The Writers concept of the American Dream
The era of the roaring twenties seemed to reflect a literary flowering of innocence come of age. Writers came from all walks of life, including rich, blacks, Jewish, and women writers were bent on exposing the real side of life. Their writing echoed a spirit that reflected a sense of searching out and forming the new image of humanity from the ashes of the wars they experienced.
Looking through the mirror of an image marred by the embattled dreams of mankind, a black writer named Countee Cullen welded a mighty pen bent on redefining the entire essence of the Blackman's aspirations. His transition somehow seemed to reflect the transition he endured as an Orphan adopted by the Reverend Frederick A. and Carolyn Belle (Mitchell) Cullen. He went by the name of Countee Porter until 1918 until he finally changed it to Countee Cullen. It was if his writing mimicked the inner struggle he felt between accepting a Christian upbringing on one hand, or the unbridled challenge of discovering his former roots. The place of his birth was at first listed as Louisville, Kentucky Sometime before 1918, but later scholars find it listed as either New York City or Baltimore. Countee's attempt to rework his inner man reflected his skill as a prolific writer of poetic verse. His academic training enabled him to write "white" verse-ballads, sonnets, quantrains, in the former manner of such greats as Keats and other British romantics, mixed with the flavor of racial concerns. Cuntee was resolute in his belief that traditional verse forms could not be bettered by more modern paradigms. Countee could not be blamed for struggling with the concept of a universal man, when the entire history of man has been an attempt to capture the essence of who we are. His novel "One Way to Heaven" ,is considered one of the better black satires and is one of the three important fictional retrospectives of the Harlem Renaissance. What is striking for any reader is Countee's notable analogue between blacks and Simon " Simon the Cyrenian Speaks," the Simon which was compelled to carry the cross of Jesus Christ on his back. Through examination of one line of his work " I Have a Rendezvous with Life" one soon understands that Countee Cullen had no false hopes. "... I am betrothed to Beauty, scarred With suffering though she may be; In that she bears pain splendidly, Her comeliness may not be marred. The long, thin sword of dreams I wield Is light enough for dark and doubt...". The marriage of Lady Liberty standing in the Harbour of New York with her lighted torch, bares the cries and hope of many a stranger or sojourner casting their gaze on a Dream that is just beyond their grasp.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cullen/li fe.htm>
Clifton H. Johnson
2000 American Council of Learned Societies
Lady liberties dream did not go unnoticed by writer , Alain LeRoy Locke, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Locke entered Harvard in 1904 and graduated in 1907 with a distinguished academic record (magna cum laude), and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Locke's connection with the Renaissance centered around a couple of areas during the roaring twenties. He was involved with the visual arts, literature, as well as theatre. His association with the Howard university Players and collaboration with Montgomery Gregory resulted in a drama anthology called "Plays of Negro Life". Locke was an encouragement to young black writers, scholars and artists of the New Negro Movement by mentoring many of them. Most importantly he was head of the Department of Philosophy at Howard University, a title of no easy feat for those familiar with Venn diagrams. Locke applied his learning to help bring about ethical ideas that enhanced a higher sense of group and social cohesiveness. Locke felt that his work could lead to liberation and a transformation of artist and attitudes of other human beings. Hence, an anthology was published called "The New Negro". It ideas are sometimes referred to as the manifesto of the New Negro. Most importantly Locke believed that the American Blackman could only change by freeing himself form the fictions of the past through rediscovery of himself.
< http://www.dclibrary.org/blkren/bios/lockea.html>
Alain LeRoy Locke June 20, 2003 George-McKinley Martin
Langston Hughes did not believe change was in the best interest of the Blackman. James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He was from a divorced family in which he lived with his grandmother till he was thirteen. He then went to Lincoln, Illinois and Cleveland, Ohio with his mother. He first began to write poetry in Lincoln, then following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. He held various jobs such as busboy, assistant cook, launderer, and seaman while traveling through Africa and Europe. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in "Montage of a Dream Deferred." His ideas were far different than those of Alain LeRoy Locke. Hughe refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted his poems to reflect the actual culture of the Blackman. He felt the only way to tell their story properly was by including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself. His beautiful poems echoed the deep seated spirit of a people proud of their ancient past. In Hughes "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," the verses paint a picture of
ancient history of the Blackman, as well as their promised freedom. "...I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans..." .
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83
Langston Hughes
2006 by the Academy of American Poets
In his novels, author F.Scott Fitzgerald portrayed America's dream of a pyramid of wealth and freedom as a mere illusion. How ironic that he was second cousin three times removed to Francis Scott Key, author of the National Anthem. He was born was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. What really seemed to catapult him into his successful writing were his romantic failures. His rise and fall with various bouts with alcohol seemed to echo those standards he thought most lacking in the American dream. The chief themes of his novels centered around aspirations of idealism and mutability or loss. Fitzgerald became identified with the Jazz Age: It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire, he wrote in Echoes of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald connected his writing of the novel with the age of prohibition, the boom of the 1920'a as well as the crash of the 1930's. One of his trademark novels, "The Great Gatsby" marked the pinnacle of Fitzgerald's technique, as well as highlighting the great excesses of American life in the roaring twenties.
