Contemporary Novel

I read Selected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay for my contemporary novel. Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine and went to college at Vassar. She wrote many poems through out her life and was highly acclaimed for them. Through her poems you can tell that Millay lived her own aspects of the American dream.
Millay liked to experience the world around her fully and she would strive for anything; in her poem Renascence she said:

“The sky I thought is not so grand;

I ‘most could touch it with my hand!

And reaching up my hand to try, 

I screamed to feel it touch the sky.”

Millay always looked for her own way of life. In her poem The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge she explains how her parents differed in ideas and from then on she always made her own choices.

“And yanked both ways by my mother and my father,

With a ‘Which would you better?’ and a ‘Which would you rather?’

With him for a sire and her for a dam,

What should I be but just what I am?”

Edna Millay was a feminist and believed fully in perusing what she wanted, and she became the first woman poet to win a Pulitzer Prize. She always did as she pleased or what she thought was best. Portrait by a Neighbor shows her independence and her insistence to do only what she wanted.

“Before she has her floor swept

Or her dishes done,

Any day you’ll find her

A-sunning in the sun!

It’s long after midnight

Her key’s in the lock,

And you never see her chimney smoke

Till past ten o’clock!”

Edna St. Vincent Millay lived maybe not how most people would find decent, especially in the 1920’s; but she lived with her own ideas, beliefs, wonders and passions. Part of the American dream is to be able to live unoppressed in your customs and beliefs, which Edna Millay did and expressed in her poetry.



Source:
Selected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. New York, NY: Gramercy Books, 2006.

Frederick Douglass: Thematic Question

How do you think Douglass' autobiography helped to promote an end to the evil institution of slavery in the United States?

Frederick Douglass’ autobiography caused quite a stir among Americans when it was published in 1845. Many people in the North did not know what slavery was like, and even more had never heard about it first hand from some one who had lived in it. Frederick’s autobiography detailed his life from as much as he knew about his early years and parentage through his struggles as a slave and all the injustice he had seen up to his escape and freedom.

Most people who read the autobiography were shocked and appalled at the events of cruelty and mistreatment of the slaves. Children were taken from their mothers at birth in what Frederick could only explain as “to hinder development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child.” Slaves were often brutally beaten to the point of their faces or bodies becoming disfigured. Frederick wrote of a female slave he had met who was “So much…kicked and cut to pieces that she was oftener called “pecked” than by her name.” Slaves were beaten and underfed in most cases but worse than that to Frederick was that they were not educated, and would be in a vast amount of trouble if found trying to educate themselves. Frederick realized at a young age that slaves were kept in ignorance to keep them as slaves.

The complete exposure of the cruelties in the narrative written by an eye witness who had experienced some of the horrors himself was extremely jarring to those who read it. The words that Frederick wrote coaxed anti slavery feelings into a blaze. His autobiography was support for abolitionists who were already campaigning for the end of slavery, but it also won supporters to the cause who otherwise would not have know much about slavery.

When Frederick reached his freedom in the North he dedicated the rest of his life to help in promoting the end of slavery and advocating equality for all races as well as women. He delivered many speeches but eventually there was suspicion as to if he ever really was a slave; that maybe it was just a clever act to win supporters. By writing his autobiography, Frederick was able to put down that idea and continue speaking and writing believed.

The autobiography was popular and translated into many languages and was read in America and many other countries besides. The autobiography won the anti slavery movement supporters through out Europe and America. The wide spread popularity of Frederick’s life story brought him much popularity especially with European women. The European women bought Frederick’s freedom and were able to get him a printing press as well for him to further promote the end of slavery.

Frederick Douglass’ autobiography helped to promote the end of slavery in the United States by providing many people who did not have a good understanding of what was going on in the world of slavery much needed reliable insight. It proved that Frederick was who he claimed to be and that he had a right to speak out against all the awful things he saw. It also gave Frederick the popularity that allowed him to continue writing, publishing, speaking, and convincing people of the wrongs of slavery for the rest of his life.


Source:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 1997.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Author's Intent

Dee Brown was a librarian and then became a professor of library science. He died at the age of ninety-four but in his life time wrote many books that have to do with frontier life and Native Americans. His most famous and best selling book was Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which tells the Indian’s side of the Americans settling the west.

