Luận văn Discuss some of the most prominent aspects of the culture and society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries

Luận văn Discuss some of the most prominent aspects of the culture and society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries Luận văn Discuss some of the most prominent aspects of the culture and society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries

PART I: INTRODUCTION1.1 Rationale

I was bom to a family whose members are all business people except me My father used to be asuccessful businessman who traveled all around the world from Asia, Europe, America toAustralia After each trip, he told me about the places he had been to and about the people he hadmet with vivid examples of their culture From my father, I learnt about the beautiful Singaporecity and Copenhagen capital of Denmark whose people are very well aware of keeping their cityclean and green, about fast-food and the work-oriented and individualistic people in Californiacompared to the out-going and neighborly people in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas My father hasleft in me the curiosity to learn about culture of the countries around the world Besides, my fatherand my brother were my first teachers of literature who blew in me the wind of passion to studyliterature, moving my heart with the poem “Me om” by Tran Dang Khoa, “Nguoi thay dau tien”translated from a Russian short story by a Russian writer, “Chiec la cuoi cung“ translated from anAmerican short story by O’Henry These literary works provoked in me the love for men, theunderstanding of the people, their culture and the social circumstances in and about which theworks were written

I am now a teacher of English at Haiphong Foreign Language Center under Haiphong University.For a teacher of English, having good knowledge of the culture and society of English speakingcountries is of great benefit since such experiences do help to make the teaching and learning ofthe target language easier, more lively and vivid It can not be denied that the teaching andlearning of a language would fail if the teacher does not have good cultural and social backgroundknowledge to explain to his or her students the situations in which the native speakers use thelanguage or the social circumstances in which the language is used

Once watching the “Sao mai diem hen” and “Bai hat Viet” competitions, the favorite musictournaments of the Vietnamese on television, listening to most competitors singing all pop songs,which originated from the United States, it came to my question that “To what extents hasAmerican culture penetrated the Vietnamese?” Beside pop music, we can witness the practice ofAmerican culture by a large number of people in our country, especially, by the young generation,through the way they sing pop, rock, Hip-hop songs, dance and dress in American style with jeans

The twentieth and twenty-first century have witnessed a breakthrough of American economy asthe United States of America has become the leading power of the world, and especially witnesseddramatic changes in American society and culture Literary works of this time in general and theshort stories in particular have done a good job to depict these changes in the liveliest ways Shortstories do not require much time and effort to read The reader can enjoy the whole piece of a shortstory without interruptions or even without changing his or her posture, therefore, he or she canhave a more thorough and correct interpretation of the work as well as of the cultural and socialcontext in which the work is written.

1.2 Aims and objectives

Doing this research, I wish to gain an in-depth understanding of some aspects of American popularculture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through highly- appreciated shortstories Once at a time, I have chance to study both American culture and society and a specialcultural category, that is American literature in general and the short stories in particular

People may think that I am too greedy to “catch two birds with one hand” However, I myselfacknowledge that this greediness is for the sake of my students’ advantages When their teacher ofEnglish has a thorough understanding of one of the target cultures, the students would benefit.Instead of being taught about the language, they are explained about the cultural and socialcontexts in which the language is used Thus, they could use the language in a more natural wayand, therefore, engage in language activities more actively

I have always insisted that teaching literature in a foreign language is not for the sole aim, that is

to teach the language and the art of language to express the ideas, but it is for the greater aim, that

is to broaden the knowledge of the students of the target culture and society With suchknowledge, my students would be more conscious of their cultural identity and practice the targetculture more selectively

1.3 Scope of the research

Within the limitation of a minor thesis, I only discuss some of the most prominent aspects of theculture and society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries such asindividualism, American informality, racial discrimination, modem American women, generationgap and American people in the turbulent ages These are the features of American culture andsociety that arise most prominently in the short stories I luckily came across

The literary works used for analysis are the short stories written by recognized American authorssuch as William Faulkner, Jesse Stuart, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Bernard Malamud,Grace Paley and the new generation of writers including Charles Bowden, Tom McNeal, JhumpaLahiri, Bobbie Ann Mason, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Nathaniel Bellows, Julia Alvarez, AkhilSharma and others Besides, I include one piece of memoir and a literary essay which I find helpfill to support my discussion

1.4 Design and methodology

The paper is divided into three main parts:

Part I presents an overview of the whole research, providing readers with the rationale, the aimsand objectives, the scope, the design and methodology of the study

Part II is the development of the paper, consisting of two chapters Chapter 1 is devoted to theliterature review of the subject matter which deals with the concepts including culture and society,literature, short stories and other genres of literature, techniques in storytelling, and short literaryworks and their portrayal of culture and society Besides, the first chapter also provides anoverview of American society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Such overview ofAmerican society, along with the theoretical background in the previous section are the bases forchapter 2, which discusses the main issues concerning aspects of American culture and society inthe 20th and 21st centuries reflected in the short literary works The explicative method is employed

to exploit the cultural and social circumstances embedded in the literary works since this researchdoes not aim at studying thoroughly the techniques of the writers

Part III gives the conclusion of the whole discussion in part II along with implications for teaching

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

@hapler /: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, an attempt is made to clarify some basic concepts such as culture, society,literature, short stories and other genres of literature including essay and memoir, techniques instorytelling and moreover, short literary works and their portrayal of life With the understanding

of such concepts, our discussion on some aspects of American culture and society in the twentiethand twenty-first centuries through literature in the next chapter would be more precise

