Charlotte Temple

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Discussion Questions:

What balance is struck between "instruction" and "entertainment?"

What kind of pleasure may be found in the story? Why was Charlotte Temple so popular?

In what ways does the text contradict itself? That is, telling you a moral while showing the opposite?

What instruction, moral, or lesson(s) does the novel offer?

Waves of immigration

4 historic waves of immigration to USA
(numbers not official--depends on where you start)

1^st wave, 12-20,000 years ago, Indians' Ancestors (During Ice Age, land exposed from Asia to Alaska)

2^nd wave 1600 - 1890 Northern Europe, 250,000 in 1700 > 50 million in 1890 [e. g., English, Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, Irish 
(near end of this wave; Catholic rather than Protestant like most earlier Northern European immigrants)

3^rd wave 1890-1924, Southern and Eastern Europe [e. g., Italians, Poles, Russians]; US population app. 100 million

[1920s-1960s: immigration severely restricted by racial quotas; in 1940s some Jews come to America to flee Holocaust despite tough immigration restrictions during this period]

4^th wave 1965- Latin America, West Indies, Eastern Europe, & Asia
US population in 1965: 200 million
US population in 2007: 300 million

"white flight"

familiarity with term?

implications?

cities > suburbs mid-20c

suburbs > exurbs

coastal cities are increasingly multicultural

working-class & lower-middle-class whites move to interior states

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (2004)

by James Webb

Webb = most decorated (and wounded?) Marine in Vietnam War

Respected novelist on Vietnam War: Fields of Fire (1978) + 5 other military novels

Secretary of Navy in 1980s

screenwriter, movie producer

2006 elected U. S. Senator from Virginia

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (2004)

Most Confederate soldiers were Scots-Irish

Plurality of Union soldiers and all wars since are Scots Irish

Invisible, unmarked, very little attention, but very important

2 defining presidents fit profile:

Ronald Reagan (1980-88)--successful warrior president + rugged individualism

Andrew Jackson (1828-1836)--Indian fighter, Cherokee Trail of Tears

clan mentality, family honor

clan = tribe

aside from family, clan, or tribe > highly individualistic, independent, & anti-government

stereotype: hillbilly moonshiners shooting at government reps

1600s: early English settlement of New England, Tidewater Virginia

1700s: Scots-Irish