Nayeli Naranjo-Robles Motivation and Techniques of Realist Writers
American literature during the Civil War to 1914 was the rise of realism. Writers such as Kate Chopin and Paul Laurence Dunbar both faced struggles such as death of family and the oppression for being apart of a marginalized group in an era of major disparity. Because of their experiences, Chopin and Dunbar are able to use their thoughts and feelings to create realist literature. They used their writing as way to express the struggles of an ordinary person living in America, a country with unfathomable poverty and unfair treatment due to war, the rise of industrialisation, and systematic oppression. The common goal and hope for individualism and equity was portrayed
…show more content…
He uses his experiences to fuel his writings and to speak out on the treatment of African Americans that have been planted into our conscience as a normal way of living. In his poem “Douglass”, he writes “We ride amid a tempest of dispraise”(Dunbar 598). With this line, Dunbar emphasizes how intense the suffering of African American people is in America. He describes the backlash and oppression as a storm,dispraise, and although one would not dare to be out in a storm Dunbar explains the willingness of his community to confront the problem. In another poem ‘We Wear the Mask”, Dunbar says “Why should the world be overwise, in counting all our tears and sighs?”(Dunbar 599). Again Dunbar points out their demise by including the words tears and sighs, but in these two lines he also criticizes the world's(white america) actions towards the suffering they are facing. This is great social commentary, it shows the readers that we should question the way authority or the majority ignores the issues and despair people receive in this era. Dunbar expresses with emotional ties why it’s important to inform the public of the struggles oppressed groups …show more content…
Both stories deal the issue of death differently; in We Wear the Mask is about the death of one's spirit, motivation, sense of self and community(the African American community). In the poem, the line “We sing, but oh the clay is vile” shows the way they choose to show the world their reaction to their seemingly never ending suffering. Singing is positive a connotation, but that does not connect with all the negative that they experience; it's a disillusionment, but they keep putting on the mask to not let sorrow overcome them. In The Story of an hour, there is an actual death, and when Mrs. Mallard is left with the news, “She did hear the story the as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance“(Chopin 594). We are given two perspectives of how to deal with actual death at the time, some refuse to accept the inevitable suffering or put it off so as not to be affected by it, since it is such a horrid fact of life. Mrs.Mallard chose to accept the truth, weep and become haunted by the news and yet later the story takes an unexpected turn.She later becomes fine with the outcome for it lead her to freedom. The views of death and its significance with both writers is written with a strong aura of suffering and
Many writers begin writing and showing literary talent when they are young. Paul Laurence Dunbar, born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, was already editor of a newspaper and had had two of his poems published in the local newspaper before he’d graduated from high school. His classmate, Orville Wright, printed The Tattler which Dunbar edited and published for the local African American community. After graduating from high school, he was forced to get a job as an elevator operator which allowed him spare time for writing. He finally gained recognition outside of Dayton when, in 1892, he was invited to address the Western Association of Writers and met James Newton Matthews who praised his work in a letter to an Illinois newspaper. In 1892, he decided to publish his first book of poems entitled Oak and Ivy and four years later his second book of poems Majors and Minors was published. People began to see him as a symbol for his race, and he was thought of artistically as “a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being… in a log cabin amid fields of cotton” (Dunbar, AAW 2). Dunbar’s poems, written alternately in literary and dialect English, are about love, death, music, laughter, human frailty, and though Dunbar tried to mute themes of social protest, social commentary on racial themes is present in his poetry.
Mrs. Mallard’s husband is thought to be dead, and since she has that thought in her mind she goes through many feelings
In his poems, Langston Hughes treats racism not just a historical fact but a “fact” that is both personal and real. Hughes often wrote poems that reflect the aspirations of black poets, their desire to free themselves from the shackles of street life, poverty, and hopelessness. He also deliberately pushes for artistic independence and race pride that embody the values and aspirations of the common man. Racism is real, and the fact that many African-Americans are suffering from a feeling of extreme rejection and loneliness demonstrate this claim. The tone is optimistic but irritated. The same case can be said about Wright’s short stories. Wright’s tone is overtly irritated and miserable. But this is on the literary level. In his short stories, he portrays the African-American as a suffering individual, devoid of hope and optimism. He equates racism to oppression, arguing that the African-American experience was and is characterized by oppression, prejudice, and injustice. To a certain degree, both authors are keen to presenting the African-American experience as a painful and excruciating experience – an experience that is historically, culturally, and politically rooted. The desire to be free again, the call for redemption, and the path toward true racial justice are some of the themes in their
The readings were insightful and had interesting approaches to Negro mood. They had many emotional elements that were for the readers understanding of the different situations Negroes faced. When looking at the writings collectively they create a timeline. The timeline shows the various changes the Negroes mindset has gone through. The reader is exposed to three types of Negroes; one, the compliant Negro who knows his place, two, the Negro with will take his revenge and three, Negro who is conflicted between his desires and his responsibilities to his people.
Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in a northern town near Dayton, Ohio on June 27, 1872 (Brawley 12). His parents instilled in him the value of an education, and he excelled at the all-white Dayton Central High-school where he held the titles of class president, the president of the school literary society, and the editor of the school's newspaper (15). Dunbar was extremely well learned; he spoke and wrote in Standard English, but just as often his poetry was written in black dialect. As one of the first professional African American literary figures (Baym 1038), Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry consists of two distinct styles: his dialect pieces with the simple rhyme schemes of the ballad lyrical form, such as his 1897 poem When Malindy Sings, and his classical poetry that has more complex rhyme and form, and is written in Standard English like his 1897 poem, We Wear the Mask. The dialect poem, When Malindy Sings, is a result of what Dunbar called the mask, and what W.E.B. Dubois would later call double-consciousness. It portrays black society through the eyes of white America and how they wish to see it, while the poem written in classical form, We Wear the Mask, displays Dunbar’s true thoughts concerning his identity and the identity of his race.
Paul Dunbar was born into a tough life from the beginning. His parents were slaves and shortly they separated after his birth but this helped Dunbar later on in his career because Dunbar would draw stories from their plantation life (Paul Poetry Foundation). He had to grow up without two parents and had to tough it out on his own. Dunbar also was financially unable to attend college and eventually moved to Chicago and befriended Frederick Douglass (Paul Poetry Foundation np). These events affected his life by not allowing Dunbar to attend college and sharpen his writing skills and Douglass helped him gain more reputation. Dunbar challenged the literary world by trying to make them read within the words and not just read the words. He fought slavery through his poetry and always referred to people as “we” and never “I”. This is important because Dunbar wanted to stand up for the whole black community and it is important he inspired so many people to read his poems. Dunbar impacted modernism by writing some o...
Paul Laurence Dunbar is one of the most influential African American poets to gain a nationwide reputation. Dunbar the son of two former slaves; was born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio. His work is truly one of a kind, known for its rich, colorful language, encompassed by the use of dialect, a conversational tune, and a brilliant rhetorical structure. The style of Dunbar’s poetry includes two distinct voices; the standard English of the classical poet and the evocative dialect of the turn of the century black community in America. His works include a large body of dialect poems, standard English poems, essays, novels, and short stories. The hardships encountered by members of is race along with the efforts of African Americans to achieve equality in America were often the focus of his writings. http://www.dunbarsite.org/
On the surface, "life" is a late 19th century poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The poem illustrates the amount of comfort and somber there is in life. Unfortunately, according to Paul Laurence Dunbar, there is more soberness in life than the joyous moments in our existence. In more detail, Paul Laurence Dunbar demonstrates how without companionship our existence is a series of joys and sorrows in the poem, "Life" through concrete and abstract diction.
Thesis: The poems “Negro”, “I Too”, and “Song for a Dark Girl” by Langston Hughes was written around an era of civil inequality. A time when segregation was a customary thing and every African American persevered through civil prejudice. Using his experience, he focuses his poems on racial and economic inequality. Based on his biographical information, he uses conflict to illustrate the setting by talking about hardships only a Negro would comprehend and pride only a Negro can experience, which helps maintain his racial inequality theme.
The story begins on a very sad note especially in the eyes of a reader. Mrs. Mallard is said to have a “heart
...eding hearts” and “mouth . . . . myriad subtleties” (4-5).Today, everyone is entitled to having equal opportunities in the US. Back in Dunbar’s time, on the other hand, slavery prohibited blacks from being an ordinary person in society. Although they prayed heavily and persevered, they wore the mask for the time-being, in the hopes of living in a world where the color of one’s skin would not determine his or her character.
Most women in Mrs Mallard’s situation were expected to be upset at the news of her husbands death, and they would worry more about her heart trouble, since the news could worsen her condition. However, her reaction is very different. At first she gets emotional and cries in front of her sister and her husbands friend, Richard. A little after, Mrs. Mallard finally sees an opportunity of freedom from her husbands death. She is crying in her bedroom, but then she starts to think of the freedom that she now has in her hands. “When she abandoned herse...
Justice and freedom play a huge role in the unit as it gave African Americans still suffering from racial oppression and violence a voice to air the injustices they were facing. It also gave them an opportunity to show that even though they were free from slavery policies like “separate but equal” were used to create a new type of slavery. You can see this in the poem “We Wear the Mask” even though they were free from slavery African American still had to wear a metaphorical mask to cover the anger and sadness they felt over the policy of “separate but equal” and the lynchings of innocent African Americans that were occurring. Dunbar also uses imagery when he says things such as: “bleeding hearts”, “tortured souls”, “tears and sighs” to give
This poem immediately explains the pain that African Americans had to deal with. The diction that Dunbar chooses is not in any way dramatic. He writes, “With torn and bleeding hearts we smile.” I feel he is writing about true feelings on how serious it was to conceal these deep feelings. We now know that they suffer an internally and even with broken hearts they continue to show that they are happy. During slavery time, basically all opportunities to a better life were pretty much taken away from slaves, they were poor and were bossed around by higher dominance hierarchy. With that being they were born to be at the bottom and there was nothing that they can be done. It was just unfortunate and the only thing to do is smile and live the
The first reader has a guided perspective of the text that one would expect from a person who has never studied the short story; however the reader makes some valid points which enhance what is thought to be a guided knowledge of the text. The author describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman who seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." (This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time). Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she automatically does not want to accept, blindly, the situation of being controlled by her husband. The reader identified Mrs. Mallard as not being a "one-dimensional, clone-like woman having a predictable, adequate emotional response for every life condition." In fact the reader believed that Mrs. Mallard had the exact opposite response to the death her husband because finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow. "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." We can see that the reader got this idea form this particular phrase in the story because it illuminates the idea of her sorrow tuning to happiness.