Rhetorical Analysis: An Address To The Whites

. Elias Boudinot and William Apess both fight for the rights of their peoples. In what way are their rhetorical strategies different?

Elias Boudinot and William Apess both fight for the rights of their peoples (Native Americans) during the period just before and just after the ratification of The Indian Removal Act. Despite having the same goal, they use different rhetorical strategies to persuade their audience toward their cause. In “An Address To The Whites,” Elias Boudinot attempts to prove the Civility of Native Americans and to prove assimilation to the White Population is possible with time (appeasement). Boudinot notes the invention of an alphabet, the organization of a government, and most importantly a translation of the Bible

into the New Testament (with a major mark of Civilization being Christianity) to point out the similarities between Natives and Whites. On the other hand, William Apess fights for the rights of Native Americans by accusing/indicting the White Population for unjust actions. He uses the Principle of Justice (“How can you rule over us if you are all criminals?”) and the Principle of Majority/Democracy in reference to Religion, (“God created 15 colored races to 1 White”) to prove that Whites are not only not as holy as they think they are compared to Native Americans, but also that Whites aren’t fit to rule Natives due to their crimes.

2. Contrast irony in Douglass’s “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July” with Zitkala Sa’s “Impressions of an Indian Childhood.” Both works employ the rhetorical strategy of temporal doubling, but their ironic effects cannot be more different. In what way are they different?

Frederick Douglass’s “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July” and Zitkala-Sa’s “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” both utilize the strategy of temporal doubling (using multiple time periods to deliver their message). However, the message they deliver using irony is nearly the complete opposite. Frederick Douglass mentions the irony that Slaves didn’t get the same rights as American Revolutionaries, that “What was shocking going against laws (Unjust laws under a larger power) is now celebrated and justified-Slavery” (Discussion). Douglass ironically uses the temporal parallels between the 1700s and 1800s to pronounce that progressive social change has occurred in the past and it can occur in the future for slaves reach a better physical and social stature. In contrast to the message of positive social change through irony, Zitkala-Sa’s irony is that the happiness of the first temporal period (childhood) is complicated by the sadness and impossible return to the past found in the second (narration) and third (present day) temporal period. “The world of tradition was destroyed with the creation of the reservation” (Discussion), Zitkala-Sa’s irony, using the temporal periods, shows that due to social changes, she and Natives can’t return to a better place.

3. What makes Rebecca Harding Davis’s novella “Life in the Iron Mills” one of the first works of
American literary naturalism? Give an example.

Despite naturalism not ‘starting’ for nearly 20 years after, Rebecca Harding Davis’s novella “Life in the Iron Mills” is considered one of the first if not the first naturalist novel. Her novella, by focusing on; Environment, income inequality, the ills of Capitalism (much like Marx at the same time), and disputes over labor systems (slave vs paid labor) parallel the principles of naturalism. American literary naturalism is an “innovative form of realism” (discussion), a subgenre where the “human is subject to environment, culture, and class” (lecture) focusing on environment (setting), and by using that definition given in class, it is clear how Davis’s novella is considered naturalist. One specific point in the book that proves this is the description of the factory town and its people, “the air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human beings… the hands of each mill are divided into watches that relieve each other as regularly as the sentinels of an army.” (Pages 1 & 6). Her description of the environment show that the citizens are not only trapped between the air and the ground and therefore trapped in the town, but also that men are the equivalent to machines subject to their class/economic stature. An emphasis on social and environmental factors and their effects on man.

4. Compare gender relations in Hawthorne’s “Rapaccini’s Daughter” and Gillman’s “The Yellow Wall Paper.” In what way can these two works’ respective portrayals of gender relations be viewed as similar and in what way are they different?

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rapaccini’s Daughter” and Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” address the role of women during their respective time periods. They are similar in that the idea that the “Only way for a woman to be free is by being something other than a woman” (discussion) is very present both in Beatrice becoming Super-Natural and the Narrator becoming “crazy.” Both women are also treated like infants, Beatrice is “Grown in garden” her social skills are described as that of a child, “no unlike what the maiden of a lonely island might have felt, conversing with a voyager from the civilized world…Giovanni responded as if to an infant” (page 11). Similarly, John calls the narrator “little goose” and puts her (intentionally or not) in a nursey meant for children. Finally, both John and Rappacini have complete power over the woman, both believing that they are helping her health by controlling her location (the Rapaccini’s garden and the room with the Yellow Wallpaper), when they are really hurting them. The major difference in their portrayal is that at the end of “The Yellow Wallpaper” the Woman “creeps” over the man, stepping over him in a literal and symbolic manner gaining power where in “Rapaccini’s Daughter” once she is liberated from the poison and control, she dies.

5. According to standard critical definitions, American literary regionalism is a style divorced from history and politics, and bent on promoting the purity of American identity. How does Jewett’s story about “poor Joanna” in The Country of the Pointed Firs destabilize this standard definition?

American literary regionalism is a style divorced from history and politics, and bent on promoting the purity of American identity.

Joanna destabilizes this definition in a regionalist novel “The Country of the Pointed Firs” because, despite Jewett’s focus on setting and the cultural specificity, Joanna’s story is all about history and a political history that is less than ideal to the American image. Joanna “Lives like a Native” (discussion) preserving the Native’s history just by living on Shell-Heap Island, a place that exists (in the modern eye) as a preservation of history in a region. She is resourceful, using her environment in her house for decorations, rejects the social convention of time, and rejects the Church’s Authority as seen on page 438. By preserving the history of the Natives, she is a persistent reminder of a past that contaminates the idea of the perfect American identity. By preserving history (and a political history with the treatment of Natives), her character is history therefore going against the definition of American literary regionalism.

6. What is the relationship between Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs and her story “The Foreigner”? In what way would the novel be different had Jewett never written “The Foreigner”?

The relationship between Jewett’s “The Country of the Pointed Firs” and her story

“The
Foreigner” is essentially that “The Foreigner” is an extension of “The Country of the Pointed Firs.” “The Foreigner” is said to have occurred in the same Summer (late August), in the same place (Dunnet Landing), involving the same characters (the Narrator and Mrs. Todd who is telling the story), and “mends all the previous stories together by preserving history” (Lecture). The novel would be very different if Jewett had never written “The Foreigner” because it brings a major shift to Mrs. Todd’s origins, the history of Dunnet Landing, and therefore the story itself. Through the main story of Mrs. Tolland in “The Foreigner” the reader finds out that Mrs. Todd learned all her knowledge of herbs from Mrs. Tolland. Because Mrs. Tolland is from the Caribbean area (we know this through her mother’s ghost’s “dark face” on page 553) an area that is heavily influenced by conjure medicine, Mrs. Todd becomes a Conjure Woman. This is big for two reasons (I’ll try to keep it short). First, “The Foreigner” shifts from a story about two woman’s friendship, to a community benefitting from slavery destabilizing the purity of New England Maine and the history of Dunnet Landing (different history than a cute port). Second, this means that the community is indebted to conjured medicine as Mrs. Todd brought life through conjuring once against destabilizing the “racial purity of New England” (Lecture) creating a different history, reinventing one of the main characters in Mrs. Todd, and a different story if you keep “The Foreigner” in mind.