Comparing The Ice Palace And It's Wavering Image

America’s history has many instances of cultural conflicts. We can see these conflicts in early America with the Native Americans and the colonist. As America grew new immigrants, cultures, and ways of living began to develop which increased the number of social conflicts. In the early 1900’s both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Maud Eaton or pen name Sui Sin Far comment about some of these struggles in their time. Fitzgerald highlights the difference between northern culture and southern cultures in his story “The Ice Palace”, while Far shows the clash between of the Chinese American and the white man in “It’s Wavering Image”. To illustrate these differences both Far and Fitzgerald use a women who is stretched between two different cultures,

Fitzgerald’s character Sally Carrol is in love and engaged with a man from the North named Harry. As Sally visits Harry in the North she develops first impressions of the North. The first thing she sees is a “solitary farmhouse” and has “ an instant chill of compassion for the souls hut in there waiting for spring”.(928). Sally also describes the women she meets as being “flaxen” and “listless” and “the essence of spiritless conventionality”(928, 933). Sally’s illustration of her environment shows her dislike for the North, but continues to react positively for the sake of her marriage with Harry. When Harry asks if she enjoys the south she responds by saying “’Where you are is home for me, Harry’” and realizes as she says this that this was “the first time in her life that she was acting a part” (930). Sally tries to make the “the North –her land” because of her love for Harry (928). Her attempt is in vain because her love for Harry cannot eliminate the southern culture within her. This is apparent at the end of the story; when she breaks down in the ice labyrinth and screams to “Take [her] home” she is talking about her home in the South (940). This time of desperation causes her to reveal that she feels her home is in the South. Sally’s love and future was located in the North but this was not enough to overcome her upbringing in Southern

The characters in Fitzgerald’s story lack long-term exposure to different cultures, a flaw that leads to the creation of false stereotypes. Mr. Bellamy grew up in Kentucky which “made him a link between” Sally’s “old life and new”(933), implying that the rest of the family grew did not grow up in the South. When Harry sees a man with baggy trousers he immediately assumes that “He must be a Southerner,”(934). Harry believes that many Southerners are “degenerates” and have “gotten lazy and shiftless.”(934,935). He makes generalizations about a whole group of people without ever being with these people for a lengthy period of time. He even shows that his generalization is false when he thought a classmate was “the true type of Southern aristocrat” but found out that he was “just the son of a Northern carpetbagger”(935). Without growing up in the South it is unreasonable for Harry to make any “sweepin’ generalities”(935). Sally also categorizes when she describes most of the Northern men as “canine” and most of the Southerners as “feline”(932). Similar to Harry, Sally lacks any long-term exposure with the Northerners, so she has no backing to label the Northerners. Fitzgerald extends stereotypes based on vicinity to ones according to race through Roger Patton. Patton says that the “Swedes” are “gloomy and melancholy” , the “Spanish” have “black hair and daggers an’ haunting music”, and “the