Some aspects of American culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through a number of selected short literary works

Some aspects of American culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through a number of selected short literary works

Part I: IntroductionI.1 Rationale

I was born to a family whose members are all business people except me My father used to bea successful businessman who traveled all around the world from Asia, Europe, America toAustralia After each trip, he told me about the places he had been to and about the people hehad met with vivid examples of their culture From my father, I learnt about the beautifulSingapore city and Copenhagen capital of Denmark whose people are very well aware ofkeeping their city clean and green, about fast-food and the work-oriented and individualisticpeople in California compared to the out-going and neighborly people in Texas, Louisiana andArkansas My father has left in me the curiosity to learn about culture of the countries aroundthe world Besides, my father and my brother were my first teachers of literature who blew inme the wind of passion to study literature, moving my heart with the poem “Me om” by TranDang Khoa, “Nguoi thay dau tien” translated from a Russian short story by a Russian writer,“Chiec la cuoi cung“ translated from an American short story by O’Henry These literaryworks provoked in me the love for men, the understanding of the people, their culture and thesocial circumstances in and about which the works were written

I am now a teacher of English at Haiphong Foreign Language Center under HaiphongUniversity For a teacher of English, having good knowledge of the culture and society ofEnglish speaking countries is of great benefit since such experiences do help to make theteaching and learning of the target language easier, more lively and vivid It can not be deniedthat the teaching and learning of a language would fail if the teacher does not have goodcultural and social background knowledge to explain to his or her students the situations inwhich the native speakers use the language or the social circumstances in which the languageis used.

Once watching the “Sao mai diem hen” and “Bai hat Viet” competitions, the favorite musictournaments of the Vietnamese on television, listening to most competitors singing all popsongs, which originated from the United States, it came to my question that “To what extentshas American culture penetrated the Vietnamese?” Beside pop music, we can witness thepractice of American culture by a large number of people in our country, especially, by the

young generation, through the way they sing pop, rock, Hip-hop songs, dance and dress inAmerican style with jeans and T-shirt, through the way we eat fast-food, drink soft drinks andspend money, through the way young people think more practically about love and money andso on No one can say how much we have absorbed American culture, however, it is obviousthat American culture has more or less had an impact on the Vietnamese.

I have recently become interested in American literature, especially the short stories Whenreading pieces of literary work of this genre, I have in mind a clear mosaic of Americanpeople, their culture and society I find it very effective to learn about the culture and societyof a country through their literature since literature is the art of words made up from the “rawmaterial of life” Reading literature not only provokes our thoughts and imagination but alsoenriches our knowledge of the people, and aspects of the target culture and society

The twentieth and twenty-first century have witnessed a breakthrough of American economyas the United States of America has become the leading power of the world, and especiallywitnessed dramatic changes in American society and culture Literary works of this time ingeneral and the short stories in particular have done a good job to depict these changes in theliveliest ways Short stories do not require much time and effort to read The reader can enjoythe whole piece of a short story without interruptions or even without changing his or herposture, therefore, he or she can have a more thorough and correct interpretation of the workas well as of the cultural and social context in which the work is written

I.2 Aims and objectives

Doing this research, I wish to gain an in-depth understanding of some aspects of Americanpopular culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through highly-appreciated short stories Once at a time, I have chance to study both American culture andsociety and a special cultural category, that is American literature in general and the shortstories in particular

People may think that I am too greedy to “catch two birds with one hand” However, I myselfacknowledge that this greediness is for the sake of my students’ advantages When theirteacher of English has a thorough understanding of one of the target cultures, the studentswould benefit Instead of being taught about the language, they are explained about the

cultural and social contexts in which the language is used Thus, they could use the languagein a more natural way and, therefore, engage in language activities more actively

I have always insisted that teaching literature in a foreign language is not for the sole aim, thatis to teach the language and the art of language to express the ideas, but it is for the greateraim, that is to broaden the knowledge of the students of the target culture and society Withsuch knowledge, my students would be more conscious of their cultural identity and practicethe target culture more selectively.