Brown was not an Indian himself or of Native American decent, but he grew up in an area where there were many Native Americans. He would hear their stories of their past and ancestors and he realized that the history usually learned and the way the media portrayed the Indians was not the same as the stories he heard. He did research and wrote Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee to expose much of the treatment of the Indians that wasn’t widely known and to show how the Indians felt about what was happening to them at that time.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee details how many Europeans worked to settle the land in the west and most in an unpeaceful manner towards the Indians. Many bloody battles were had and reservations set up. Many Indians who tried to act peaceably with the Europeans were misused. When peace treaties were made they were usually broken, or made with unreasonable demands on the Indians. At the Battle of Wounded Knee, which is considered one of the last major European Indian battles, the Indians gave up their arms in hope of avoiding major conflict, the English cruelly massacred men women and children. In the book Dee Brown quotes Louise Weasel Bear who said “We tried to run but they shot us like we were a buffalo.”

When Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was published in 1970 many people were unaware of much of the cruelty that the Indians had suffered and little was known about their culture as well. The contents of the book shocked many people as they learned the little spoken of truths. People were able to see and better understand the Indian motives and culture, and with both stories, the European’s and the Native American’s, were better able to understand the whole picture of the settling of the west.

Dee Brown wrote his book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee to express the little known standpoint of the Indians during the early years of America. From it a depiction of Native American history and culture was finally seen by many people who had never heard it, and since then Native Americans are better understood.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: Thematic Question 2

What does the victor owe the defeated after a conflict?

The accounts of history are more often written by the victors than the defeated; and many times the defeated has no voice at all. The motives, plans, and excuses of the triumphant are the ones most told and because of this the winning side is often seen as the side that deserved the victory.

The Europeans that came into the new world of America came for different reasons. Some wanted religious or political freedom, some money, some adventure, and others any opportunity they could find. Once they came they began setting up their settlements, towns and trading posts. The Europeans wanted the American land because they saw how untainted it was and how much potential it had.

The settlers brought their culture and ideas with them to America to set up along with their homes. They established their churches, stores and schools to make the land into a livable and acceptable society. All of the Europeans had their ideas of how people should behave and the world should be run and were going to do what it took to make the new land what they believed it should be.

Most of the Europeans believed that the Indians were in the way. The Indians were a hindrance to what many of the Europeans were trying to do in America. The Indians did not dress or behave the way the Europeans did and they were on the land that the Europeans wanted. The Europeans were trying to progress and many found the Indians were backwards and needed to be civilized or taken care of in another way. When changing the Indians did not work some found it not only necessary but justifiable to move or destroy them by violence.

The Indians lived on the European’s new land; but it wasn’t new to them. The Indians had lived there for centuries before. They knew and loved the land that their ancestors had lived on before them and were buried in. It was sacred to many of them. The Indians watched as the Europeans came on to their land and set up their lives. The Europeans spoke, dressed and behaved different than the Indians did. The Indians saw the Europeans pushing in to their lands, and often without kindness.

Some Indians tried to welcome the white people, and some did the opposite, but in the end it didn’t matter; the white people began trying to change the Indians. Some Indians changed willingly, but others did not understand or want the European ways. The Indians saw themselves as being oppressed as the Europeans tried to press their ways upon them.

The Indians wanted to live their lives in their culture, but were met with aggression from the Europeans who found them unruly and in the way. The Indians who wanted to live their lives as they had before the white people arrived, and the Indians who refused to leave the land of their fathers found themselves in the midst of violence, reservations, terror, massacres, and eventually, a form of defeat. The Europeans succeeded in wiping out or pushing aside the Indians that lived on the land first.

The victorious party owes the defeated it’s story. When the Europeans killed or moved the last of the Indians and began telling the stories and writing the histories of America; how and why the Indians were displaced, the Indians should have been able to speak as well. The victorious owes the defeated the ability to tell the world and the people to come their motives, feelings, and reasons for fighting the battles they lost.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Thematic Question #1

Why does the story of “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” begin in 1492?

In 1492 Columbus set out on a sea journey, on a route that he believed would lead him to the East Indies. He traveled under the financial aid of Spain, hoping that his way would make a better trade route. When Columbus landed on the 12th of October, he was convinced that he had landed in India. In fact, he was standing on a whole different continent that most of his world had no idea existed.

Believing he was in India, Columbus called the people native to the land he was now on “Indios” or Indians; thinking that they were people of India. Even after the realization that the land was not India, the name had already been used many times and stayed. This was the first misunderstanding of many that separated many of the new settlers from the Native Americans.