A brief life of Fitzgerald
http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html
December 4, 2003
Matthew J. Bruccoli's
The real excesses of American life could not have been truly enjoyed had it not been for the heroic efforts portrayed by characters in Earnest Hemingway's novels. Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. His father, Clarence Hemingway, was the owner of a prosperous real estate business . His father instilled the love of nature in him as well as a strict religious upbringing. He exposed Earnest to hunting, eating small game, as well as making earnest familiar with the natural world. Clarence made sure his children were never idle sitting around reading. It was said that Earnest Hemingway learned to box at a young age. His real influence in his writing was his exposure to the war. His experiences in Europe shaped the writer and legend of who readers now remember. Earnest portrayed the true bittersweet story of war in a way that was believable. A common theme throughout Hemingway's stories is that no matter how hard we fight to live, we end up defeated, but we are here and we must go on. One interesting note was that During World War II, Ernest became a secret agent for the United States. He recommended that he use his boat, the "Pillar", to surprise German submarines and attack them with hidden machine guns. His allure to readers always was the stories of his sudden luxury or option of doing without material things. Hemingway became a hope to the downtrodden as well as a hero or romantic fellows. Ernest Hemingway takes much of the storyline of his novel, A Farewell to Arms, from his personal experiences. The main character of the book, Frederick Henry, often referred to as Tenete, experiences many of the same situations which Hemingway, himself, lived.
http://www.literarytraveler.com/literary_articles/he mingway_pamplona_spain.aspx
Hemingway in Pamplona
John Affleck
1998
Eugene O'Neill believed in writing about experiences that he himself had seen with his own eyes. Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room in New York City on October 16, 1888. The first seven years of his life were spent traveling with his father who had given up his career as a Shakespearean actor to tour in a less satisfying but highly profitable play called Monte Cristo. After, O'Neill spent six years in a Catholic boarding school and three years in the Betts Academy at Stamford, Connecticut. His attendance in Princeton was short-lived because of being suspended at the end of his freshmen year. His yearning for gold sent him on a six month journey in 1909 in which he ended with tropical fever. O'Nelill's habit of working various jobs as sailor, dock worker and tending mules on a steamer influenced his style of writing. His plays created characters that former playwrights never really dealt with in the theatrical arts. Eventually, O'Neill had gotten so sick he was forced to be treated in a sanatorium for tubercular patients. Some say he attempted suicide there. This was the turning point in which he developed plays in which he was famous for. The themes of his plays consisted of Realism, then the study of the forces behind human life, and the ideas of his favorite philosophers , Freidrich Nietzsche, psychologists Sigmund Freund, Carl Jung, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg.
http://www2.lucidcafe.com/lucidcafe/library/95oct/eg oneill.html
Eugene O'Neill
Playwright
2006
Robin Chew
Eugene O'Neill's greatest influence had to be August Strindberg, the Swedish playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, who combined in his works psychology, naturalism, and later elements of mysticism. O'Neill like Strindberg combined his constant interest in self analysis with evolutionary history of mankind's supposed advancements that pitted the weaker against the stronger throughout history. The writing of O'Neill tended to reveal the true characters , often reflected the bouts of alcohol and drug addiction of his own experiences. O'Neills "The Naked Ape" truly reveals the underbelly of forces at work in the roaring twenties. A rich young girl in the story uses her influence to interact with the what appears to be beastral forces that are products of her own life style. The key character, tramped in a lifestyle which involves shoveling coal for a Steam ship for the rich is angered to learn that his appearance sends the young women shirking in horror at his appearance. The characters final connection to civilized is severed as he learns he has more in common with the ape in the cage than the forces at work around him.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/strindbe.htm
(Johan) August Strindberg
2002
Authors' Calendar
Writers came from all walks of life, including rich, blacks, Jewish, and women writers were zealous on exposing all the forces at work in peoples existence. Their writing echoed a spirit that reflected a sense of searching out and forming the new image of humanity from the ashes of the wars they experienced. Gertrude Stein, a modernist writer, saw that women's life and thoughts were often put in a cage separate from the thoughts of the male civilization. Born in 1874, Stein was the youngest child of Daniel and Amelia Keyser Stein, German Jews whose parents had emigrated to Baltimore. By the time she was seventeen both her parents had died, leaving her to face the world with her three other siblings. Her parents had exposed her to the clothing Industry and traveled from Paris, Austria, and California frequently. Perhaps her familiar connection to clothing motivated her to write in such a way that inspired the Feminist society. The age of flappers and women wanting to be equal with men in both voting and the work place must have inspired her. As the male dominant field of medicine revealed its bias toward women, one has to wonder if her problem with the medical fields became more personal. This in itself may have played a major role in her developing a strong will to expose the sensual side of women's feelings. Her novel Q.E.D., was an account of her tragic lesbian liaison in Baltimore. Fernhurst, another of her novels reflected the treatment of power within a love triangle. Gertrude Stein was already in modernistic flavor with her writing when she published in 1905, a collection of three 'realistic' stories of common women , in the tile of " Three Lives". By flicking through the pages of Gertrude Stein's " Three Lives" one can begin to see the understanding of roles that she perceived in the social order of the roaring twenties between working women and men.. Even the chapters were labeled in a way they depicted "The life of the good Anna" and the evolving death of the innocence that was the "good Anna". Here in the story, realism shows a distinct tie in to what she herself had discovered while interacting in a male world that often was at odds with the true feelings of women. Perhaps the primitive traits of some men of her time had drove Gertrude Stein away from a relationship of marriageable bliss, but her writing had undoubtedly raised many eyebrows.
< http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stein/bio .htm>
1995
Linda Wagner-Martin
Stein's Life and Career