Le Sage, 5 things I lurned

Hawthorne's "unpardonable sin," the violation of the human heart, shows an American resistance or temper. There are lines that we find it difficult to cross, even in literature.


With the above mentioned lesson, an American 'resistance or temper' must stretch literature. Any kind of caution used while writing makes literature an extension of real-life ideals, principles, and rules, which seems true in today's works as well.


The mask(s) of Ben Franklin concentrate the idea of an author's voice, that no matter how honest, a writer is always adopting some kind of a persona, depicting themselves in a certain, intentional light. A 1st person non-fiction piece, with this in mind, does not stray far from a fictional narrator.



Wieland's focus on an ambiguous God puts our own zealots into perspective.



The gothic works we discussed did make me appreciate the angst I love to hate in contemporary pieces.



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• Focusing on religion, I've gotten a nice understanding of the arch faith in America has traced. While I am not religious, the development from Puritan ideals to the humanist, compassionate sense of God found in later writers rounds a sense of history.
  



• The Wilderness was spoken of so much in the first month of class. A contemporary thought of it... Much like religion, the transformation from the Devil's residence to something Americans seem to idealize is compelling. I like camping.
  



• When we discussed Ben Franklin and the Self-Made-Man the first thing to analyze was whether the same principles and virtues hold today. Am I a self-made-man? etc. Will I be? etc. If migrating through society to a desired position, creating something out of nothing, was Franklin's pinnacle, have we changed since then? America still defines its 'Dream' as rising to an occasion, ladder, hierarchy from whatever origin.
  


• What about our City On A Hill? According to some, hurricane Katrina was a wrathful God's judgement on a sinful city (men in dresses deserve to drown?), and should this idea be held against the Puritan goal of a true place for the Second Coming, where is America now? We have zealots, but the desire for one seems to have changed. In this I see an America striving for individual salvation, which brings me to



• Individuality and personal sovereignty, discussed particularly with Thoreau and Emerson, seems to have continued in much the same vein. Refusal to pay taxes seems less common nowadays, but the same sense of personal freedom has developed, even grown in scope.