I.3 Scope of the research

Within the limitation of a minor thesis, I only discuss some of the most prominent aspects ofthe culture and society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twenty-first centuriessuch as individualism, American informality, racial discrimination, modern American women,generation gap and American people in the turbulent ages These are the features of Americanculture and society that arise most prominently in the short stories I luckily came across.The literary works used for analysis are the short stories written by recognized Americanauthors such as William Faulkner, Jesse Stuart, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, BernardMalamud, Grace Paley and the new generation of writers including Charles Bowden, TomMcNeal, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bobbie Ann Mason, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Nathaniel Bellows,Julia Alvarez, Akhil Sharma and others Besides, I include one piece of memoir and a literaryessay which I find helpful to support my discussion.

I.4 Design and methodology

The paper is divided into three main parts:

Part I presents an overview of the whole research, providing readers with the rationale, theaims and objectives, the scope, the design and methodology of the study.

Part II is the development of the paper, consisting of two chapters Chapter 1 is devoted to theliterature review of the subject matter which deals with the concepts including culture andsociety, literature, short stories and other genres of literature, techniques in storytelling, andshort literary works and their portrayal of culture and society Besides, the first chapter alsoprovides an overview of American society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Suchoverview of American society, along with the theoretical background in the previous section

are the bases for chapter 2, which discusses the main issues concerning aspects of Americanculture and society in the 20th and 21st centuries reflected in the short literary works Theexplicative method is employed to exploit the cultural and social circumstances embedded inthe literary works since this research does not aim at studying thoroughly the techniques of thewriters.

Part III gives the conclusion of the whole discussion in part II along with implications forteaching.

Part II: development

In this chapter, an attempt is made to clarify some basic concepts such as culture, society,literature, short stories and other genres of literature including essay and memoir, techniquesin storytelling and moreover, short literary works and their portrayal of life With theunderstanding of such concepts, our discussion on some aspects of American culture andsociety in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through literature in the next chapter wouldbe more precise.

II.1.1 Culture and society

For many people, culture is an abstract and, therefore, it is very difficult to give a briefdefinition of it Nevertheless, culture is a very simple term to me When we talk about Japan,people think of cultural artifacts such as “kimono” “shusi”, “gheisa”, tea art, and the hard-working Japanese people Regarding Vietnam, international friends discuss our charmingwomen in the “all revealing and all concealing” “ao dai”, “pho”, “Ha Long Bay”, “Hueancient town”, the street sellers and the brave and intelligent Vietnamese who won the victoryin our struggle against the American Meanwhile, when the United States is considered, noone can exclude their hamburgers and fast-food industry, the jeans, the White House, theStatue of Liberty, the skyscrapers, Hollywood, the king of pop Michael Jackson, the king ofbasketball Michael Jordan and the “golfing genius” Tiger Wood These examples are to provethat culture is not unfamiliar with us, but it is anything, both tangible and intangible, that wehave, we think and we do As M Thomas Inge and Dennis Hall pointed out in their book The

Greenwood Guide to American Popular Culture, “Man’s culture is the complex of all heknows, all he possesses, and all he does.” (2002, xix) “All he knows” can be his knowledge

and ideas of life, science and his explanation of the relationship among people, their customs,

religion or so “All he possesses” includes all his material property, his family, his relationshipwith other people, his belief and values, his personality as well as his talent And “all he does”

is concerned with either his material or spiritual activities In the same light, Michael Kammenin his book “American culture, American tastes, social change and the 20th century” identifies

culture as “the way of life of particular people living together in one place That culture ismade visible in their arts, in their social system, in their habits and customs, in theirreligion…” (1999, p.8) What Kammen meant by the “particular people living together in one

place” is what we call society In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, society is defined as