Columbus sailed back to Europe and told of the land he had found and the people he had found there. The Spanish began to send explorers and missionaries to this new land; and some Spaniards went on their own in search of gold or mysterious fountains. This was the beginning of the rush of Europeans that streamed into the Americas.

English and French were quick to follow, spreading into the land already occupied by the Indians. With Spanish, English and French men all coming into the Indian territories, confusion, hostility, misunderstanding and change for both parties was certain. The English however, seemed to have the most conflict and lasting changes with the Indians; or so it would read from a history book.

The culture of the Indians was drastically different from the culture of the English; and neither group understood the other. Wamditanka an Indian of the Santee Sioux said “The whites were always trying to make the Indians give up their life and live like the white men…If the Indians had tried to make the whites live like them, the whites would have resisted, and it was the same with many Indians.” When the English came and saw the ways in which the Indians lived, they did try to change them, in many different ways; but almost all ended up in violence.

Some Indians complied with the white English people’s requests; others started out seeking good will with the white men, but became fed up with their forceful and often cheating ways, and some never tried at all. Red Cloud said: “If white men come into my land again, I will punish them again.” In almost all cases the confrontations or submissions ended in Indians being pushed out of their land, or bloody fights.

The fights and battles between the English and the Indians only escalated and became bloodier their treatment of each other only worsened. The Indians adopted the European weapons when they could but not their culture and the Europeans would not let the Indians be in their culture and continued to try and move change or kill them.

When Columbus landed in America by mistake he could hardly have known that he was going to start the first wave of countless Europeans that would come to the land; but it was the beginning. Europeans came with their ideas and wants and found the Indians to either need changing or to be moved out of their way, and when this wasn’t as easy as they wished it to be, loss and bloodshed followed, escalating up to the point of the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was a slave in the 1800’s. He hardly knew his mother before she died due to the separation between parents that usually occurred for all slaves. He was never sure who his father was, though it was whispered that it was his own master. If it was his master who parented him, it did not help him against the cruelties of slavery; and wasn’t expected to, as very few of the mulatto slaves were helped in any way by their white parents. As Frederick said, “slave holders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers”. Frederick did follow his mother into slavery, and met much harsh treatment and saw many things starting at an early age. Frederick wrote the events of his life to show people the cruelties, injustices, and unchristian ways of slavery.

When Frederick was sent to Baltimore, he found he was living with a mistress much less experienced in the ways of slavery, and from her he learned his letters. This was a crucial point in his life. Besides getting the foundations of his learning, this brief teaching from his mistress showed him the biggest reason why the white people were able to enslave his race. Education leads to freedom; or at the very least a greater hunger for it. The more he read, the more he began to fully realize the horrors of slavery and how completely unreasonable, and inexcusable it was and resolved not to stay in slavery forever and to escape when the best chance came; or die trying. Frederick learned the arguments against slavery and placed them beside his own experiences to see the truth. He wrote about this to show the world what they didn’t want to see.

Where ever Frederick was he saw cruel treatment of slaves. Countless horrific episodes or comments are scattered through out the pages of his life. He wrote about the first terrifying scene he saw that, “he made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook…her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood on the ends of her toes…he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin and soon the warm red blood came dripping to the floor.” Beatings were not the only offences that slaves endured, lack of food, separation from families and friends, and verbal abuse were also very common. Frederick watched this happen to those around him and felt the pains himself. He wrote all these things so people could really see what was happening and could not deny the cruelty without a stone heart. He wrote so the tortures his fellow slaves endured wouldn’t slip by without any notice at all.

Often, through out the writings of his life, Frederick spoke out on how unchristian the ways of slavery are. He was appalled by the cruelty of his Methodist masters who professed that they had great faith and were very religious, sometimes even twisting scripture to justify themselves. Frederick went as far as to say that “Were I again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that of enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me.” He could not accept the things that these slave holders would do as anything but far from Christian. After reading pieces from the book The Columbian Orator, such as a narrative between slave and master and speeches on Catholic emancipation, he knew it wasn’t Christian; and wrote to prove it.

Frederick Douglass knew first hand the inhumanity of slavery, and just escaping himself was not enough for him. Thousands of other slaves were still suffering, and their children looked to the same fate. Many people in the North did not know the full extent of the horrors of slavery. He wrote the truth of slavery. He wrote all the events in his life so that they would be exposed undeniably, and the world, after seeing would be held accountable to change its ways.