I have gained an immense appreciation for the richness and depth of American literature through my study of it over this past semester. The texts I have studied have been so engaging because of how historically charged and thought-provoking they are. Some of the areas of American literature that I have studied included transcendentalism, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, native and African American writing, as well as works of modernism, the Beat Generation and postmodernism. Through the collective study of these works I have come to realise that America is undeniably a nation of paradoxes.
In my first blog I took inspiration from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson as stated in his essay Nature; “Nature always wears the colours of the spirit”. These words hold immense relevance for me because I find that my everyday life is ultimately an embodiment of them. Emerson in his essay Nature, utilises a variety of paradoxes to evoke the higher reasoning and ways of thinking that must be activated to be attuned to nature and the solitude it can offer. When my mind is open and I am optimistic, I find that I am more able to be attuned to my surroundings beyond a superficial level of seeing. I mentioned in my first blog that “it is the spirit of man that dresses and styles the world around him in a way that is synchronous with the happenings in his life at the time.” This means that ones sees the world in the way they style it. They either have the ability to dress it up as dull and unimpressive or explosive and extraordinary with their minds. I used imagery and descriptions of my experience of camping as a child at Turon Gates to really bring this idea to life.
Image taken from our campsite at Turon Gates.
In my second blog, I then discussed the portraits of George Washington and King George III. I talked about the fact that the paintings are symbolic portrayals of the nature of both figures.
Image taken from: https://michaelgriffith1.com/2019/07/30/american-literature-2019-session-1/ .
The work of George Washington included him with direct gaze, representing the fact that in his leadership he had the the American people in his field of view and he was an advocate for them. Contrastingly, King George III is depicted with extravagant clothing and an indirect gaze, conveying his detachment from the interests of the people he lead. I also highlighted the context of these works with the fact that America was freed from the oppression and tyranny of King George III when the United States Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776. It is paradoxical that America liberated itself from the shackles of British rule but have now found themselves in the hands of Donald Trump, who is caught up in the “dusty desert of dollars and smartness”.
The above quotation comes from my third blog on Du Bois, who glorified African Americans as the souls of America. They are much more in touch with their spirituality than most white Americans. America’s paradoxical nature is again affirmed through the fact that these same people who were once committed to slavery, use jazz music and other forms of expression to liberate themselves and project their spirit.
Similarly, Ezra Pound uses form as a means of liberation in his poem In a Station of the Metro. Blog Four discusses his shift away from conventional literary forms of expression, which was an ideal of the modernism movement. He does this by adopting a minimalist form that is characterised by a montage of quick contrasting images. Taking inspiration from In a Station of the Metro, I attempted two of my own poems of the same style:
Waves crashing and crushing the vulnerable sand,
Each whitewash a by-product of the tender kiss between land and sea.
Stuck inside the pot, stirred the chicken in the stock
Bursting to bounce out of the boiling bubbles, back to life.
To finish off, my fifth blog then examined the poem Illustration by John Ashbury. This work confronted me with the idea that a world that is swept up in the midst of materialism and empty relationships is meaningless. The nun committed suicide in an attempt to escape from the shallow world she saw herself surrounded by. Her death was a means of immortalising herself so that she would long be remembered on a deeper level for the life she lead.
From the rule of King George III, slavery and preoccupation with materialism to the transcendental experiences that are described in the essays of Emerson and Thoreau, it can undeniably be deduced that America has comprised a wealth of differing states and experiences. It is a nation of paradox.
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