II.1.1 Culture and society

For many people, culture is an abstract and, therefore, it is very difficult to give a brief definition

of it Nevertheless, culture is a very simple term to me When we talk about Japan, people think ofcultural artifacts such as “kimono” “shusi”, “gheisa”, tea art, and the hardworking Japanesepeople Regarding Vietnam, international friends discuss our charming women in the “allrevealing and all concealing” “ao dai”, “pho”, “Ha Long Bay”, “Hue ancient town”, the streetsellers and the brave and intelligent Vietnamese who won the victory in our struggle against theAmerican Meanwhile, when the United States is considered, no one can exclude their hamburgersand fast-food industry, the jeans, the White House, the Statue of Liberty, the skyscrapers,Hollywood, the king of pop Michael Jackson, the king of basketball Michael Jordan and the

“golfing genius” Tiger Wood These examples are to prove that culture is not unfamiliar with us,but it is anything, both tangible and intangible, that we have, we think and we do As M ThomasInge and Dennis Hall pointed out in their book The Greenwood Guide to American Popular

Culture, “Man’s culture is the complex of all he knows, all he possesses, and all he does.” (2002, xix) “All he knows” can be his knowledge and ideas of life, science and his explanation of the relationship among people, their customs, religion or so “All he possesses” includes all his

material property, his family, his relationship with other people, his belief and values, his

personality as well as his talent And “a// he does” is concerned with either his material or spiritual

activities In the same light, Michael Kammen in his book “American culture, American tastes,

social change and the 20th century” identifies culture as “the way of life of particular people living

together in one place That culture is made visible in their arts, in their social system, in their habits and customs, in their religion ' 1 '’ (1999, p.8) What Kammen meant by the “particular people living together in one place” is what we call society In Oxford Advanced Learner’s

Dictionary, society is defined as “people in general, living together in communities ” or “a

particular community of people who share the same customs, laws, etc.” Such customs, laws and

etc make up a culture Culture and society are closely related We do not have two differentsocieties with exactly the same culture or one society with completely different culture Letconsider American society and Vietnamese society The two communities live in different parts ofthe world on different continents With different geographical features and history, eachcommunity develops their economy in different ways, therefore, each country has a distinguishedculture With its origin in water-rice agriculture, the culture of Vietnam is often regarded ascommunity-based culture whereas the American tend to develop their individualistic culture owing

to their hunting, and farming origin supported by developed industry Within the Americansociety, there are many races such as white, black or African-American, American Indian orAlaska native, Asian, native Hawaiian, other Pacific Islander and ethnic groups due toimmigrations from all around the world However, when all these races live together in one unitedsociety, they share the mainstream culture such as fast pace of life, individualism, informality,modernity although their practice of these criteria varies in terms of degree

II 1.2 Literature

II 1.2.1 Definitions

Before having a discussion about literature, I would like to spend some words for EarnestHemmingway, one of the greatest American writers, who I find some similarities with theexcellent writer Nguyen Tuan of Vietnam Earnest Hemmingway and Nguyen Tuan, who wererestless, share the passion for traveling and writing about the people and places they had been to.Hemmingway spent his whole life traveling all over America, Europe, Cuba, Africa and wrote his

masterpieces A Farewell to Arm when he was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in Italy during the World War I, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls and Death in the Afternoon based on his experiences while living in

Spain and joining the Spanish civil war Meanwhile, Nguyen Tuan, who is claimed to be anadventurer and a motionist of Vietnamese literature, gained great success in variety of literaryforms, one of which is essays (tuy but) with the works such as Mot chuyen di (A Trip), Vangbong mot thoi (Echo and Shadow Upon A Time), Chiec lu dong mat cua (The Crab-Eyed

Copper Censer), Song Da (Da river) and others These brilliant works are the result of his

never-stopped watching, listening, involving and writing

The examples of Earnest Hemmingway and Nguyen Tuan are to prove that literature is the art

of employing language as a tool of symbolizing what the writer sees, hears, feels, involves inand understands real life A writer can not stay in one place all his life if he wants to sharpen hissenses for the production of literary works As David Stuart Davies has appealed, writers in

general and story tellers in particular are the “magicians who can take the raw material of life,

enhance it and mould it into something that both entertains and provokes thoughts” (2000, p.

vii) This statement not only points out two of the many functions of literature and story telling,that is entertaining and provoking thoughts, but also reveals the realistic basis of literature It isobvious that the ideas which inspire writers for a worthy piece of literary work often come fromreal life Therefore, it can be understood that literature is a tool for the reflection of life and for

the expression of viewpoints of the writers Davies emphasized that “True literature is not just

there to entertain it is there to help us understand ourselves and the world in which we live that little bit better ’’ (2000, p viii) As he suggested, a real literary work does not only provide

readers with pleasure but also helps to improve their critical thinking of their own ways of life,

their belief, their religion, which means their culture and “the world in which ” they live in,

which is the society In the same light, Norman N Holland also stressed the roles of literature inproviding readers with knowledge of the world and, moreover, with approaches to their

understanding that world He insisted that “Literature is not things but a way to comprehend

things.” (as cited in Beaty, Booth, Hunter & Mays, 2002, p xxviii) What Holland meant by

