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LITR 4326 Early American Literature Model Assignments |
Final Exam Essays 2016 Sample answers
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Michelle Liaw
In the Beginning, There Was the Origin Story
After
spending a gruesome year at nursing school fueled by sleepless nights and
self-revelations I discovered that I was not as adept at science as I thought I
was, and that I was deathly afraid of needles. Coming back to the world of
literature was my safe haven. Immediately on the first day of class, I felt
relieved to be poring over original texts instead of poring over bowel
movements. However, I have to be honest that my preconceived notions of Early
American Literature was completely blown away by how each text was intricately
weaved through another. Compared to my previous experiences with literature
classes, a standard lecture-test regurgitate rinse and repeat style, I was
perplexed at how many different cultures and expressions were to be covered in a
semester. What I uncovered was that early American literature is a complex and
interdisciplinary study that fosters close relationships with other fields like
history and religion that melds together to form an increasingly multicultural
beginning.
Reading the several different origin stories at the beginning of the semester
enlightened me on how one tale becomes immersed in another throughout time,
making it difficult to discern if there is just one creation story or several.
For one, evidence of Genesis absorbed
into other origin stories becomes clearly apparent.
The Handsome Lake Origin story echoes
strongly on the theme that human curiosity destroys innocence and virtue. Native
Americans become the scapegoat as the corruption of the white man is the cause
of their demise, connecting the parallels between Adam and Eve and the snake. In
this sense, origin stories help to create a culture of story-telling that is not
only unique to each individual culture, but also aids in creating an overall
theme of a desire to explain the world and its history. While each creation
story differs from one another, they all reflect the same basal human desire to
understand the world around us.
Furthermore, the intertextuality between
Genesis also spans as far as later texts in the semester such as
Charlotte Temple. One commonality
found in creation stories is the presence of evil or darkness. A striking
connection is the characters La Rue and Belcour to the snake in the Garden. As
the original snake is associated with deceptiveness and trickery, La Rue and
Belacour embody the same villainous behavior through influence in Charlotte
Temple’s seduction. La Roux is not only characterized as a serpent, with “the
mind of youth eagerly catches at promised pleasure: pure and innocent by nature,
it thinks not of the dangers lurking beneath those pleasures, till too late”,
but she also represents the temptations of sinning that encroach on Charlotte’s
impressionable mind. Belcour, on the other hand, is another evil villain figure
who constantly whispers lies on Montraville’s ear in order to seize Charlotte
for his own. Ending the semester with Charlotte Temple further cemented my
understanding of origin stories having an overall theme that justifies the human
exploitation of other human beings. The snake, as the original harbinger of sin,
morphs into other villainous characters throughout literature like Madmoiselle
La Rue or Belcour. Just as Sarah Roelese states in her final,
Origins, Origins, Everywhere! “both
female-to female writing in Charlotte Temple.. served as their own origins
because they opened up a whole new world for not only writers, but thinkers of
the time,” Charlotte Temple remains
in history as a symbol of the emergence of the female voice in literature.
In my
midterm essay, Human Nature Revealed
through Literature, I touched on how the concept of original sin can be
shown throughout literature and culture. While I initially connected
Christopher Columbus’ Letters with
the idea that the human tendency to document the conquering voice becomes their
own demise, there is also a similarity to be made in the idea of first
discoverers. Like Adam and Eve test their innocent in the Garden, Columbus lands
on an “untouched” land only to burn it with the trail of European expansion. The
recurring model of origin stories as justification for human exploitation once
again repeats in Columbus’ letters. While his tales of westward expansion are
praised in early education, it is often forgotten that the inhabitants of the
“conquered” lands suffered from disease and war brought on by the explorers.
Expanding on the idea of the Garden of Eden as the final test before mankind
shows it’s true colors, the motif of a blank slate and pure world continues to
resound through later texts in the semester.
My
second research post, although not regarding an origin story, was in a sense the
origins of female equality in a strictly Puritan society.
Mary Rowlandson’s experience as a
captive only steamrolled success for captivity narratives, but for the
popularity of a redemption success story during a time of religious turmoil. A
common theme between the origin stories is that the role of women is omitted or
even condemned. Just as Eve is responsible for getting humanity expelled, the
belief that females exploit mankind only highlights the successful emergence of
female writers during the Seventeenth century. One interesting point Dr. White
added in feedback was that “it was almost as though we would have never started
re-reading captivity narratives if not for the interests incited by feminist
research.” It’s astonishing to see the rebirth of female captivity narratives in
the latest half-century as they reemerged in accordance with heighted female
sentimentality in modern culture. It becomes apparent that story-telling, either
in the form of creation stories or captivity stories, has become immersed in
early American literature and has marked the complex interchanges between
literature and history.
However, a more recent connection is
Phyllis Wheatley’s On Being Brought from Africa to America poem. As African
slavery is aligned with one of the original sins of European America, Wheatly
deftly weaves biblical lessons regarding sin in practically each line. Her
juxtaposition of light and dark terms allow the reader to become a part of a
spiritual and intellectual movement of equating slaves with all other Christians
in the world. “Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,” specifically
parallels with the Genesis origin story of innate evils passed down from Adam.
Wheatley also embodies the idea of double language, wherein the female voice is
delineated by the dominant male opinion. Reading this poem can be interpreted
multiple ways, one as the idea that losing salvation is nothing compared to past
difficulties, and the other is the comparison of Pagan versus savior mercy. What
is astonishing as I read through Wheatley’s poem is how skilled she is in using
written words to catalyze a historical movement in American history. Her work is
not only remembered as being literary masterpieces, but also representing the
anti-slavery movement in history.
Nevertheless, what I have learned throughout the semester is that there is not
just one origin story that defines the beginnings of early America, but rather
it is the diversity of the stories in their essence, characters, and themes that
show the intermingling of cultural texts to form what we understand to be
America today. Just as modern origin stories of superheroes provide readers with
models of coping with adversity and overcoming weaknesses, origin stories of
early America provide us with a cultural backdrop that helps us in viewing a
window into how early civilizations answered the question, “Where do I come
from?” Throughout the class this semester the recurring theme of origin stories
scattered throughout the origins of America showed me that origin stories become
a broader explanation of the world and a deeper understanding of complex
beginnings. As a future educator, incorporating origin stories will not only
impart the knowledge that early America was increasingly multicultural, but also
how the story of literature has the power to reveal diverse origins. By looking
at the world through multiple lenses of perspectives and beliefs, my future
students will be able to gain a better understanding of how human beings have
belief systems that are unique and similar to others.
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