“people in general, living together in communities” or “a particular community of people whoshare the same customs, laws, etc.” Such customs, laws and etc make up a culture Culture and

society are closely related We do not have two different societies with exactly the sameculture or one society with completely different culture Let consider American society andVietnamese society The two communities live in different parts of the world on differentcontinents With different geographical features and history, each community develops theireconomy in different ways, therefore, each country has a distinguished culture With its originin water-rice agriculture, the culture of Vietnam is often regarded as community-based culturewhereas the American tend to develop their individualistic culture owing to their hunting, andfarming origin supported by developed industry Within the American society, there are manyraces such as white, black or African-American, American Indian or Alaska native, Asian,native Hawaiian, other Pacific Islander and ethnic groups due to immigrations from all aroundthe world However, when all these races live together in one united society, they share themainstream culture such as fast pace of life, individualism, informality, modernity althoughtheir practice of these criteria varies in terms of degree.

II.1.2 LiteratureII.1.2.1 Definitions

Before having a discussion about literature, I would like to spend some words for EarnestHemmingway, one of the greatest American writers, who I find some similarities with theexcellent writer Nguyen Tuan of Vietnam Earnest Hemmingway and Nguyen Tuan, whowere restless, share the passion for traveling and writing about the people and places they hadbeen to Hemmingway spent his whole life traveling all over America, Europe, Cuba, Africa

and wrote his masterpieces A Farewell to Arm when he was an ambulance driver for the RedCross in Italy during the World War I, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, ForWhom the Bell Tolls and Death in the Afternoon based on his experiences while living in

Spain and joining the Spanish civil war Meanwhile, Nguyen Tuan, who is claimed to be anadventurer and a motionist of Vietnamese literature, gained great success in variety of literaryforms, one of which is essays (tuú bót) with the works such as Mot chuyen di (A Trip), Vangbong mot thoi (Echo and Shadow Upon A Time), Chiec lu dong mat cua (The Crab-Eyed

Copper Censer), Song Da (Da river) and others These brilliant works are the result of his

never-stopped watching, listening, involving and writing

The examples of Earnest Hemmingway and Nguyen Tuan are to prove that literature is the artof employing language as a tool of symbolizing what the writer sees, hears, feels, involves inand understands real life A writer can not stay in one place all his life if he wants to sharpenhis senses for the production of literary works As David Stuart Davies has appealed, writers

in general and story tellers in particular are the “magicians who can take the raw material oflife, enhance it and mould it into something that both entertains and provokes thoughts”

(2000, p vii) This statement not only points out two of the many functions of literature andstory telling, that is entertaining and provoking thoughts, but also reveals the realistic basis ofliterature It is obvious that the ideas which inspire writers for a worthy piece of literary workoften come from real life Therefore, it can be understood that literature is a tool for thereflection of life and for the expression of viewpoints of the writers Davies emphasized that

“True literature is not just there to entertain…it is there to help us understand ourselves and

the world in which we live that little bit better.” (2000, p viii) As he suggested, a real literary

work does not only provide readers with pleasure but also helps to improve their criticalthinking of their own ways of life, their belief, their religion, which means their culture and

“the world in which ” they live in, which is the society In the same light, Norman N Holland

also stressed the roles of literature in providing readers with knowledge of the world and,

moreover, with approaches to their understanding that world He insisted that “Literature isnot things but a way to comprehend things.” (as cited in Beaty, Booth, Hunter & Mays, 2002,

p xxviii) What Holland meant by “things” here is everything in the world around us includingculture and society Literature is not only concerned with problems of a culture and society butalso reveals how the writer deals with such problems The writer approaches the subjectmatters in one way and the reader may approach them in a different way but the thing is, the

writer brings about his experiences and views of life for the reader to expose to, to comparewith and to sharpen his owns

II.1.2.2 Short stories, memoirs, essays and other genres of literature

The classification of literary genres or types of literature is often based on many categoriesincluding theme, form, technique, tone, length and others Regarding the form, literature istraditionally divided into three main genres including prose, poetry and drama Prose isdistinguished from the other genres in the way the ideas are organized in paragraphs made upof complete sentences Short story is a sub-genre of prose Regarding the technique whether touse real or imaginary materials, literature comprises of fiction and non-fiction As defined in

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, fiction is “a type of literature that describe

imaginary people and events, not real ones” The characters and events are invented to

promote the writer’s point of view or ideology about life However, there is still some real infiction As I have said in the definition of literature, a piece of literary works is made up from

the “raw materials of life” Therefore, there must be something true in the work The

“something” here can be either the social context or the features of the characters whichresemble ones in the real life This genre comprises short stories, novels, poetry, dramas andothers

On the contrary, non-fiction, the broadest “category” of literature is a type of writing about

real subjects although the characters or events can be imaginative or invented “Under thisumbrella term come autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, essays, speeches,travelogues, news articles and many more types of writing.” (as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p.

