LITR 5731 Seminar in American Multicultural Literature (Immigrant) UHCL summer 2006 web highlight

Thursday, 29 June 2006: The Pilgrims, the Hebrew model of national migration, and late Anglo-American culture / vertical immigration.

A sense of superiority classifies the Puritan outlook as well, as JH pointed out aptly in her midterm:

“In 1630, John Winthrop gave a speech upon the deck of the Arabella. In it he asserted, ‘For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.’ This quote of Winthrop’s speech is taken from the Bible in which Jesus tells his disciples, ‘You are the light of the world, a city set on a hill cannot be hid’ (Matthew, 5 14-16). …this description of America provides a backdrop for the American Dream” (2004 class website).

This hilltop lookout foreshadows the Air People of Raban’s essay, living far above the poor street people huddled on the ground. During the time when Raban visited the New York he writes about in Heartbreak, Reagan, a representative of the dominant culture, was president. Reagan borrowed the “city upon a hill” line often in his speeches, altering it to “a shining city.“ This became a symbol for financial ascendancy: a city of sparkly steel and glass skyscrapers enticing the culture‘s greed for more sparkly, glinting riches. It also hearkened back to the sense of being a chosen people, better than the rest, watched over by God.

In this section A.P. makes a brilliant connection, linking the idea of being elevated above people of other origins or customs to the seclusiveness of the dominant culture in present day New York. The Puritans viewed themselves, like the Hebrews of the Exodus, as a people who were set apart because they practiced a purity in their religion. They had the right God and the right way of living accordingly. In Heartbreak and 1980s America, the dominant culture is distinctive because of their lifestyle and how they live. (I think that Reagan incorporated this allusion as a way of defending democracy, setting it apart from Communism. in the same way, there is a way that is right and a way that falls short.)

The Pilgrim ideal of plainness in Plymouth offers a preview of the later dominant culture: unmarked, “avoiding as a deadly plague…all singularly affected any manner of way. Let every man repress in himself and the whole body in each affected….Be not shaken with unnecessary novelties or other oppositions” (57). This contrasts with what the Pilgrims find in Holland where the people’s “strange and uncouth language…with their strange fashions and attires, all so far differing from that of their plain country villages” (16), where they live their “plain country life” (11). Bradford endeavors, the introduction says, to write in “plain” language. Rejecting the ornate, ceremony-laden Catholic church, they “wanted, above all, to return to a simpler church,“ (xi), a plainer style, without icons or rococo designs and intricate rituals, just relying on the word of God. *The Pilgrims’ love of the plain style foreshadows the plainness of the dominant culture…

Raban marvels about the iconic status that Ralph Lauren reached in the 1980’s. Son of a house painter immigrant from Russian, Lauren grew up in North Bronx, one of many boroughs the Air People of would never visit. Yet, he styled his clothing line on how he thought, from watching PBS television, the upper crust of British society looked. He was a sweeping success, wildly popular and trend-setting. Describing the philosophy implicit in Lauren’s strange designs, Raban simultaneously describes the dominant culture. One can substitute dominant culture or Pilgrim for any spot where Lauren is used. They:

“recoiled from the melting pot. Ralph Lauren’s America was aggressively Anglo-Saxon. Nothing in it derived from Mediterranean Europe, let alone Afro- or Hispanic America. It was the Lowell-Cabot axis of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, pitched squarely against the teeming mass of blacks, browns, yellows and of-whites. When you kitted yourself out with Ralph Lauren in the paneled Club Room at Macy’s, you aligned yourself with the Mayflower versus the Rest….it was in flight from New York--from the dense streets, the mix of peoples, the electric up-to-dateness of the place. It was marketed as a ‘conservative’ vision--as a return to ‘the classic,’ the ‘things that endure,‘ to a ‘style beyond time’” (Raban 82-83).

Here A.P. characterizes the plainness or style and states its origin. The Puritans, desiring to distance themselves from the ornateness of the Catholic Church, simply relied on the Word of God in and of itself. This simplicity would lead to the culture of plainness set forth by the dominant culture of America. In the same way that the dominant culture moves forward economically and technologically yet harkens back to the past, so does the style of Ralph Lauren. It is, no doubt, a change in style from whatever preceded it, yet it is a change that brings back a simpler time – “the classic.” Styles have a cyclical trend still. Things tend to come in style that are reminiscent of a simpler time before. (e.g. Converse from the 60s – hardly a simple time)

Stemming from this detachment are the ideas of exclusivity and separateness. Much like the Hebrews in Exodus, the Pilgrims originally conceived their exclusivity as means to perpetuate their ideology and reinforce their faith through monotheism, the discouragement of intermarriage, and an emphasis on the nuclear family. However, over time the concept developed to create a social hierarchy, which at its most corrupt materializes as a dominant elite. In Raban’s story, for instance, plain has become pristine, and the ascent above the firmament takes on material rather than spiritual connotations. In effect, the “air people”- the haves, and the “street people” – the have-nots, exist in parallel universes, and somewhere in between the vast majority ekes out a living in a system far removed from the ideals of the pilgrims’ collective altruism (CR 2002). In the “high-altitude” society of Raban’s story, the DC has become an aberration of itself, a perversion of the American Dream, the domain of the rich and the powerful to which only the select minority can assimilate.

Y.H. acknowledges the evolution of the idea of exclusivity. In keeping with the ideals of the Puritans, the dominant culture maintains its exclusivity, yet it has become more materialistic and consumer oriented. In essence, though the idea of exclusivity has remained, the morals upon which this was based have mutated. I would argue that it is more than a select minority that can assimilate. I think the dominant culture is more vast than this person makes it out to be. Though, through the eyes of the peddler and the immigrant, it does seem like a very demanding and oppressive standard.

William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation is an excellent text for the conceptualization and contextualization of the dominant culture. It differs greatly from the immigrant narrative because it complies with stages 1, 2, of the immigrant narrative; however, stages 3 (shock, discrimination, and resistance), 4 (assimilation to dominant culture and loss of ethnic identity), and stage 5 (rediscovery of ethnic identity) are completely revamped by the Puritans in Bradford’s history. Because the Puritans sought immigration to America as a religious duty and calling, they did not see the Native American culture as a dominant culture that could viably constrain them. (According to Bradford, the “unpeopled countries of America” were only “inhabited” by “savage and brutish men”.) Additionally, the pre-migration resources (strong middle class communities and literate families) and the fierce motivations of the Puritans (to be “holy and set apart”) aided the Puritans in creating a dominant culture with high morals and strong family values. Consequently, as they came to America and began to promote a new civilization of America, the Puritans evolved into the dominant culture and had no reason to assert an ethnic identity. They had literally become the American standard. Yet, the longer that the Puritans remained in the “promised land,” they became more economically oriented. Bradford ominously refers to this as the Puritans loss of innocence.

I chose this section because it discusses the stages of immigration the Puritans went through. Because the Puritans migrated with a large group, they did not experience the later stages of immigration like experiencing discrimination, assimilating, and rediscovering their ethnic identity. This section attributes the determination in Puritans to maintain their culture to their strong, educated families and their desire to be “holy and set apart.” It also notes the beginning of a change when the Puritans become more “economically oriented.”