“things” here is everything in the world around us including culture and society Literature isnot only concerned with problems of a culture and society but also reveals how the writer dealswith such problems The writer approaches the subject matters in one way and the reader mayapproach them in a different way but the thing is, the

writer brings about his experiences and views of life for the reader to expose to, to compare withand to sharpen his owns

II.1.2.2 Short stories, memoirs, essays and other genres of literature

The classification of literary genres or types of literature is often based on many categoriesincluding theme, form, technique, tone, length and others Regarding the form, literature istraditionally divided into three main genres including prose, poetry and drama Prose isdistinguished from the other genres in the way the ideas are organized in paragraphs made up ofcomplete sentences Short story is a sub-genre of prose Regarding the technique whether to usereal or imaginary materials, literature comprises of fiction and non-fiction As defined in Oxford

Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, fiction is “a type of literature that describe imaginary people and

events, not real ones” The characters and events are invented to promote the writer’s point of

view or ideology about life However, there is still some real in fiction As I have said in the

definition of literature, a piece of literary works is made up from the “raw materials of life".

Therefore, there must be something true in the work The “something” here can be either thesocial context or the features of the characters which resemble ones in the real life This genrecomprises short stories, novels, poetry, dramas and others

On the contrary, non-fiction, the broadest “category ” of literature is a type of writing about real

subjects although the characters or events can be imaginative or invented “Under this umbrella

term come autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, essays, speeches, travelogues,

news articles and many more types of writing.” (as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p 422)

The genres of literature used in this study are primarily short stories supported by a memoir and aliterary essay

II 1.2.2.1 Short stories

As the term itself suggests short stories are pieces of writing which are short However, what is thecriterion to say that one work is short and the other is long In the Preface of the book Fiction - AnIntroduction to the Short Story, Jane Bachman Gordon and Karen Kuehner (1999) argue that ashort story often contains around five hundred words Those contain much less than five hundredwords are considered short-short stories And if a story is made up of about fifteen thousand

words, people call it a novella, a short novel However, what is counted here is not only the matter

of the length of a story Edgar Allan Poe described a short story as “<z short prose narrative,

requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal.” (as cited in Gordon & Kuehner,

1999, p vii)

Regarding the form of a short story, Robert DiYanni pointed out: “Short stories typically reveal

character in dramatic scenes, in moments of action, and in exchanges of dialogue.” From the

scenes, the moments of action and what the characters speak to each other, the readers canunderstand the characters, which contribute to the understanding of the underlying ideas of theauthor as well as the cultural features and social aspects of the time

Like other types of story, a short story consists of five elements:

Setting is the time and place in which the story takes place The setting here means either the physical environment or the belief, values, ideas, traditions and customs Characters

are the people, animals or anything that the writer chooses to act in the story The main

character is called the protagonist and the other characters that support the conflict of the story are the antagonists.

Point of View is the '‘''vantage point'’ of the author from which the story is told This

“vantage point” can be depicted from the first person stand (The first person is the

narrator named “I” or “me” that tells the story.) or the third person stand (The third person can either be an omniscient narrator who knows everything that happens or a limited narrator who is the outsider of the events and describes from the points of view of

one character in the story.)

Theme is the message of the story that the author wants to send to readers The message is

often about human behavior and relationship, human nature, conflicts in the society and thesolution and so on The theme can be explicitly stated or implicitly presented, whichencourages readers to consider all the elements of the story in order to infer the message

- Plot is the sequences of related events which help conveying the theme and the point of view A plot is often developed in five stages: exposition, which provides introductory information for the setting, the characters and the conflict; rising action,

Exposition

Rising actions

then leads to the climax - the highest emotional or turning point of the story; falling action - the action that the

characters do after the climax, which brings about the

resolution which deals with how the conflicts are resolved

Let consider an example with the short - short story “Snow” by Julia Alvarez, a recognizedDominican - American fiction writer (as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p 1032)

Falling action Resolution

As seen from the diagram, the climax is drawn from a number of rising actions and after theclimax come a falling action which perform a lead to the resolution, which indicates the theme

- the message the writer wishes to present to readers, that is the value of life, which should be

highly considered The climax of this short story, which is the extreme anxiety of the youngimmigrated girl when mistaking snow for bomb, was not only the suffering of a single character inthe story but of a number of real American people during the nuclear age in the 1960s Althoughtheir characters, actions and dialogues can be invented, short stories often portray real cultural andsocial subject matters

Her teacher drew a picture dotted a flurry of chark marks to illustrate the dusty fallout that would kill them

The teacher told “F that it is snow, not bomb

“F learnt the first

new words fallout and including

bomb shelter

“I” - an immigrant, spent her first year in New York studying at a Catholic school

“F had airraid drills and learnt about

nuclear bomb, radioactive

II 1.2.2.2 Essays

As our common knowledge, essay, one of the most common types of non - fiction, is a short piece ofwriting dealt with a chosen topic which can be of social or cultural issues, personal conflicts andperception of the world, interpersonal relation and many other subjects

