Tag Archives: american society

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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The Scarlet Letter (Signet Classics): Hawthorne, Nathaniel ...

The Scarlet Letter is a novel by American romantic writer Hawthorne. It was published in 1850. The Scarlet Letter is about the tragedy of love in colonial North America. The heroine, Hester Prynne, was married to a physician, Chillingworth, but there was no love between them. In her loneliness, Prynne fell in love with the reverend Dimmesdale and gave birth to her daughter Pearl. Prynne was publicly punished and was paraded to the public with the symbol of adultery. But Hester Prynne remained steadfast and refused to name the child’s father. Symbolism is often used in the novel. Characters, plots, and language are highly subjective, and psychological activities and intuition are often given priority in the description. Therefore, it is not only a representative work of American romantic novels but also known as the pioneer of American psychoanalytic novels.

The love between Hester and Dimmesdale is full of the sacrificing spirit of a moth to the flame, which has a strong tragic color. They are not only the unashamed martyrs who sacrifice themselves for the higher truth but also the victims who are offered to God on the altar of Puritan. The symbolism of the letter “A”, at the heart of the book, is more colorful than red. Its connotation changes with the development of the plot and characters, and varies with the standpoint of the observer, showing the characteristics of wandering and drifting. “A” is the first letter of the alphabet, signifying beginning, and in Christian doctrine, the beginning in the fall, the original sin from which no one is spared. The beginning of the world was the fall; Adam and Eve, the ancestors of human beings, were expelled from the Garden of Eden because they sinned by eating the forbidden fruit. The beginning of life is also the fall, Adam and Eve’s children and grandchildren inherit original sin which means that people are born to sin.

-Coreen C.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthrone is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It can also be downloaded for free from Overdrive.

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

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Sister Carrie - Kindle edition by Dreiser, Theodore. Literature ...

Carrie, a country girl, came to Chicago with a longing for the city. Carrie soon felt disappointed after a while. She lived in her sister’s house, and the shabby and humiliating conditions destroyed her dreams. At that moment Drouet, whom Carrie had met on the train, appeared. He extended a generous hand and offered financial help, and the two moved in together. The present life was a little like the one she had dreamed of, but she found that the relationship was not right. Then he meets Hurstwood, a publican, and they flirt and fall in love. Often, as they walked among the lights and the wine and the food, Carrie saw the congruity between dream and reality. However, such a life can not come so easily. Something happened to the landlord. In desperation, Hurstwood fled to New York with Carrie. For the rest of his life, the tavern owner was stranded like a dog. Once again she experienced what hardship meant. By chance, Sister Carrie found work at the Opera, and her good looks and natural voice put to good use. She grew popular and wealthy, and Hurstwood became a worn and rusted machine before her eyes. She left Hurstwood and lived a life of splendor alone which made Hurstwood kill himself.

This work is characterized by realism, which reveals the tragic fact of people’s fanatical pursuit of The American dream in the early 20th century. It reveals the instinctive theme that drives people to enjoy but ultimately disillusion and shows that there can be no real happiness in the money-centered American capitalist society. It can be seen from the novel that Carrie’s degeneration has certain social factors. First of all, due to the capitalist system at that time, Carrie was the representative of a group of people at the bottom of society. She was forced by a hard life and had to go down the road. On the other hand, it stems from Carrie’s dissatisfaction with the present situation of life and her constant pursuit of a higher life to satisfy her desire, which leads the man on whom she constantly depends to embark on this degenerate road. It was social and objective that Carrie had lost her job. It was this objective factor that led Carrie down a depraved path. Even when Hurstwood had told her that he had a wife, his financial ability and social position still attracted Carrie so deeply that she followed him to New York. For this man was able to gratify Carrie’s desires and her great vanity. Because in society at that time, having money meant still having a good quality of life. Having a high social status is not the value orientation of Carrie alone, but the value orientation of the whole society. It is this value orientation that influences a group of women from the countryside like Carrie to take this path.

-Coreen C.

The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

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The Gilded Age by Mark Twain

The Gilded Age is a novel published in 1873. The novel boldly reveals the decayed darkness of the capitalist development stage after the American Civil War by means of realism. The author makes a bitter satire on the bourgeois democratic system and exposes the speculative epidemic, corruption and bribery prevailing in the whole country at that time. Through his own experience and by witnessing the social phenomenon, the author employs exquisite artistic techniques to depict social reality and condense it into the novel, so as to fully present the scene of corruption to the readers.The period from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the 20th century became known as the Gilded Age because of its widespread use to describe the corrupt politics and vulgarity of materialism in the United States.