The genres of literature used in this study are primarily short stories supported by a memoirand a literary essay.

II.1.2.2.1 Short stories

As the term itself suggests short stories are pieces of writing which are short However, whatis the criterion to say that one work is short and the other is long In the Preface of the bookFiction – An Introduction to the Short Story, Jane Bachman Gordon and Karen Kuehner(1999) argue that a short story often contains around five hundred words Those contain much

less than five hundred words are considered short-short stories And if a story is made up of

about fifteen thousand words, people call it a novella, a short novel However, what is counted

here is not only the matter of the length of a story Edgar Allan Poe described a short story as

“a short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal.” (as

cited in Gordon & Kuehner, 1999, p vii)

Regarding the form of a short story, Robert DiYanni pointed out: “Short stories…typicallyreveal character in dramatic scenes, in moments of action, and in exchanges of dialogue.”

From the scenes, the moments of action and what the characters speak to each other, thereaders can understand the characters, which contribute to the understanding of the underlyingideas of the author as well as the cultural features and social aspects of the time.

Like other types of story, a short story consists of five elements:

-Setting is the time and place in which the story takes place The setting here means

either the physical environment or the belief, values, ideas, traditions and customs.

-Characters are the people, animals or anything that the writer chooses to act in the

story The main character is called the protagonist and the other characters thatsupport the conflict of the story are the antagonists.

- Point of View is the “vantage point” of the author from which the story is told This

“vantage point” can be depicted from the first person stand (The first person is the

narrator named “I” or “me” that tells the story.) or the third person stand (The thirdperson can either be an omniscient narrator who knows everything that happens or a

limited narrator who is the outsider of the events and describes from the points of view

of one character in the story.)

-Theme is the message of the story that the author wants to send to readers The

message is often about human behavior and relationship, human nature, conflicts in thesociety and the solution and so on The theme can be explicitly stated or implicitlypresented, which encourages readers to consider all the elements of the story in orderto infer the message.

-Plot is the sequences of related events which help conveying the theme and the point

of view A plot is often developed in five stages: exposition, which provides

introductory information for the setting, the characters and the conflict; rising action,which develops and complicates the conflicts, which then leads to the climax – thehighest emotional or turning point of the story; falling action – the action that thecharacters do after the climax, which brings about the resolution which deals with

how the conflicts are resolved.

Let consider an example with the short - short story “Snow” by Julia Alvarez, a recognizedDominican - American fiction writer (as cited in Chin et al, 2002, p 1032)

As seen from the diagram, the climax is drawn from a number of rising actions and after theclimax come a falling action which perform a lead to the resolution, which indicates the theme- the message the writer wishes to present to readers, that is the value of life, which should behighly considered The climax of this short story, which is the extreme anxiety of the youngimmigrated girl when mistaking snow for bomb, was not only the suffering of a singlecharacter in the story but of a number of real American people during the nuclear age in the1960s Although their characters, actions and dialogues can be invented, short stories oftenportray real cultural and social subject matters.

“I” watched the snow and found each snowflake irreplaceable and beautiful, like a person,

Resolution

“I” – an immigrant, spent her first year in New York studying at a Catholic school

“I” learnt the first new words including

“I” had raid drills and learnt about

air-nuclear bomb, radioactive fallout and bomb shelter

Her teacher drew a picture dotted a flurry of chark marks to illustrate the dusty fallout that would kill them

“I” shrieked “Bomb! Bomb!” seeing the sky dotted with snow The

teacher told “I” that it is snow, not bomb

Climax

II.1.2.2.2 Essays

As our common knowledge, essay, one of the most common types of non – fiction, is a shortpiece of writing dealt with a chosen topic which can be of social or cultural issues, personalconflicts and perception of the world, interpersonal relation and many other subjects.

