LITR 4232 American Renaissance

Sample Midterm Answers 2004

Option Z: Cultural / historical option

How has literature of the American Renaissance challenged or developed your ideas of American culture or history and the role of literature in shaping and understanding it?

·        Refer to at least 3 texts from our readings. Compare and contrast authors and texts with each other.

·        You might choose 3 or more texts that chart the range of cultural history represented by American Renaissance literature. (Your three texts might handle different issues that come together to make a wide picture of American culture.)

·        Or you might align three or more texts that deal with a single issue or identity, e. g., American Indians, abolition of slavery, women’s rights, literacy / education, gaining a voice, American identity, etc. (Don’t feel limited to this list. Try out an idea that matters to you.)

·        Remember this is a Literature course and emphasize the language being used, issues of literacy or voice, or other elements that link literature and language with culture and history

·        Conclude strongly: What have you proved or learned about our past and present by reading literature and cultural history together?

What love exists in the heart of a man that would kill another in enjoyment?  What kindness can be found in the hearts of these slaveholders that are so vividly portrayed by the writings of people like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Beecher Stowe?  The South prided itself on its spiritual supremacy.  Christians would gather every Sunday for worship and would pray around the table.  But what was this religion of the South? Could it have been what Christ intended?  These authors explore the hypocrisy of the slaveholders and the affliction of the enslaved.

            Frederick Douglass wrote mockingly of this phenomenon in his autobiography.  “I assert most unhesitatingly that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, - a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, - a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds.” There was inside of Douglass the knowledge of the true teachings of Christ, and in the lives of the slaveholders, there was no humility, there was no service.  In the slaveholder’s mind was found superiority and pride, expectations to be served by others, and indignation at the thought of serving others.  So the unknowing slave was manipulated by the twisting of scripture.  Douglass, however, saw through it. 

Similarly, Harriet Beecher Stowe made comment on the injustice of slavery.  Uncle Tom, a benevolent slave in the hands of an unmerciful master was willing to die to give others the knowledge of Christ, “I’d give (my blood) freely as the lord gave his for me.  Oh Mas’r! Don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than ‘t will me!  Do the worst you can, my troubles’ll be over soon; but if ye don’t repent, yours wont Never end!”  The slave poured out the most sincere concern could and it was returned with hatred and violence.  Stowe speaks to her country in the next couple of paragraphs crying out to her country and to Christ. “O, Christ! Thy church sees them, almost in silence!” The church was a cover, as Douglass stated.  It was an enabler, a crutch on which the wicked would hold themselves high.  I can imagine they were much like the Pharisees when Christ said, “Your lips speak my name, but your hearts are far from me.”  Vanity and self-gain motivated these people, not the building up of the glory and the kingdom of God. Stowe’s treatment of the subject was so beautiful it could almost be read as a psalm. 

A midterm from 2003 stated this about Sojouner Truth’s religious conversion, “she spoke of direct experience with God and brought to any forum a wisdom and insight that only years and excruciating experience could lend, she spoke of the present life as merely a fleeting thought and of her experiences with God as painfully ecstatic.”  Sojourner Truth was a woman on a mission to spread the real religion that is a relationship with Christ, not ritual on Sundays to feel good about what you do the rest of the week, but a life changing, humbling experience with a savior.  'Lord, Lord, I can love even de white folks!' this must have been a great revelation indeed due to the suffering herself and her people endured during this stain on the American history. 

This topic obviously has significance to me and challenges me to never use my religious conviction for my own pride or gain.  That is the greatest injustice a person can do, to take what is meant to give hope and use it for personal gain.  That is what these writers did, they brought hope back to the name of Christ.  It had so long been used to ensnare them that they had never considered that it could set them free. [DD]

The founders of America successfully formed a political divide from England, but never sought an intellectual divide. They still acted like wannabe noblemen, read British writings, and followed British moral guidelines. For example, they did not at first deny the divine right of King George, but questioned whether it applied to people separated by an ocean. After what they viewed as repeated injustices by the king and Parliament, they invoked John Locke’s social contract theory.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Harriet Beecher Stowe appealed to their countrymen to reexamine the way they think. Emerson advocated a spiritual and philosophical re-examination; Thoreau, innovation in political philosophy; and Stowe, in moral thought regarding slavery.

