Nature as a Theme in the History of American Literature. Richard Wright’s "Uncle Tom’s Children" E-Book

Dennis Schmidt

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2012 im Fachbereich Didaktik für das Fach Englisch - Literatur, Werke, Note: 2,0, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: “Nature is perhaps the most complex word in language”, declared Raymond Williams once. This statement is connected with Jhan Hochman's distinction between Nature and nature. He believes that Nature is a principle which is rhetorically useful and has often been associated with the “highly suspect realms of the otherworldly or transcendental”. In contrast to that, nature is an expression which can be understood rather literally, as it is a synonym for a collective of “individual plants, nonhuman animals and elements.” As one can see here the term N/nature itself is a very difficult and sophisticated expression. In this essay the focus will lie on the meaning of nature as our environment and surroundings. It will rather deal with different sorts of animals, plants, phenomena like night, day, sunlight, rain and others than it will concentrate on transcendence or the other world. The essay will be separated in three parts: in the first part it will concentrate on questions like: how does it occur that nature is a topic which is so important for the history of American literature? Who were the most important American writers that dealt with nature as a main theme? In the second part which will be rather brief, some of the most employed symbols which can be assigned to the field of nature will be presented. And the third part it will illustrate that it is in fact possible to analyze literature concerning its natural aspects even if the text is not famous for its great employment of natural elements. The literature which will be treated is Uncle Tom's Children published in 1938 by the black modernist writer Richard Wright. This work is rather popular for its impressive demonstration of black life and the problems like discrimination, hunger and poverty blacks had to handle. So four short stories, namely Big Boy Leaves Home, Down By The Riverside, Fire And Cloud and Bright And Morning Star will be analyzed by first briefly presenting the content and subsequently picking different aspects of each story which have to do with nature and interpreting them and showing its role in the short story.

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

I. Introduction: What is Nature?

II. Nature as a theme in American literary history

1. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

2. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

3. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

4. Henry David Thoreau (1818-1862)

III. The meaning of some traditional natural symbols

1. The Tree

2. The Crop

3. The Violet

4. The Apple

5. The Snake

6. The Death

IV. The Role of Nature in Several Short Stories published in Richard Wright´s Uncle Tom's Children

1. Big Boy Leaves Home

2. Down By The Riverside

3. Fire and Cloud

4. Bright And Morning Star

V. Conclusion

VI. Bibliography

I. Introduction: What is Nature?

 “Nature is perhaps the most complex word in language.”[1], declared Raymond Williams once. This statement is connected with Jhan Hochman's distinction between Nature and nature. He believes that Nature is a principle which is rhetorically useful and has often been associated with the “highly suspect realms of the otherworldly or transcendental”. In contrast to that, nature is an expression which can be understood rather literally, as it is a synonym for a collective of “individual plants, nonhuman animals and elements.”[2]

 As one can see here the term N/nature itself is a very difficult and sophisticated expression. In this essay the focus will lie on the meaning of nature as our environment and surroundings. It will rather deal with different sorts of animals, plants, phenomena like night, day, sunlight, rain and others than it will concentrate on transcendence or the other world.

 The essay will be separated in three parts: in the first part it will concentrate on questions like: how does it occur that nature is a topic which is so important for the history of American literature? Who were the most important American writers that dealt with nature as a main theme?

 In the second part which will be rather brief, some of the most employed symbols which can  be assigned to the field of nature will be presented.

 And the third part it will illustrate that it is in fact possible to analyze literature concerning its natural aspects even if the text is not famous for its great employment of natural elements. The literature which will be treated is Uncle Tom's Children published in 1938 by the black modernist writer Richard Wright. This work is rather popular for its impressive demonstration of black life and  the problems like discrimination, hunger and poverty blacks had to handle. So four short stories, namely Big Boy Leaves Home, Down By The Riverside,Fire And  Cloud and Bright And Morning Star will be analyzed by first briefly presenting the content and subsequently picking different aspects of each story which have to do with nature and interpreting them and showing its role in the short story.

II. Nature as a theme in American literary history

 In the following part of the essay nature as a theme in the history of American literature will be introduced. First of all one has to go back in history towards the settlement of this new continent or country called (North) America.

 If a group of people, in this example the settlers, want to create a new existence in a nearly unexplored vast region such as it was North America in the 16th and 17th century, and they are encountered by such overwhelming natural expressions, it is obvious that the struggle of handling the new life by being dependent of natural resources in a country where they are the only human being except of some natives which they perceive as totally foreign, leave their marks in the personality and psychology of this people and their succeeding generations. This means that the settlers could not have rested untouched and unimpressed by this completely new experience of nature. The wide forests of nowadays Canada, the snow-covered mountain peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the vast plains of the Midwest or the sunny seaside of California, all that impressions are deeply rooted in the memory of each American. That is why it certainly has effected American culture which means philosophers, musicians and others and amongst them of course writers who use exactly these impressions to express their perceptions and thoughts in their works.[3]

 “Something of these experiences emerges in the forest scenes of Cooper, […] the wooded hills of Bryant, the gloom of Hawthorne, even the brighter pages of Thoreau, though lightened there by the fields and pastures of a longer habitation.”[4] Some of the authors who will be presented further down are already mentioned in this citation.

1. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

  At first one hast to consider James Fenimore Cooper, an early 19th century writer of romance and “(…) convinced the world that the physical grandeur of America was adequately embodied in literature.” [5]

 Cooper, grown up at the edge of New York at the frontier where civilization stopped, where he just could see plenty of forest when he looked westwards, could experience the dangers of life at the verge of pure nature when he still was a child. Inspired by the spirit of the settlers, but also by the Indians, he used his genius to reflect and depict his natural surroundings by portraying the majesty of nature in his works.