There are two main kinds of essay: narrative and informative Narrative essays are short

writings devoted to true stories told from either the first person or the third person point ofview While a short story has to do with unreal people and things, a narrative essay focuses onreal people and events However, in some essays, writer employs some imaginary and creativeelements to promote a true story Informative essays are divided into two main kinds:

expository essay which describes a single issue such as discrimination, American fashion,

American women and persuasive essay or argumentative essay which supports an opinion.

The main objective is to persuade readers to share a common point of view with the writer byoffering facts and real-life situations which promote the main argument Most of informative

essays develop into three stages: The introduction or lead introduces the topic to readers byusing a topic sentence or in other words, a thesis statement, which can either be implied orexplicit In some essays, a thesis statement may come at the end The body develops the topic

with a number of supporting details or ideas, from statistics, tables and charts or facts,

personal observations and experience to legal documents The conclusion provides a summary

of the main points discussed in the body At the same time, the writer brings readers back tothe thesis statement which has been drawn in the introduction.

II.1.2.2.3 Memoirs

A memoir is a personal “account” of the events of the author’s life in the past In many books

they use autobiography for a memoir Nevertheless, the two terms represent two different

forms of writing While an autobiography is a personal “account” of the writer’s entire life up

to the time followed a chronological order, a memoir tells an “episode” of the whole life of theauthor, focusing on particular events or facts in a particular period of the author’s life

A memoir is a combination of the writer’s memory and his thoughts and feelings about theincidents described These thoughts and feeling may not be stated directly but implied in the

interaction and actions of the characters Most commonly, a memoir is written from the standof the first person A small number of memoirs are written in the third-person to increase theobjectiveness of the amount of narration.

There are two main types of memoirs including personal memoirs and historical memoirs.

As a personal observations of, thoughts of and feelings about the writer’s own life, a personalmemoir is more subjective Whereas a historical memoir tends to describe historical facts andevents on a more objective stand

Elements of a memoir are, like a short story, settings, characters, points of view, theme andplot with conflicts, which may not lead to a climax or require a resolution as in short story.Besides, a memoir, like an essay is often made up of three parts, introduction, body andconclusion

II.1.2.3 Some techniques in storytelling

Technique is one of the five major elements of storytelling in association with plot, theme,point of view, character and setting Technique has to do with the structuring of the story intothe plot so that the writer can convey the theme and the manipulating of the language in orderto express the ideas of the writer in the most effective way Hereby, I take into considerationsome of the most popular techniques which have been used so far:

- Flash-back or “replay” of scenes or events As Beverly Ann Chin defines it,

“Flash-back is a portion of a story that interrupts the chronological sequences of events todescribe what happened earlier.” (Chin, et al., 2002, p 813) This technique provides

readers with the background of a setting, an event or a character.

- Foreshadowing is considered opposite with flash-back as it “gives hints or clues that

suggest or prepare the reader for events that occur later in a work.” (Gordon &

Kuehner, 1999, p 5) However, the writer must be careful when employing thistechnique because too apparent hints or clues may result in boredom for the readers asthey can speculate exactly the ending of the story in early stages.

-Coincidence is the arrangement of time and place for two characters to meet or two

events to take place at the same time As Gordon and Kuehner point out coincidence is

“the chance occurrence of two things at the same time or place to denote the workingof Fate in a person’s life.” (Gordon & Kuehner, 1999, p 6)

-Indirect characterization is a technique utilized to develop a character The writer

does not present the personalities of the character in a direct way but readers can learnwhat kind of personalities the character is through the words or actions of the characterhimself or herself, or through what the narrator or the other characters say about him orher.

