Tim O'Brien and the Vietnam experience

Tim O'Brien is an American writer who, drafted to serve in Vietnam, was so deeply affected by the experience that he draws heavily on it in his fiction.

What follows is an outline of the main events in this war that affected so deeply a whole generation of Americans (and which left a terrible mark on the Vietnamese people).

* In 1954, the French were driven out of Vietnam by Ho Chi Minh’s soldiers.
Vietnam was divided into two: Communists ruled the North, and non-Communists the South.

* There should have been elections, which did not take place due to Southern fear that Ho Chi Minh would win.
* Ho Chi Minh set out to unite Vietnam through war.
* Americans intervened as part of their policy to stop the spred of communism worldwide. (Containment policy)
* The Vietnam war was one of ambushes and sudden attacks.

* Ordinary villagers fought the war.
* It was a guerrilla war, difficult for Americans.
* By the early 1960s, it was clear that South Vietnam, suported by the American government, was losing the war.
* Yet, the war would go on for more than a decade. (until 1973-1975)
American fighting men grew angry and frustrated. They burnt towns and sprayed napalm (deadly chemicals) againts the Vietcong soldiers and villages.

* There were peace marchs all over the USA.
* In 1973, during Nixon's presidency, the last American soldier left Vietnam. However, the war would be over only in 1975, when Ho Chi Minh's victorious tanks eneterd the city of Saigon.

As said above, Tim O'Brien relies heavily on his war experience to write much if his fiction. "How to Tell a True War Story" is a good example of this, together with a text with many traits of metafiction.
What is metafiction?
“Metafiction is a self-reflexivity prompted by the author’s awareness of the theory underlying the construction of fictional works.” (Patricia Waugh)

Relation with other arts: There are many movies which depict the Vietnam War from several perspectives. A great -very interesting one- is Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now! which turns Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness into a Vietnam War experience.
You may watch the original trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt0xxAMTp8M

William Faulkner: Yoknapatawpha's Chronicler

Ethnic Literatures

The idea of a melting pot in which all cultures mix and melt has long been left aside. Instead, the metaphor of the mosaic is more commonly used to refer to American culture: a country where different cultures coexist, side by side; each contributing to the whole, but keeping at the same time their distinctiveness. This acceptance and respect of diversity has led to the description of America as MULTICULTURAL society. The main ethnic groups that are part of America's multiculturalism are African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. These terms are, of course, quite imprecise, as immigrants from Asia came from different countries, African slaves were brught from several parts of Africa, Hispanics may be of any of many Latin American countries, and Native Americans have very different ancestries, languages, cultures, etc.

                                                                Amy Tan


Louise Erdrich

The Dream Deferred: Lorraine Hansberry and the echoes of Langston Hughes' Poetry

The history of African Americans was marked by deep injustices (starting with slavery, which was abolished in 1865; followed by legal segregation, in practice until 1965; and its various manifestations which attempted against the social and civil rights, and even the identity of a whole people.

Against such a negative background, artists among other members of the African American community played an important role in defining identity in positive termns, fighting for recognition of equal rights, and contributiing to the richness, diversity and multi-voiced character of American multicultural art.

Lorraine Hansberry, a playwright commited to the African American cause, wrote her paly A Raisin in the Sun which was produced in 1959 for the first time. The play takes its title from a poem by Langston Hughes. He was one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Below you can read Hughes' text:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

This poem plays with the idea of the dream (the American dream, which has been part of American life, history, ideology and society from the very beginning); only that his series of rhetorical questions turn the "dream" inside-out: what happens when people cannot reach their dream? when it is postponed?

Lorraine Hansberry's play is an attempt to answer the question. The dream may take different forms in each character's case, but they're all unified by the desire of equality.

As you read the play, take into consideration the following ideas:
* The dream(s)
* Asagai's role in helping define dreams and identity
* Realism vs. idealism
* Vanished dreams
* Death (real ans symbolic)
* Role of men. Manhood

And think deeply about the following questions:
* Is Lena a nurturing or an overbearing mother?
* How does the nature of the family account for the dreams they have?
* Which economic, social and moral pressures do the characters feel?

e. e. cummings

Two of T. S. Eliot's Ariel Poems

T. S. Eliot was born in St Louis, MO; but decided to become a British subject. His poetry, drama, criticism and poetics are informed by the love of tradition, in which he found the roots of humanity and the solution to the devastation of the modern world. (This devastation is clearly seen in The Waste Land, especially in the last section: the image of the falling towers, for example, is particularly significant to readers who witnessed WWI, but it also speaks to 21st-century readers who recall contemporary wars or terrorist attacks). In British Literature we read his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent." When Eliot speaks of tradition, he refers to literary tradition, but also to the arts in general, to languages, religions, history... All these elements can be found in his poetry. He creates a new work of art with materials derived from a pre-existing tradition, which is resignified from the perspective of the modern world. This is clearly seen in his Ariel Poems, from which we have selected the first two.

(Benozzo Gozzoli's "Journey of the Magi", 15th century) In class we read and analyzed "Journey of the Magi", in which one of the Three Wise Men recalls the hardships of the journey to find the baby Jesus. Both the popular story's and the biblical account's details are the point of departure for a text which is, in fact, a reflecion on the disappointment of modern man. In "A Song for Simeon" we hear another biblical character speak: Simeon was an old man who had been promised that he would not die until he saw the savior. So, when he witnessed Jesus' presentation at the temple, and after telling Mary that a sword would pierce her heart (a direct reference to the crucifixion), he let God know that now he could die, after all, since he had seen Salvation. (Just as the Magi, he had an epiphany, and was able to realize that the baby Jesus was the Saviour). Eliot, once more, recreates the hopeful account of the Bible and transforms it into a disillusioned discourse, the words of an old man who sees not salvation, but a painful future for his descendants. The peace that he asks God is not the biblical Peace, but the peace of death, where he wishes to find forgetfulness (in a way, the last line of "Journey of the Magi", which goes "I should be glad of another death", has an echo in Simeon's poem). And just like in the previous poem, here Simeon, who sees the baby Jesus, has visions of the future (the scourges, lamentations, the time of sorrow...). The "birth season of decease" recalls the similar paradox in "Journey of the Magi". Both speakers are old, tired, disillusioned, and even if their promises have been fulfilled, the results are not what they expected.

(An Armenian icon depicting the meeting of Simeon and the Holy Family in the temple) That is why we may say these two poems can be read as companions: we may compare the poetic personae, the setting, the allusions, the tone, and several other elements. In both poems, you may see the exotic, Oriental presence (the girls bringing sherbet, or the hyacinths), the desacaralized biblical allusions, which are given a new meaning that speaks of the modern world and its disillusioned inhabitants, and the "small biography" of each poetic persona who speaks about his past, present and future. ASSIGNMENT N 4,to be handed in in class on Monday, October 26th. Write an essay in which you analyze one of the following topics on BOTH "Journey of the Magi" and "A Song for Simeon": a. Eliot's use of biblical allusions. b. The poems' re-writing of biblical stories from a modern perspective. c. The lyric subject: the mask and modern man. d. The 2 poetic personae's "small biographies" in their dramatic monologues.

T. S. Eliot and his dramatic monologues