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(2015
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2015 #2b: Short Essay (Favorite Term) |
LITR 4328 |
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Jennifer Robles
Sentiment vs Sentimentality: A Sign of True Artistry
On the first day of class, Dr. White posed the
question “could any works of literature in today’s world become classics?”
Most people could not come up with a definitive
response.
I wondered why certain pieces of literature had
withstood the test of time.
What made them special in regards to other
works during the same period?
I knew in my mind that I called these classics
“timeless,” their general themes knew no space or time and the ideology will
always permeate society.
But this idea seemed rather broad, what was
special about these themes?
Then we were introduced to the concept of
sentiment versus sentimentality and everything seemed to come together.
We see sentimentality in many of today’s works,
and most likely, it was in many works of times before.
Sentimentality is the cheap thrill to our
emotions, an instant gratification and a mass appeal to everyone who witnesses
it.
We can count on sentimentality to make everyone feel
the same way. If a commercial comes on with starving children, we all feel
sorrow. Sentimentality looks to manufacture emotions and lay it out clear as day
how the reader should feel.
Maria Susanna Cummins fabricates how the
audience should feel about Nan Grant in
The Lamplighter, leaving no room for the reader to find their own conclusion
about her.
Nan Grant is a one-dimensional character whose
only purpose is to be the mean, bitter antagonist to sweet, innocent Gerty:
“Gerty heard a sudden splash and a piercing cry. Nan had flung the poor creature
into a large vessel of steaming hot water. The poor animal writhed an instant,
then died in torture.” What member of Cummins audience will ever have a
differing image of Nan Grant as a horrible person?
This is sentimentality at its finest,
constructing exactly how the audience should feel.
A one-dimensional character cannot be timeless
as it simply is not realistic.
Somewhere or something in Nan Grant’s life made
her the way she is and if the audience knew Nan Grant in a deeper way, all would
not be able to draw the same conclusion of her.
Not many people know Cummins’ Nan Grant, but if
she would have made her a multi-faceted character, perhaps many people could
have seen her through the eyes of someone they knew.
Truly timeless literature comes in the art of
making people relate, feel or debate.
People are always talking about it because it
is relevant.
That is what sentiment does.
Sentiment builds from an internal human emotion
and is not produced in the same way.
The author that uses sentiment will not tell
the audience what to feel.
One reader may gain a different perspective
than another reader.
Susan Warner demonstrates sentiment beautifully
in The Wide, Wide World.
In contrast to Cummins cold, one-dimensional
Nan, Warner shows that Ellen’s father is much more than one dimensional: “He
found her lying very much as her mother had left her,—in the same quiet sleep,
and with the same expression of calmness and peace spread over her whole face
and person. It touched even him,—and he was not readily touched by anything;—it
made him loath to say the word that would drive all that sweet expression so
quickly and completely away. It must be said, however; the increasing light
warned him he must not tarry; but it was with a hesitating and almost faltering
voice that he said, "Ellen!" He exhibits a coldness just as Cummins’ character
but Warner demonstrates true artistry and gives him true humanity to counter
that cold.
Is he a bad character?
Does the entire audience have the same feeling
towards him?
No.
Some people may know someone like him, some may
even be him.
Sentiment is the tool that keeps literature
thriving.
We pick up controversial pieces or reexamine
characters to find deeper meanings.
They are not predetermined ideas that lay it
all out for us; if they did, we would read it once and never have anything to
discuss.
Discussion keeps books alive and sentiment adds to
that richness of deep, intellectual dialogue.
That is what will determine the classics of our
future.
