Moran: the final countdown

Five things that I did not know about America

1. That the Puritan colonists believed in predestination.
2. That America was born out of a mix of the opposing forces of Puritanism and the Enlightenment.
3. That Americans had a history of viewing nature with awe.
4. That many feminists were at the head of the abolitionist movement.
5. That many Americans have a history of celebrating the individual.


Five things that I did not know about American literature

1. That the idea of the ‘self made man’, which would become a model for the American dream, originated with Ben Franklin.
2. That authors such as Washington Irving and James Cooper wrote intending to create ‘American Literature’.
3. That Nathaniel Hawthorne was the descendant of a judge at the Salem witch trials.
4. That the gothic writing style often commented on the theme of slavery, especially Poe.
5. That many themes of American writers discuss the balance of man’s place in society with his connection to nature.


I think the biggest surprise I encountered this year was how much American Literature differed from the rest of the world. I assumed that there were some differences between writers in America and the rest of Europe but I thought that they all followed the movement and styles of the time. I think that the differences can be attributed to our origins. The majority of the American colonies were started by the Puritans who brought over their deeply religious views, while in contrast, the United States was a child of the enlightenment and the two binary opposites have created a unique culture with a unique style of literature.