and reliant upon themselves can they make peace with others.
At the heart of Emerson’s idea of self-reliance is the profoundly American idea that self-knowledge is the key to self-improvement and self-realization. Emerson argued that the object of education is to help a person find that in himself that is strong enough to be relied upon. (American system of education: child-centered schools). This was not hokey ego-boosting; Emerson proposed quite specific methods of introspective learning, all of them aimed at discovering what is strong and valuable in one’s own mind.
The challenge was to make these methods of self-betterment credible to Americans who were no longer immersed in the old Puritan traditions of self-examination and self-culture. Emerson turned to the ancient Greeks, whose philosophy was in vogue in the Boston intellectual circles in which he grew up.
What is outside, Emerson believed, teaches us to understand and make use of what is inside. Emerson spoke of the outer world as “this shadow of the soul, or other me. . . . Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself.”