-Foil is a character used to contrast with a second character in order to highlight the

qualities of the second character (Chin, et al., 2002, p 872) This is an effectivetechnique as it helps readers identify the main character more easily

-Sarcasm, known as satire or irony is a kind of humor in storytelling that uses bitter or

“caustic” language for the portrayal of a negative character.

All the techniques employed are to generate the curiosity –the desire to know what ishappening and what is going to happen next or, moreover, the suspense of readers – a type of

involvement of the readers in doubting and speculating the coming events of the story.

II.1.3 Short literary works and the portrayal of life

In the lifetime of a writer, he or she witnesses and engages in many activities or events Eachactivity or event causes certain effects on the writer However, there are some activities orevents that have prevailing or overwhelming impressions on the writer and, therefore, provokedeep thoughts in the writer The writer, with his or her natural gift in language, will look for away to record the event as well as his or her feelings and point of view for it Literature is

created as the result Among various genres of literature, literary works consisting of short

stories, memoirs and essays, unlike other longer pieces of work such as novels or dramas, canbe an instant record of real-life events since they do not require too much time and energy.Since memoirs and essays are of non-fiction genre, I suggest spending most of this sectiondiscussing the realistic reflection of short stories, which belong to fiction genre

In her note for the short story “Nobody’s business” about the life and love of the young

American students, Jhumpa Lahiri states that “I spent most of my twenties in Boston In myeight years there, I moved a total of eight times For the majority of those years, I shared

apartments with people whom, initially, I didn’t know at all I usually found them throughnewspapers or words of mouth…Everything in those households was communal I felt normalthen, but it’s hard to imagine now, living in such proximity with perfect strangers This storywas inspired by the unexpected glimpses one sometimes has the intimate lives of others.” (as

cited in Kenison, 2002, p 349-350) Yet, what Lahiri had experienced is described vividly inher story, which begins with the moving in of the new comer, Sang from Bengali, to share therented house with the other two perfect strangers from different corners of the States Then,the whole story is devoted to describing the love affairs, the life of the three students under thesame roof and how they cope with their personal problems as well as the shared-problems ofthe house Without her experience, her sharpened mind and deep thoughts about the studentlife she had experienced, Lahiri could never create such a recognized work which does notonly do the descriptive job but also provokes thoughts in readers as they may have their ownjudgements about the modern lifestyle of the young American and, then, have the solutions fortheir own problems which resemble those in the story

For another instance, in her note for the short story “Accomplice”, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

writes “”Accomplice” grew out of my efforts to understand how a well-conceived assignmentmanaged to go awry How could such involved, wordly, educated parents accept as real ateacher’s report that was so obviously false? It was only by imagining Ms Hempel’srelationship with her father that I began to grasp what it might feel like, as a parent, to be theonly one who recognizes your child’s talent and greatness, and how hungrily you mightwelcome the news that you are not alone ” (Bynum, as cited in Morre, 2004, p 435) This

note is to show that a literary work is the fruit of the ponderation of the writer for theunderstanding of different aspects of life For Ms Bynum, it was the ponderation of a teacherherself finding a way to make a true school-report to the prideful parents as well as activatethe students in their study and their self-responsibilities by doing self-assessment The storyreflects serious innermost conflicts of an individual school teacher, which many teachers ofthe time might experience.

In whichever genre of literature either fiction or non-fiction, with whichever techniqueemployed, the sole aim of the writer is to portray real life, to express his or her own

viewpoints of real life and to suggest a solution for problems in society In each literary work,the writer uses a particular technique which helps to achieve his or her ultimate purposes Forexample, as flash-back technique is employed in fictional A Rose for Emily with constantshifts of past and present events, William Faulkner brings to readers the suspense in theirattempt to interpret the plot and, therefore, creates more curiosity and interest of the readerswhen discovering changes in the attitude of the town people toward the protagonist, MissEmily as well as the changes in the South of the U.S where the story sets Along with flash-back, Faulkner also utilizes other techniques such as irony in his description of the women,Miss Emily’s people and the other people in town, and, indirect characterization technique,which employs the third limited narrator to present an objective voice for the story andstimulate the analysis and interpretation of the readers All of the techniques used in the storyare to contribute to the success of the writer in achieving his ultimate goal, that is, as acommon interpretation says, to portray the extreme racial discrimination in the Southern whitesociety of the time which causes a prideful white, Miss Emily to kill her colored lover in orderto keep him for herself forever