There are two main kinds of essay: narrative and informative Narrative essays are short writings

devoted to true stories told from either the first person or the third person point of view While a shortstory has to do with unreal people and things, a narrative essay focuses on real people and events.However, in some essays, writer employs some imaginary and creative elements to promote a true

story Informative essays are divided into two main kinds: expository essay which describes a single issue such as discrimination, American fashion, American women and persuasive essay or argumentative essay which supports an opinion The main objective is to persuade readers to share a

common point of view with the writer by offering facts and real-life situations which promote the

main argument Most of informative essays develop into three stages: The introduction or lead introduces the topic to readers by using a topic sentence or in other words, a thesis statement, which can either be implied or explicit In some essays, a thesis statement may come at the end The body

develops the topic with a number of supporting details or ideas, from statistics, tables and charts or

facts, personal observations and experience to legal documents The conclusion provides a summary

of the main points discussed in the body At the same time, the writer brings readers back to the thesisstatement which has been drawn in the introduction

II 1.2.2.3 Memoirs

A memoir is a personal “account’ of the events of the author’s life in the past In many books they

use autobiography for a memoir Nevertheless, the two terms represent two different forms of

writing While an autobiography is a personal “account’ of the writer’s entire life up to the time

followed a chronological order, a memoir tells an “episode” of the whole life of the author, focusing

on particular events or facts in a particular period of the author’s life

A memoir is a combination of the writer’s memory and his thoughts and feelings about the incidentsdescribed These thoughts and feeling may not be stated directly but implied in the interaction andactions of the characters Most commonly, a memoir is written from the stand of the first person A

small number of memoirs are written in the third-person to increase the objectiveness of the amount

of narration

There are two main types of memoirs including personal memoirs and historical memoirs As a

personal observations of, thoughts of and feelings about the writer’s own life, a personal memoir ismore subjective Whereas a historical memoir tends to describe historical facts and events on a moreobjective stand

Elements of a memoir are, like a short story, settings, characters, points of view, theme and plot withconflicts, which may not lead to a climax or require a resolution as in short story Besides, a memoir,like an essay is often made up of three parts, introduction, body and conclusion

II.1.2.3 Some techniques in storytelling

Technique is one of the five major elements of storytelling in association with plot, theme, point ofview, character and setting Technique has to do with the structuring of the story into the plot so thatthe writer can convey the theme and the manipulating of the language in order to express the ideas ofthe writer in the most effective way Hereby, I take into consideration some of the most populartechniques which have been used so far:

- Flash-back or “replay” of scenes or events As Beverly Ann Chin defines it, “Flashback is a

portion of a story that interrupts the chronological sequences of events to describe what

happened earlier.” (Chin, et al., 2002, p 813) This technique provides readers with the

background of a setting, an event or a character

- Foreshadowing is considered opposite with flash-back as it “gives hints or clues that suggest

or prepare the reader for events that occur later in a work.” (Gordon & Kuehner, 1999, p 5).

However, the writer must be careful when employing this technique because too apparenthints or clues may result in boredom for the readers as they can speculate exactly the ending

of the story in early stages

Coincidence is the arrangement of time and place for two characters to meet or two events to

take place at the same time As Gordon and Kuehner point out coincidence is “the chanceoccurrence of two things at the same time or place to denote the working of Fate in a person’slife.” (Gordon & Kuehner, 1999, p 6)

- Indirect characterization is a technique utilized to develop a character The writer does not

present the personalities of the character in a direct way but readers can learn what kind ofpersonalities the character is through the words or actions of the character himself or herself,

or through what the narrator or the other characters say about him or her

Foil is a character used to contrast with a second character in order to highlight the qualities

of the second character (Chin, et al., 2002, p 872) This is an effective technique as it helpsreaders identify the main character more easily

Sarcasm, known as satire or irony is a kind of humor in storytelling that uses bitter or

“caustic” language for the portrayal of a negative character

All the techniques employed are to generate the curiosity -the desire to know what is happening and what is going to happen next or, moreover, the suspense of readers - a type of involvement of the

readers in doubting and speculating the coming events of the story

II.1.3 Short literary works and the portrayal of life

In the lifetime of a writer, he or she witnesses and engages in many activities or events Each activity

or event causes certain effects on the writer However, there are some activities or events that haveprevailing or overwhelming impressions on the writer and, therefore, provoke deep thoughts in thewriter The writer, with his or her natural gift in language, will look for a way to record the event aswell as his or her feelings and point of view for it Literature is created as the result Among variousgenres of literature, literary works consisting of short stories, memoirs and essays, unlike other longerpieces of work such as novels or dramas, can be an instant record of real-life events since they do notrequire too much time and energy Since memoirs and essays are of non-fiction genre, I suggestspending most of this section discussing the realistic reflection of short stories, which belong tofiction genre

In her note for the short story “Nobody’s business” about the life and love of the young American students, Jhumpa Lahiri states that ‘7 spent most of my twenties in Boston In my eight years there, I moved a total of eight times For the majority of those years, I shared apartments with people whom, initially, I didn’t know at all I usually found them through newspapers or words of mouth Everything in those households was communal I felt normal then, but it’s hard to imagine

now, living in such proximity with perfect strangers This story was inspired by the unexpected

glimpses one sometimes has the intimate lives of others.” (as cited in Kenison, 2002, p 349-350) Yet,

what Lahiri had experienced is described vividly in her story, which begins with the moving in of thenew comer, Sang from Bengali, to share the rented house with the other two perfect strangers fromdifferent comers of the States Then, the whole story is devoted to describing the love affairs, the life

of the three students under the same roof and how they cope with their personal problems as well asthe shared-problems of the house Without her experience, her sharpened mind and deep thoughtsabout the student life she had experienced, Lahiri could never create such a recognized work whichdoes not only do the descriptive job but also provokes thoughts in readers as they may have their ownjudgements about the modem lifestyle of the young American and, then, have the solutions for theirown problems which resemble those in the story

