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(2014
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2014 #3: Web Highlights |
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Jonathon Anderson
“Less Than Human”: The Necessity of
Moving Beyond Dualisms
Diversity has been a major theme for the
first half of this semester’s survey of Early American texts, and the student
samples from the “Model Assignments” section of the course webpage reflect that
diversity. Without any particular agenda to pursue, I initially found myself at
a loss to find any productive way to engage with the material. After
procrastination masquerading as productivity eventually led to my reading each
Model Assignment, I found myself thinking about the obstacles to a unified
American Story. Reading several students’ accounts of polarizing figures like
Columbus, John Smith, and the various Native Americans who show up throughout
our readings, a pattern of alternating demonization or exaltation seemed to be
showing up. Connecting this to the concerns over the usefulness of the
Greek/Kantian dualities in the work of American Pragmatist Richard Rorty, I
began to consider the possibility of looking at our Early American textual
record through a similar lens, as well as the repercussions of not doing so.
The temptation to “divid[e] the world up
into good Xs and…bad non-Xs” can be hard to resist, especially when we become
disillusioned with our uncomplicated impressions of major cultural figures
(Rorty xix). This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it is an “indispensable
tool of inquiry.” However, we’ve got to remember that it is merely a tool, and
not a comprehensive (or even particularly meaningful) evaluation. Any mature
sense of cohesion we might develop in synthesizing a Grand Unified Theory of the
American Story will need to be predicated upon a mental jump beyond standard
dualisms like Good/Evil or Truth/Lie. If we force all thinking about polarizing
figures into these extreme oppositions as if they are the only possible pairs,
we put ourselves in a limited interpretive position. “Evil” is not the only
alternative to “Good,” nor is someone who is self-indulgent with “Truth” (like
Smith) automatically, as Elizabeth Eagle claims in “An Introduction to the
Beginning,” a “consummate liar.”
In Eagle’s essay we can see the dehumanizing
effect on all parties that results from this sort of moral dualism. When she
presents a Native American population “with a
culture, religion, and a way of life that benefited their society without
destroying another's,” with a “balance to their way of life that resulted in
peaceful societies that found violence scarce and life to generally be as
peaceful as their early oral histories,” and contrasts it to “a culture that
prided itself on dominance and discovery and used their creation story as a way
to further their own selfish demands for wealth and lands,” she has reduced both
to the one-dimensional existence of characters in fairy tales and fables. In
this version of the story, we are forced into a Good/Evil opposition that has
little use for helping us to understand the complex social and economic networks
that begin to intertwine at first contact.
A more useful strategy
appears in Zara Gottschalk’s “Cotton Mather: A Man Who Should be Held in High
Esteem,” in which the author attempts a reconciliation between the opposing
biographical information about Mather by acknowledgement of his role as “a
prominent figure [who] aided in making the [Salem] situation a lot worse” before
building her case for his historical rehabilitation. She presents Mather as a
flawed but talented individual contextualized in his historical moment, which
offers us a starting point to begin piecing together a cohesive idea of the
defining American events in which he was enmeshed. As Gottschalk says, “Seeing a
much more well round[ed] view and perspective on Mather’s life leads one to
realize that he is not just the infamous man involved in the Salem Witch
Trials. He was a dominant figure
during a precarious time.” The concept of a more three-dimensional “human”
character is a first step past the inconclusive arguments of dualisms, even if
we are not yet thinking of people functioning in their relationships to each
other and their world (Rorty, McNamara).
Nora Haenggi (“European
Mythology”) and Josh Hughey (“Creation of Hostilities”) largely abandon concerns
over their subjects’ relative Goodness/Badness or Honesty/Dishonesty in favor of
the consideration of developmental processes and textual comparison. Hughey
makes clear that his interest in examining the origin myths of various Native
American tribes in comparison to the Europeans is to discover “why these groups
behaved the way they did. [It] is not meant to justify or condemn the actions of
any particular group but merely to try and understand them,” and Haenggi comes
to the broad conclusion that “human
history is one long blended story.”
A further thought pertaining to our evaluation of Early American texts is
that, although they are the products of real people experiencing real lives, at
five centuries’ remove all we are left with is a text containing characters who
are based on real people but who are not the actual people (McNamara).
Demonization or exaltation is of no use to literary characters, and whatever
interest they may have as “demigods” (It has always seemed to me that
controversy over the dissonance between the mythic Founding Fathers and the
flawed, historical Founding Fathers comes from not realizing that, although
based on the same real people, they are not the same characters. The mythic
Founding Fathers we learned about in elementary school serve a representational
function similar to the Greek gods.) is limited and specific in scope. The hope
for “one long blended story” of America is contingent upon cultivating the
ability to step past the emotionally-charged obstacles of the
“standard…problems…[,] both so intriguing and barren” (Rorty). The alternative,
as Elizabeth Eagle perceptively pointed out without realizing its full
significance, is “detrimental…because it [makes us] seem less than human and
destroy[s] any…attempts at reconcil[iation].”
Works Cited
Eagle, Elizabeth. “An Introduction
to the Beginning.”
Gottschalk, Zara. “Cotton Mather:
A Man Who Should be Held in High Esteem.”
Haenggi, Nora. “European
Mythology.”
Hughey, Josh. “Creation of
Hostilities.”
McNamara, Kevin. Class Lecture.
Rorty, Richard.
Philosophy and Social Hope. New York:
Penguin Books, 1999.