From the discussion above, we see that literature in general and short stories in particular donot come solely from the imagination of the writers Such works are deeply rooted in real lifeand are written to reflect real life

II.1.4 An overview of American society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

The twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century have been marked by themost important and eventful periods in American history which have made up substantialchanges in American society The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed an excessiveeconomic growth with dramatic industrial expansion, which brought about the so-called theroaring 1920s or the Jazz age symbolized by the rebellious and modern American flappers.This roaring age was soon followed by the worst economic downfall in American history, theGreat Depression from 1929 to 1939 which caused one - third of all American farmers to losetheir land and a recognizable decline of 60% of farm income between 1929 to 1932 (Brinkley,2000, p.739), along with a reduce by 40% in the average income of American family TheAmerican faced the hardest time ever before (retrieved on December 12, 2008 from

http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade30.html) From 1932 to 1935, the American, especiallythose living in the Great Plain region – the Dust Bowl, had to suffer one of the mostdevastating disasters of the nature, the dust storm After these difficult phases, the Americanjoined the World War II, which, with its aftermath, led the American to the golden age ofbooming national prosperity with the highest standard of living in the history of the worldeconomy, as indicated in the increase of the Gross National Product by 250% from 200 billiondollars to over 500 billion dollars between 1945 and 1960 The baby boom after World War IIprepared a vast number of 70 million coming of age generation in the 1960s Anotheraftermath of the Second World War is the struggle of American women for liberation andequality during the chaostic1950s and 1960s, which ended with the success of Women's Strikefor Equality on August 26, 1970 The period between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s wasalso the time of Civil Right movement which ended with the equal rights for the African-American in the whole country The late 1960s and the first half of 1970s saw millions ofpeople march to protest the American wars in Vietnam in which 57,939 American soldierswere killed or missed (as inscribed on Vietnam Veterants Memorial) (fromhttp://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade80.html, retrieved on Dec 12, 2008) The 1980s was thetime of “I” generation who craved for their own status in the society marked by sex revolution.Entertainment was booming with new genres of music such as rap or hip-hop, cabletelevisions, MTV and so on The following 1990s, though witnessing the U.S involvement inthe Gulf War, escalating terrorism, school shooting and sex scandals, the American enjoyed abooming economy which led to low unemployment and flowering consumption However thebeginning of the twenty-first century was welcomed by the American great anxiety and fearafter the suicide attack by the Islamic extremist’s organization named Al-Qaeda on the TwinTowers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which caused 2,974 fatalities excludingthe 19 hijackers and billions of dollar for economic recovery (retrieved Mar 10, 2009 fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_attacks) Along with the tense of terrorism,the American, at the beginning of the twenty-first century once again have been sufferinganother global economic recession with the unemployment rate reached to 8.1% in February

2009, equivalent to 12.5 million people out of work (retrieved on March 11, 2009 fromhttp://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.html)

Such mosaics of American culture and society provides a background for our understandingsof the more specific cultural and social aspects of the American in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries later discussed in this research.

twentieth and twenty-first centuries through short literaryworks

II.2.1 American informality

The American are very well-known for their informality I remember seeing an American manin the U.S embassy when I was reading a book, I looked up and caught his eyes He smiledand said “Hi” to me to my surprise since we had never met before The other day, when I wasclimbing the staircase up to my friend’s room in the dormitory of the University ofTechnology in Hanoi, some American guys went past me and greeted “Hi” to me in a verycasual way This informality is not a common practice among the Vietnamese when we meetstrangers as for Vietnamese people, we only greet those who are well-known to us or thosewho are older.