For another instance, in her note for the short story “Accomplice”, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum writes “

’’Accomplice” grew out of my efforts to understand how a well-conceived assignment managed to go awry How could such involved, wordly, educated parents accept as real a teacher’s report that was

so obviously false? It was only by imagining Ms Hempel’s relationship with her father that I began

to grasp what it might feel like, as a parent, to be the only one who recognizes your child’s talent and greatness, and how hungrily you might welcome the news that you are not alone ’’ (Bynum, as

cited in Morre, 2004, p 435) This note is to show that a literary work is the fruit of the pondération ofthe writer for the understanding of different aspects of life For Ms Bynum, it was the pondération of

a teacher herself finding a way to make a true school-report to the prideful parents as well as activatethe students in their study and their self-responsibilities by doing self-assessment The story reflectsserious innermost conflicts of an individual school teacher, which many teachers of the time mightexperience

In whichever genre of literature either fiction or non-fiction, with whichever technique employed, thesole aim of the writer is to portray real life, to express his or her own viewpoints of real life and tosuggest a solution for problems in society In each literary work, the writer uses a particular techniquewhich helps to achieve his or her ultimate purposes For example, as flash-back technique isemployed in fictional A Rose for Emily with constant shifts of past and present events, William

Faulkner brings to readers the suspense in their attempt to interpret the plot and, therefore, createsmore curiosity and interest of the readers when discovering changes in the attitude of the town peopletoward the protagonist, Miss Emily as well as the changes in the South of the U.S where the storysets Along with flashback, Faulkner also utilizes other techniques such as irony in his description ofthe women, Miss Emily’s people and the other people in town, and, indirect characterizationtechnique, which employs the third limited narrator to present an objective voice for the story andstimulate the analysis and interpretation of the readers All of the techniques used in the story are tocontribute to the success of the writer in achieving his ultimate goal, that is, as a commoninterpretation says, to portray the extreme racial discrimination in the Southern white society of thetime which causes a prideful white, Miss Emily to kill her colored lover in order to keep him forherself forever.

From the discussion above, we see that literature in general and short stories in particular do not comesolely from the imagination of the writers Such works are deeply rooted in real life and are written toreflect real life

II.1.4 An overview of American society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

The twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century have been marked by the mostimportant and eventful periods in American history which have made up substantial changes inAmerican society The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed an excessive economic growthwith dramatic industrial expansion, which brought about the so-called the roaring 1920s or the Jazzage symbolized by the rebellious and modem American flappers This roaring age was soon followed

by the worst economic downfall in American history, the Great Depression from 1929 to 1939 whichcaused one - third of all American farmers to lose their land and a recognizable decline of 60% offarm income between 1929 to 1932 (Brinkley,

2000, p.739), along with a reduce by 40% in the average income of American family The Americanfaced the hardest time ever before, (retrieved on December 12, 2008 fromhttp://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade30.html) From 1932 to 1935, the American, especially those living

in the Great Plain region - the Dust Bowl, had to suffer one of the most devastating disasters of thenature, the dust storm After these difficult phases, the American joined the World War II, which,

with its aftermath, led the American to the golden age of booming national prosperity with the higheststandard of living in the history of the world economy, as indicated in the increase of the GrossNational Product by 250% from 200 billion dollars to over 500 billion dollars between 1945 and

1960 The baby boom after World War II prepared a vast number of 70 million coming of agegeneration in the 1960s Another aftermath of the Second World War is the struggle of Americanwomen for liberation and equality during the chaosticl950s and 1960s, which ended with the success

of Women's Strike for Equality on August 26, 1970 The period between the 1950s and the 1960s was also the time of Civil Right movement which ended with the equal rights for the African-American in the whole country The late 1960s and the first half of 1970s saw millions of peoplemarch to protest the American wars in Vietnam in which 57,939 American soldiers were killed ormissed (as inscribed on Vietnam Veterants Memorial) (fromhttp://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade80.html, retrieved on Dec 12, 2008) The 1980s was the time of

mid-“I” generation who craved for their own status in the society marked by sex revolution Entertainmentwas booming with new genres of music such as rap or hip-hop, cable televisions, MTV and so on.The following 1990s, though witnessing the U.S involvement in the Gulf War, escalating terrorism,school shooting and sex scandals, the American enjoyed a booming economy which led to lowunemployment and flowering consumption However the beginning of the twenty-first century waswelcomed by the American great anxiety and fear after the suicide attack by the Islamic extremist’sorganization named Al-Qaeda on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,which caused 2,974 fatalities excluding the 19 hijackers and billions of dollar for economic recovery(retrieved Mar 10, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_ll, 200 lattacks) Along with thetense of terrorism, the American, at the beginning of the twenty-first century once again have beensuffering another global economic recession with the unemployment rate reached to 8.1% in February

2009, equivalent to 12.5 million people out of work, (retrieved on March 11, 2009 fromhttp://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nrO.html)

Such mosaics of American culture and society provides a background for our understandings ofthe more specific cultural and social aspects of the American in the twentieth and twenty- firstcenturies later discussed in this research