From the end of the Civil War to the first half century of the 20th century, the United States experienced a period of rapid economic growth. The end of the Civil War cleared the way for the development of capitalism, and a large number of workers and immigrants provided the United States with abundance of cheap labor. The continuous discovery of mineral deposits and the nascent technological revolution brought abundant resources for the liberation of productive forces. By 1894, the United States had become the world’s largest country by virtue of its industrial output. However, rapid economic development has not brought people the same happiness. A large number of migrant workers in cities lead to the increase of urban operating load; air, water and noise pollution can be seen everywhere; workers’ income security does not match the scale of enterprise development; the problem of food safety is extremely serious; infrastructure construction in urbanization lags behind; corruption involving collusion between government and business occurs frequently; the anxiety of the people at the bottom and the impetuous mentality of the society are increasing.

The Gilded Age is more of a social survey than a novel. It reveals and criticizes the reality of life in American society during this period from several aspects. Corruption, opportunism and plunder, as well as the social noise and smoke of wealth, are presented to the reader in the images of politicians such as Dilworthy and Colonel Sellers. The Gilded Age combines humor and satire, with unique personal wit, profound social insight and analysis. Humor not only plays a role in regulating life and releasing worries in this novel, but more importantly, enables readers to deeply observe reality, life and society. Society is mercilessly exposed in the humor of The Gilded Age, and the oddities of the underclass are kindly mocked.

-Coreen C.

Book Review: Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow

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Humboldt's Gift (Penguin Classics): Bellow, Saul, Eugenides ...

Born into a Hungarian Jewish immigrant family, Von Humboldt Fleischer had the romantic temperament of a poet. Many things were sacred in his eyes, and he dreamed of transforming the world with art. But his success did not last long, and he was vilified by some unscrupulous writers. By the end of the 1940s his romanticism was out of date and the era of fanaticism and poetry was over. Art could not transform society, so he tried to get involved in politics, but his bad luck was so bad that he was sent to an insane asylum. Although he was released from the hospital, he soon died in a New York tavern and was buried in a funeral mound. Charles Citrine was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. After his rise to fame, he went to New York to follow the great poet where Humboldt helped him to become a university lecturer and to write a historical play based on him.

While Humboldt was very poor, Citrine’s play was a hit on Broadway. Fame was followed by money and beauty and he lived a life of luxury. The temptation of material broke his worship of the authority of art and his pursuit of serious thoughts, which made him lose his creative inspiration. At the same time, he could not get rid of the intellectual disposition. His life is full of material and spiritual contradictions, both want to enrich the human soul, but also want fame and wealth. His soul was lost in uncertainty and anguish. After years of spendthrift, divorceable wives, dissolute mistresses, lawyers, and social gangsters trying to cash in on him, he went broke and ended up in a cheap boarding house in Spain. Just when he was at his wit’s end, he was presented with Humboldt’s bequest — two script outlines, one of which has been made into a movie and has become a worldwide sensation. Humboldt’s gift not only saved his life and future, but also gave him a deeper understanding of Humboldt’s pain and madness along with the fate of intellectuals.

“Humboldt’s Gift” is a genre painting of contemporary American society. No street, no building, no car, no dress, and no hairdo is imaginary. Even fictional characters are based on real people living in the real world. “Humboldt’s Gift” is a panorama of American society on a grand scale. From hooligans to senators, from the White House to chicken joints, from mystics to mafia-controlled booty shops, poets, scholars, cultural crooks, big money gamblers, judges, lawyers, psychiatrists, and moneymakers, the list goes on and on.

-Coreen C.

Book Review: Martin Eden by Jack London

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Martin Eden - Jack London | Feedbooks

Martin Eden is a semi-autobiographical novel written by American writer Jack London. The story tells about young sailor Martin Eden to get acquainted with Miss Rose of high society by chance, be inspired by her, and began his hard creation career. Despite all the setbacks, he still refused to obey Rose’s arrangement to enter her father’s office and become a promising young man. Then his fortune suddenly changed, and manuscripts that had previously been rejected were published and he became a popular writer. Friends and relatives who despised him before fell over each other to invite him to dinner, and Miss Rose who had broken up with him also came to throw herself on him. This makes him see clearly this world as a cold society; the wonderful illusion that holds him to love also is also disillusioned thoroughly.

