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LITR 4326 Early American Literature Model Assignments |
Final Exam Essays 2016 Sample answers
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2c.
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Tom
Britt
10
May 2016
The Ugly Truth or the Optimistic Ideal
The option that speaks most to me as I sit down to pen this essay must be
which America is the most appropriate to teach in the classroom. As I will be
entering a multicultural classroom, and have had, since October, classrooms full
of not only mixed-race populations but also individual mixed-race students, it
is important for me to frame the material I present to them in such a manner as
to show the aspirations that our founding leaders had for this country while not
washing the past in such a way that all negative side-effects of the American
experiment are left out. Obviously, it is important to highlight the ideals of
the dominant culture of the time as they had, arguably, the biggest impact on
our society today. However, I would be remiss if I did not include the minority,
Native American and African-American writers, for their contributions to the
literary and social world of today. There is a balance to be struck here, and
finding it requires great tact and sensitivity.
In perhaps the most famous American document taught in schools,
The Declaration of Independence, the
founders of this country attempt to ensure the best qualities of human life will
not be stripped from their people. They write that “all men are created equal”
and intend to secure the rights of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”
for American citizens, believing that these are necessities for a life worth
living. This is a nice notion and certainly the pillars that this country has
built its foundation on. Since a tyrant previously withheld these civil
liberties and the Declaration’s
writers deemed them a worthy cause for going to war, these flowery words cannot
be overlooked in the fields of American history and literature. However, if I
left out the fact that both Native Americans and African-Americans, the latter
themselves enslaved with no rights of their own at the time this document was
written, are technically not included in the rights guaranteed by the
Declaration, I would not be
presenting a true and honest picture of the country’s origin.
Similarly, as Crevecour attempts to discern exactly what it means to be
an American in his third letter, he describes a melting pot in which all men
receive equal opportunity for success the moment they step onto American shores.
He describes the American as “a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must
therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions.” He characterizes the land
called America as a fresh slate, a place for starting over, where each
individual has the ability to craft for himself whatever he life he chooses if
he is willing to put in the effort. However, in his ninth letter, he points out
that this opportunity is not actually available to every single inhabitant. The
African-American inhabitants of this land of opportunity “drudge on without any
prospect of ever reaping for themselves” the benefits of the land they are
manually putting in the labor for. It seems impossible that I could laud the
achievements of this newly built country when the blood put into the melting pot
was put their against its owners’ will.
Samson Occom, in his “A Short Narrative of My Life,” describes a scene of
a young Native American boy whose master beats him for no other reason than
“because I am an Indian.” In this land of infinite opportunity, this young boy
is reduced to toiling against his will and being physically assaulted, not
because he is not a good worker, but due to the color of his skin. Occom
himself, even though he was regarded as an equal authority on the subject of the
religion he shared with his white peers, received unequal treatment. It is
impossible to consider this a land of opportunity when two men completing the
same work are given varying rewards, if one of them receives rewards at all.
A minority that has not been addressed thus far in this essay is the
treatment of women and the education they were believed to have deserved. Thomas
Jefferson, one of the chief founding fathers, writes in a letter that the only
“solid education” women might require would be that which would “enable them,
when [they] become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct
the course for their sons.” It is worth noting that mothers, in Jefferson’s
view, ought only instruct their sons “should their fathers be lost, or
incapable, or inattentive.” Obviously, times have changed in that regard as my
future classroom will have as many female learners as male, but, like the Native
and African-Americans previously mentioned, if the truth is not given that women
were thought of as second-class citizens, I am lying by omission to my students.
The common theme evolving seems to be that, while the white idealists who
imagined what America would become as a utopian society, it came at the great
cost of the minority. Perhaps it is possible to blame these crimes all on
ignorance and the fact that no one knew any better at the time. Perhaps the
white founders saw no other option than to elevate themselves and hope that
their own rising tide would raise the ships of the ethnically less fortunate. In
the end, I have come to the conclusion that the literature of the dominant
society must not be looked upon with rose-tinted glasses but with a grain of
salt. Additionally, omitting the work of minority writers presents a jigsaw
puzzle of which there are too many pieces missing to ever discern what the
picture was supposed to be. So, as an educator, I must applaud the intentions
and ideals that the dominant race set forth in their documents but never forget
the cost to minorities at which this country came into being.
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