@haplt# 2: SOME ASPECTS OF AMERICAN CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES THROUGH SHORT LITERARY

WORKS II.2.1 American informality

The American are very well-known for their informality I remember seeing an American man in theU.S embassy when I was reading a book, I looked up and caught his eyes He smiled and said “Hi” to

me to my surprise since we had never met before The other day, when I was climbing the staircase

up to my friend’s room in the dormitory of the University of Technology in Hanoi, some Americanguys went past me and greeted “Hi” to me in a very casual way This informality is not a commonpractice among the Vietnamese when we meet strangers as for Vietnamese people, we only greetthose who are well-known to us or those who are older

American informality is expressed in various forms In Cosmopolitan, a short story by Akhil Sharma

in The Best American short stories 1998, Gopal, the main character when treating his femaleneighbor for the first time at his house, presents an open, hospitable and very informal manner

“Gopal walked to the refrigerator and asked her if she wanted anything to drink ” In a traditional

Vietnamese way, we normally bring tea or sometimes drinking water to serve our guests withoutasking them if they want to have a drink or not On a contrary, the American often ask their guests

and give the options to them Like Gopal, he listed any things he had in his refrigerator: “ Orange

juice, apple juice, or grape, pineapple, guava I also have some tropical punch, he continued, opening the refrigerator door wide, as if to show he was not lying ” (1998, p 50) Later in the story,

when Gopal visited the female neighbor, Mrs Shaw at her home, she asked him if he would like

anything to drink and offered ‘7 have juice if you want." (1998, p 55) and then, very frankly when

Gopal had not made up his mind for what to drink, she added as a suggestion “’7 was going to have gin and tonic ” She said opening the refrigerator and standing before it ” (1998, p 55) When I

asked two of my American teachers, one from California and the other from Pennsylvania about thisinformal practice, they said that this is typical of the American to serve their guests at home in such

an informal way In addition, in the book American Ways, an example of an American womanwelcoming

guests is given to illustrate the informality of the American The evidence is that “ When the guests

arrived, she welcomed them by saying “Make yourself at home ” She showed them where to find the food and drinks in the kitchen and introduced them to some of the other guests ” (Althen G,

Doran R A., & Szmania J S, 2003, p 16) The woman treated her guests as her family members.Hence, these casual behaviors provide the guests with comfort for the feeling that they are at homeand, therefore, improve the closeness of the host and the guests Another variation of Americaninformality is seen in the short story “The Magic Barrel” by Bernard Malamud The story, whichtakes place in the 1950s in New York, provides us with an evidence of casuality in the waySalzman, a marriage broker, behaved as a guest at the home of Leo Finkle, his customer and arabbinical student when he came to Leo to persuade him to consider some of the women he hadintroduced to him While Leo behaved very formally, asking Salzman to call him “Mr Finkle.” (ascited in Chin, et al, 2002, p 877), Salzman, on the contrary, is very casual He brought with him

something to eat because he was so hungry after “all day in a rush ” (As cited in Chin, et al, 2002,

p 880) and ate in front of Leo without offering him “ first must come back my strength”, he said

and “took out of the leather case an oily paper bag, from which he extracted a hard, seeded roll

and a small, smoked fish With a quick motion of his hand stripped the fish out of its skin and

began ravenously to chew.” (as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p 879-880) Salzman felt like home and

he made himself at home Host and guest are friends so there is no need to conceal one’s hunger InVietnamese situation, it is not common to bring food to other people’s house and enjoy the foodthere The Vietnamese often try not to tell the host that he or she is hungry for the question ofsaving face Only among those who are very close to each other such as among close friends orrelatives do people do so However, for the American, it is quite normal for the guest to say how hefeels or what he wants to eat or drink For example, when Salzman felt for some tomato, or sometea, he asked Leo right away, though a bit hesitantly and humbly due to the serious attitude Leo

created “A sliced tomato you have maybe?” and “A glass tea you got, rabbi? ” (2002, p 880).

These evidences, though indicate rather extreme casualty for the purpose of the author to draw apicture of a real awkward salesman, more or less reveal the informality of the American as theguests For an American, it is not uncommon to bring food

to other people’s house, especially to their friends’ for a party And the thing they often bring along isoften a drink, such as beer, a bottle of champagne or wine or any of their favorite drinks so thateveryone can enjoy together Like Kevin, a character in the short story Nobody’s Business by JhumpaLahiri in The Best America Short Story 2002, when he came to his girlfriend’s house shared withother students, he often brought along beers and helped with the washing up.

Beside the evidences of American informality discussed above in their greeting, in welcoming guests

or in behaving as a guest, we have seen many informal practices in their dressing such as the CasualFriday in many American company or school when the staff can put on anything they feelcomfortable with, in the way they address each other, for example, the way a student addresses histeacher or a child addresses his parents with their first name My teacher of American culture ManvelVictor Bringas often allows us to call him by his first name Manvel and in his free time, hesometimes goes on a picnic with us in T-shirt and shorts There are no gaps between teacher andstudents His informality creates a very friendly atmosphere which we usually have with ourAmerican teachers in particular and with our American friends in general