As “D.D.” said in his midterm essay last semester, Emerson’s message was to “resist conformity.” The British/European tradition of thought was not the breath of life a young nation needed. Americans should learn to think for themselves, he said, informed by the past but not enslaved by it. Religion was not something to receive blindly; we should instead seek to experience the divine for ourselves. Social traditions can be corruptive if they were mere traditions; a return to nature is life-affirming.

Thoreau, in Resistance to Civil Government, took Emerson’s basic premise and formed a new view of political opposition. Previously, war was the supreme alternative to injustice. Thoreau challenged this. If the government is unjust, do not support it, he said. Civil disobedience can be a peaceful alternative to war, especially against a powerful government who would win easy victory in battle, although this was not Thoreau’s point. To him, civil disobedience allowed the dissenter to retain the high ground. Jail-time is no shame to an honest man serving an honorable cause.

Harriet Beecher Stowe urged Americans to re-examine their moral thought.regarding Christianity and slavery. She did this in Uncle Tom’s Cabin by making “heroes out of people normally despised,” the slaves (as recorded by William Frith in Spring 2001. By depicting African-Americans not only as people, but as potentially heroic people whom we can feel a great deal of sympathy and admiration for, she challenged her generation to re-examine their perceptions of race. Slaves were people, she implied, and people are made in God’s image, therefore the slaves were also made in God’s image. Unlike Thoreau, she is not advocating a major revolution in thought, so much as she is advocating American Christians to be consistent in their thinking. If God loves people, then he loves blacks, and so should we. And if we love them, why should we allow them to continue in horrible bondage?

In summary, Emerson, Thoreau, and Stowe issued challenges to their readers and their country to change the way certain things were thought about. They, along with many others of their period, formed what is now called the American Renaissance, in which the American identity was liberated from British tradition and thought. [BL]

One of the important changes in my understanding of American slavery has come about due to the readings in this course.  One of the main misconceptions I have had about slaves is that they were educated.  Maybe they did not have the type of intellectual education obtained through schooling, but I was completely unaware of the lack of social education about white people, especially religion.  In “Sojourner Truth, The Libyan Sibyl”,  Harriet Beecher Stowe remembers Truth’s recounting of the first moment she realized that white people had an understanding of Jesus:  “But, Sojourner, had you never been told about Jesus Christ?” “No, honey, I hadn’t heerd no preachin’,-been to no meetin’. Nobody hadn’t told me.  I’d kind o’ heard of Jesus, but thought he was like Gineral Lafayette….But one night there was a Methodist meetin.. ‘Why,’ says I to myself, ‘dat man’s found him too.”  Not only did Stowe not comprehend that Truth had not had this kind of social education, Truth did not realize that the social education existed.  This kind of noncommunication is a result of the decision on the part of white Americans that Africans were unintelligent and not worthy of any type of communication beyond orders.  This is evident in “The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” when Douglass discusses overhearing his Master Mr. Auld saying to his wife, “A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master…”  This instance was in response to Mrs. Auld being caught teaching Douglass to read. 

In Bryan Peterson’s class presentation on 9-14-04 he quotes Professor Craig White as saying, “Past people struggled with and partly resolved chronic human problems such as equality, difference, spirit & matter, etc., and future people will too… our own struggles and resolutions can benefit from knowing previous struggles.”  It is quite interesting how often the struggles of each other’s cultures were ignored on both parts of the white/ black American relationship.  Sojourner Truth was perhaps the first person to make a true connection of how those relationships can be forged, that there was a common bond possible between both sides. 

In the spring 2002 sample answers to the midterm exam in essay section in the cultural/historical option one student writes “Black Americans were powerful voices as many stood and spoke with the authority of scripture, pointed questions, and the moving stories of the horrible experiences as slaves.  Along with Bible scripture served to interanimate each other so that they all might be heard.”  The reason scripture was so powerful is because it was a perfect form to relate to both black and white Americans.  Both groups had an understanding of the scripture as truth.  In fact, Sojourner Truth used the scripture powerfully throughout her sermon style speeches.  One very famous speech in which she utilizes scripture was “Speech at New York City Convention” where she utilizes the scriptural teaching of Queen Esther to relate the importance of women’s rights.  She stated “The women want their rights as Esther” reiterating her point that these rights are not only biblical but universally important.  It was the great thinking of people like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass who could use their experiences of understanding another culture and relating it to the Bible that led Americans of all colors to unity.  This important lesson is not lost on any of us as we learned how the power of a common belief system will help to promote a cause. [JL]