In the real American society where Jack London lives, the United States has entered the period of monopoly capitalism. The bourgeoisie not only monopolizes the material wealth of society but also monopolizes the spiritual wealth. The bourgeoisie believes that all good things in the society belong to them, no matter in material life or in spiritual life. In the face of the underclass they turned their noses up. Therefore, in Jack London’s novel Martin Eden, the criticism and accusation of the corruption of the capitalist system, the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, and the inequality of class hierarchy can be seen everywhere. Through the description of the text, the reader can see different faces of the characters in the novel and feel the resistance behind feelings of the hero and heroine, their irreconcilable differences in values, and the nature each class in the capitalist society.

-Coreen C.

Book Review: Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

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Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman: 9780451419170 ...

Leaves of Grass is a collection of romantic poems with more than 300 poems. The collection of Leaves of Grass is the representative work of the American poet Walt Whitman and the first collection of poetry with the national style in the history of American literature. It has created a generation of poetry style and has had a great impact on American poetry.

Leaves of Grass also has a major innovation in artistic form, the poet broke the long-standing format of American poetry and created a “free style” poetry form. In terms of the structure of the poem, the poet adopts a large number of forms such as refrain, row, long sentence and parallel structure. Whitman also resorted to the usage of symbols and metaphors. The collection is characterized by colloquialism, with a rich expressive force and eloquent style. The poetry is sincere and fervent. The style is bold and fresh, making one one feel sick after reading it.

Leaves of Grass plays a very important role in the history of American poetry and even in the history of literature. It is a world-renowned masterpiece that ushered in a new era of American national poetry and its influence on even the English language as a whole can be described as revolutionary. Whitman’s collection of leaves of Grass was first published in 1855 with only twelve poems. By the time of his death, the last edition contained nearly four hundred poems. He named his collection Leaves of Grass because they represented the most ordinary Americans at the bottom of our society.

-Coreen C.

Book Review: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Dover Children's Evergreen Classics ...

The novel takes place in the first half of the 19th century in a small town on the banks of the Mississippi River. The hero Tom Sawyer is innocent and lively, dares to explore, pursues freedom avidly,but cannot bear to restrain his individuality and endure boring life. In the antebellum period of the novel, the small town of St. Petersburg is in some ways a microcosm of American society. Through the adventures of the protagonist, the novel satirizes and criticizes vulgar social customs, hypocritical religious rituals and stereotyped school education in The United States, and describes the free and lively hearts of children with cheerful writing.

Tom lost his mother in infancy and was adopted by his aunt. Clever and naughty Tom could not stand the control of his aunt and school teacher. Late one night, while playing in a cemetery with his good friend Huckleberry Finn, he happened to witness a murder. For fear of being discovered by the murderer they know this matter, Tom, Huckleberry and another small friend together fled to a desert island to become “pirate”. Their family thought they were drowned, but they turned up at their own “funeral”. After a fierce ideological struggle, Tom finally stood up and testified against the murderer. Soon after during a picnic, he and his sweetheart Betsy got lost in a cave and faced death for three days and nights. After he manages to escape danger later, Tom Sawyer found the treasure that the murderer buried together with his good friend Huckleberry Finn.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer marks further development of Mark Twain’s realistic creation. This book describes the free and lively psychology of children, and in contrast exposes the vulgar conservative life of small town citizens, highlighting their dull and dreary lifestyle. Mischievous and lively, full of fantasy and justice, Tom planned to go out for adventures in order to get rid of the shackles of reality and enjoy the full pleasure of freedom. All of this contradicts the capitalist living environment and is not allowed by secular morality and church precepts. Generally speaking, criticizing stagnation, vulgarity and religious hypocrisy of American local life can be seen as the main content of the novel.

-Coreen C.

Running for Governor by Mark Twain

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Running for Governor: Twain, Mark: 9781523289370: Amazon.com: Books

“Running for Governor” is a unique artistic work, a special genre between satire and short story. While a novel should be about character and plot, “Running for Governor” doesn’t focus on character or plot, but describes a bunch of cleverly arranged news stories and interspersed commentary. In that sense, it’s like a funny story, or a satirical essay. However, it is different from the general satirical sketch, because although it does not focus on depicting the character, it cannot be said that it does not show the character at all. It runs through the process of the emotional change and awakening of a character “I”.

Aesthetically, humor and satire belong to comedy. When something that is intrinsically ugly takes the form of something that is good and just; or, on the other hand, when something essentially good is expressed in some harmless form which is not in harmony with its essence, it tends to have a comedic effect — the former may be satirical and ridiculous, the latter humorous and ridiculous. “Running for Governor” is based on this contradictory principle of content and form, and adopts hyperbole to create a comic effect.