II.2.2 Racial discrimination

Racial discrimination is as old as American history since the first black African slaves came toAmerica over three centuries ago For centuries, the colored people in the United States have sufferedunjust segregation due to the dark complexion that they are bom to possess As learners of English,

we have heard about racial discrimination in America, about Rosa Parks, a black woman who wasarrested for her refusal of the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to a white rider in Mongomery,Alabama and about Martin Luther King, the leader of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s thatresulted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act which transformed the American society in the late twentiethcentury and the century to come Nevertheless, we have not leamt many of the illustrative evidencesfor racial discrimination itself

In his wonderful short story Big Boy leaves home first published in 1936, Richard N Wright provides

us with a vivid illustration for racial discrimination set in Southern America in the early twentiethcentury The story begins with a lively scene of the four black boys Bobo,

Lester, Buck and Big Boy, the main character, who are as naughty and lovely as any boys in the

world walking “lollingly in bare feet, beating tangled vines and bushes with long sticks” (Schorer,

p.885), twitting each other in a swimming hole in the woods after playing truant from school Fromthe bottom of their heart, they always dreamt of the train that could bring them to the North which

was said to have equal rights for the colored folks “They counted each train passed by and began to

sing the song about “a train bound for glory”” While singing the song, they felt a bright future

ahead Wright draws a lively picture with “A black winged butterfly hovered at the water’s edge A

bee droned From somewhere came the sweet scent of honey suckles Dimly they could hear sparrows twittering in the woods They rolled from side to side, letting sunshine dry their skin”

(Schorer, p 893) Unfortunately, the black boys’ happy time did not last long until they were foundnaked by a white woman In a normal situation, the woman is supposed to be shy and run away But

the woman in Wright’s story screamed panickly as if she was seeing four monsters “ You go away!

You go away! I tell you go away!” (Schorer, p 894), she shouted even when Big Boy said very

politely: “Lady, we wanna git our closes ” (Schorer, p 894) The climax of the whole story arises

when the woman’s fiance appeared and immediately shot the four boys Lester and Buck died Bobowas extremely terrified but Big Boy got the riffle and shot him to death What the woman and herfiance did to the four innocent boys represents what the white did to the colored The black weretreated like animals They would be killed at any time, for any reasons The more extremesegregation is depicted in the barbarous punishment the white gave to Bobo, one of the escaped AsBig Boy could see while he was running away from his hometown, the white men burnt Bobo and

“A black body flashed in the light Bobo was struggling, twisting, they were binding his arms and ligs.” Bobo’s arms and ligs were bound symbolizes the fate of the black was bound No matter they

struggled, they would be killed The injustice and barbarian of the society of the t ime is shown in thedeath of the three black innocent boys and the exhausting flee of Big Boy paid for the nonsensicalfear of a white woman

The severe segregation is also revealed in the memoir Prime Time by Henry Louis Gates Jr when herecalled the murder of the fourteen-year-old Emmette Till in August 1955 in Mississippi after his

friends dared him to ask out a white woman “He whistled at some white girl that’s all he did He

was beat so bad that they didn’t want to open the casket.” (Gates, as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p.

1092) For the American and the world, the murder of Emmett Till was an international issue It iswell-known that three days after Emmett Till whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a store clerk, he wasweighted down by a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire byCarolyn’s husband and her half-brother They mutilated his face so terribly that his uncle Wrightcould only identify the body basing on the ring worn on a finger of the dead body If it had been awhite man to whistle at Carolyn, the situation wouldn’t have been so bad This degradingdiscrimination was not the first of its kind but it was an alarming point that put the black people inAmerica on fire for justice and peace Throughout the memoir, Gates provides us with variety of

evidences of the segregation of the time “For most of my childhood, we couldn’t eat in restaurants

or sleep in hotels, we couldn’t use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores .Even after basketball games, the colored players had to stand around and drink out of paper cups while the

white players and cheerleaders sat down in the red Naugahyde booths and drank out of glasses ” (as

cited in Chin et al, 2002, 1087) Gates gives an example of his family being avoided from sittingdown at the Cut-Rate, a restaurant in town, which had a permanent TAKE AWAY ONLY sign forthe colored people Only Gates’s father was not stopped from sitting down As Gates explained, itwas in part because his father had lighter complexion At this stand we can see that the reason wasonly the matter of black or white The lighter one’s complexion was, the more chances for him or her

to use public service Another example of Carl Dadisman, who had vowed not to integrate, was given

to support Gates’ irony of discrimination Carl Dadisman was a proprietor who ran the taxi service,therefore, he tried to behave nicely, even to the colored However, he did not want the colored to sit

in his booths, eat off his plates and silverware or put their “thick greasy lips” over his glasses.

Gates’s satire arouse in the way he described the death of Carl Carl died because of a heart attack in

a tiny toilet of his own place of business “Daddy and some other men tried to lift him up, while he

was screaming and gasping and clutching his chest, but he was stuck in that cramped space.” (as

cited in Chin et al, 2002, 1088) Why Carl had such heart attack in such a “relaxing” place is notgiven but we can understand that he was “attacked” by his own prejudice for his “cramped” mind.Lowell, a black brilliant soccer player came to saw the toilet to help him but it seemed hopeless Carl

cried, moaned and died Then Gates says that “By then it made little difference to Carl that Lowell

was black.” Yet, it is so ironic that not until a “white” dies that his prejudice of black or white might

be blurred Like in Big Boy Leaves Home, the colored people in Gates’s memoir also show theirthirst for equality This thirst is embedded in their excitement to see the shows on television such as

“the all-colored world of Amos and Andy” which is full of black lawyers, black doctors and nurses.

“We were starvedfor images of ourselves and searched TV to find them ” (p 1089) But for other

fields, the colored people were well-known for their sport ability This is the reason why the people

in Piedmont, where Gates spent his childhood, kept track of every sport programs which the colored

played in “We’d watch the games day and night, and listen on radio to what we couldn’t see.” (p.

1089) and “Colored, colored, on Channel Two.” (p 1091)All these thirst and excitement to see their

own images and success reveal the desire of the colored people to be recognized in the society They

wanted to have the same stand and to enjoy the same lives as the white “With a show like Topper, I

felt as if I was getting a glimpse, at last, of the life that Mrs Hudson, and Mrs Thomas must be leading in their big mansions Smoking jackets and cravats, spats and canes, elegant garden parties and martinis This was a world of so elegantly distant from ours, it was like a voyage to another galaxy ” (p 1090) By then, all the advantages seen on television that the white came in for seemed

“just out of reach ” of the colored in Piedmont in West Virginia In the third part of the memoir,

Gates gives us lively facts of the Civil Rights movement, of the black children integrated into LittleRock high school in Arkansas, of the soldiers from the National Guard and the state police whosurrounded these black children and how the people in Piedmont reacted to the news Nonetheless,all these facts were seen only on television The people in Piedmont still had to face withsegregations

While in Gates’s nonfiction, we learn about the cheerleaders, in the Civil Rights era, from all- white

high school with a big red C for “central” on their chest waved and cheered “Two, four, six, eight

-We don’t want to integrate.” (as cited in Chin, 2002, 1094), we know more evidences of this

offensive attitude in many other fictional works including Everything That

Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor From the beginning to the end of the story, the writerreveals her light irony when describing Julian’s mother and other passengers and their hostile attitudes

toward the Negro people in general and the Negro passengers on the bus Julian’s mother was soafraid to ride the buses alone at night because the buses at the time had been integrated Therefore,after looking up and down the bus and acknowledging that there were all white on the bus on the firstroute, she was so happy “I see we have the bus to ourselves,” said her She did not expect any others

of colored complexion to join her world Her negative attitude was shared by other passengers on thebus as the Negroes got on the next route A woman stood up immediately and found another seat faraway when a Negro sat down next to her while the other protruding woman looked at the Negroavidly as if he were a type of monster These resentful reactions, unlike those in the early twentiethcentury revealed in Big Boy Leaves Home, were not open and vigorous but in a silent way Herattitude was typical of many white people toward the colored in the early 1950s and even after theCivil Rights Act took effect in 1964

Throughout American history, the attitudes of the white people toward the colored have changedconsiderably as it can be inferred from the analysis above In addition, we can witness these changes

in the language used to address the colored people In the early twentieth century, the colored was

called nigger by many white people This hostile word appeared repeatedly in A Rose for Emily by

William Faulkner to speak to and about the colored By then came the term Negro, Afro-American,the black and nowadays, African American is used to convey a neutral and more respectful attitude.The late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century have witnessed great innovation in thethinking of American society on the whole While Miss Emily in the early part of the previous centuryhad to hide her beloved dark man Homer Barron in her house until he died to avoid rumors, AfricanAmerican people nowadays are much more confident than ever before in showing themselves in front

of the public The evidences are since the African American Vanessa William was the first to becrowned Miss America in 1984, there have been a large number of colored women to win this honorincluding the 2008 Miss America Crystle Stewart Besides, African American have widely appeared

on the cover of mass consumer magazines such as Seventeen

1920s flapper’s cloche hat and bobbed hair

and Cosmopolitan, made up 20 % of the models to appear on 471 covers of 31 magazines published in 2002 (Garcia G, 2004, p 43) Many African American have come into power in the society ofwhich nearly three-forth of the population is white (Garcia G,

2004, x) Typical examples are the first black woman Condoleeza Rice who served as the 66th Secretary of States of America and most recently, the current 44th president of the United States Barack Obama who has made a history in American presidency to be the first black to hold the office African American have gained recognizable stand in American society that they deserve

II.2.3 Modern American women

From all the literary works I have had chances to read, I have the same feelings for the Americanwomen, who share many things in common as very modem, practical, strongheaded women who havenew concepts of love, thirst for love and try their best to achieve true love

In the short story Watermelon Days selected in The Best American Short

Story 2002, Tom McNeal draws a picture of an American woman in the late

1920s Doreen Sulivan, a beautiful woman from Philadelphia, had an

appearance which was a fashion of the day with “a thin, sleeveless dress over

a light camisole, her bobbed hair was marceled into deep horizontal waves,

she wore a wide ribbon in her felt cloche

She also used a scarlet lipstick to form her lips into a fresh cupid bow "

(McNeal, as cited in Kenison and Miller, 2002, p 211) The way Doreen

dressed up and wore make-up represents a revolutionary trend of the

rebellious American flappers in the so-called Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties Traditionally, womenwore long dress, long hair and very light makeup On the contrary, the rebellious flappers woredresses which exposed their hands and legs down from the knee Their long hair was cut short andeven bobbed The year 1926, which the story dates back to was a turning point in American fashionwhen camisoles, short dresses, bobbed hair under cloche hats and heavy make-up were in their hey-

wanted was to show themselves to be very young, modem, strong and different fromtraditional American women of the time Doreen, with her modem appearance raised the