As a master of critical realism, the artistic feature of Mark Twain’s writing is based on his profound insight into the various social conditions and human affairs of capitalism. The sharp point of criticism directly points to the hypocrisy and ugly soul of capitalism. The irony in language is the most outstanding feature of “Running for Governor”. As for the use of language, Mark Twain is not impatient, but slowly, through vivid and delicate brushwork to show the subtle changes and contrasts in the text incisively and vividly.

-Coreen C.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

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Amazon.com: No Country for Old Men (9780375706677): Cormac McCarthy: Books

The story takes place in the town of Rio Grande river, west Texas, USA, on the border with Mexico in 1980. A penniless former Vietnam war veteran, Llewelyn Moss, came across several dead bodies, a huge amount of heroin and a large amount of cash used to trade drugs while hunting. The dead were gangsters who had been shot in a firefight. Llewelyn immediately decided to leave the scene of the gun drug trafficking money to take home to hide. During the night, the nervous Llewelyn returned to the trading site. So far, sinister gang leader sends out cold-blooded killer Anton Chigurh, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, and Llewelyn launched the killing journey that pursues each other.

Moss gets in trouble for his lust for money, and his experience is representative of the universal human desire, and the constant pain and fear that comes with it. He reflects the good and evil side of human nature. The ending of the characters gives the world a lot of inspiration. People living in today can’t escape the temptation, who also have to face the temptation. Moss’s tragedy is undoubtedly a wake-up call for those who walk on the edge of desire. The most steadfast self-control is a powerful weapon against temptation. Temptation is the test of personal world outlook, outlook on life, values, moral character and other internal comprehensive quality, among which the most important one is virtue.

In the same circumstances, it is virtue that plays the fundamental role in why some people are able to survive and others are willing to perish. Therefore, in today’s society, everyone should strive to improve personal cultivation and self-protection awareness. At the same time, tempering desire is also key in the face of temptation. From the perspective of behavioral science, desire is a double-edged sword, reasonable and moderate desire is the basic psychological motivation to promote the development of social economy. The unrestrained selfish desire and evil thoughts will make people lose the true, the good and the beautiful and become the prisoners of material desire, and even become the root of evil.

The novel No Country for Old Men shows the dark side of American society, such as blood, violence and crime, attacks the anti-civilization phenomenon of excessive material desire and moral decay under the specific social and historical background, and expresses the sense of helplessness through the absence of heroes. Many Americans do not believe in heroes and worship money, indicating that they think money can bring them more security in life. Neither government nor personal heroes can be trusted. However, the author McCarthy still hopes to express his yearning for the peaceful and tranquil past of American society through allegorical novels, as well as his expectation of energetic heroes who can save human lives and souls.

Jennie Gerhardt by Theodore Dreiser

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This is a relatively long novel written by the all-known American author Theodore Dreiser. It talks about Jennie Gerhardt, a poor but strikingly pretty girl who fell in love twice with two men and their story from thereon. At first, because Jennie and her mother were working at a luxurious hotel, she was working there as a laundry washer and there met the brilliant Senator Brander who fell in love with her gradually over a short period of time. Despite the huge age gap between the two of them, they got along fine and it was Senator Brander who assisted this starving family living in Ohio after witnessing the condition of their life and home. Although Jennie’s father, Mr. Gerhardt strongly expostulated against this man who is old enough to be his own brother, his daughter did not listen and thus she was pregnant when Senator Brander died after promising to marry her.

Thus Jennie met another man named Lester Kane who came from a very rich family of carriage business based in Cincinnati. Due to her pulchritude and intelligence, Lester Kane quickly fell in love with Jennie. They lived together for a short period of time before Kane knew Jennie’s daughter, Vesta’s existence. He really wanted to give up Jennie at this point but found her too attractive to do so. Moreover, their relationship at first was gossiped by the neighbors who discovered that they weren’t married after all. What’s worse, when Lester’s sister Louise found out about all of these, she spilled this all to Lester Kane’s father, Archibald, who forced Lester to leave Jennie, but to no avail and thus passed away with a small will left to Lester for his punishment.

Overall, I think this book stuns me as the social gap between the rich and poor widens in America over the years and still remains unchanged. It’s so miserable how the children cannot choose their own course of marriage and HAVE to marry into their own level. So slowly, the conception of social status is imbued in their minds and they themselves can’t even seem to persuade themselves that this person is whom they really love but that they don’t have enough money, therefore, should be relinquished as a potential spouse.

-Coreen C.