American informality is expressed in various forms In Cosmopolitan, a short story by AkhilSharma in The Best American short stories 1998, Gopal, the main character when treating hisfemale neighbor for the first time at his house, presents an open, hospitable and very informal

manner “Gopal walked to the refrigerator and asked her if she wanted anything to drink.” In

a traditional Vietnamese way, we normally bring tea or sometimes drinking water to serve ourguests without asking them if they want to have a drink or not On a contrary, the Americanoften ask their guests and give the options to them Like Gopal, he listed any things he had in

his refrigerator: “Orange juice, apple juice, or grape, pineapple, guava I also have sometropical punch, he continued, opening the refrigerator door wide, as if to show he was notlying.” (1998, p 50) Later in the story, when Gopal visited the female neighbor, Mrs Shaw ather home, she asked him if he would like anything to drink and offered “I have juice if youwant.” (1998, p 55) and then, very frankly when Gopal had not made up his mind for what todrink, she added as a suggestion “”I was going to have gin and tonic.” She said opening therefrigerator and standing before it…” (1998, p 55) When I asked two of my American

teachers, one from California and the other from Pennsylvania about this informal practice,they said that this is typical of the American to serve their guests at home in such an informalway In addition, in the book American Ways, an example of an American woman welcoming

guests is given to illustrate the informality of the American The evidence is that “When theguests arrived, she welcomed them by saying “Make yourself at home.” She showed themwhere to find the food and drinks in the kitchen and introduced them to some of the otherguests.” (Althen G, Doran R A., & Szmania J S, 2003, p 16) The woman treated her guests

as her family members Hence, these casual behaviors provide the guests with comfort for thefeeling that they are at home and, therefore, improve the closeness of the host and the guests.Another variation of American informality is seen in the short story “The Magic Barrel” byBernard Malamud The story, which takes place in the 1950s in New York, provides us withan evidence of casuality in the way Salzman, a marriage broker, behaved as a guest at thehome of Leo Finkle, his customer and a rabbinical student when he came to Leo to persuadehim to consider some of the women he had introduced to him While Leo behaved veryformally, asking Salzman to call him “Mr Finkle.” (as cited in Chin et al, 2002, p 877),Salzman, on the contrary, is very casual He brought with him something to eat because he

was so hungry after “all day in a rush” (As cited in Chin et al, 2002, p 880) and ate in frontof Leo without offering him “…first must come back my strength”, he said and “took out ofthe leather case an oily paper bag, from which he extracted a hard, seeded roll and a small,smoked fish With a quick motion of his hand stripped the fish out of its skin and beganravenously to chew.” (as cited in Chin et al, 2002, p 879-880) Salzman felt like home and he

made himself at home Host and guest are friends so there is no need to conceal one’s hunger.In Vietnamese situation, it is not common to bring food to other people’s house and enjoy thefood there The Vietnamese often try not to tell the host that he or she is hungry for thequestion of saving face Only among those who are very close to each other such as amongclose friends or relatives do people do so However, for the American, it is quite normal forthe guest to say how he feels or what he wants to eat or drink For example, when Salzman feltfor some tomato, or some tea, he asked Leo right away, though a bit hesitantly and humbly

due to the serious attitude Leo created “A sliced tomato you have maybe?” and “A glass teayou got, rabbi?” (2002, p 880) These evidences, though indicate rather extreme casualty for

the purpose of the author to draw a picture of a real awkward salesman, more or less reveal theinformality of the American as the guests For an American, it is not uncommon to bring foodto other people’s house, especially to their friends’ for a party And the thing they often bringalong is often a drink, such as beer, a bottle of champagne or wine or any of their favoritedrinks so that everyone can enjoy together Like Kevin, a character in the short storyNobody’s Business by Jhumpa Lahiri in The Best America Short Story 2002, when he came to

his girlfriend’s house shared with other students, he often brought along beers and helped withthe washing up

Beside the evidences of American informality discussed above in their greeting, in welcomingguests or in behaving as a guest, we have seen many informal practices in their dressing suchas the Casual Friday in many American company or school when the staff can put on anythingthey feel comfortable with, in the way they address each other, for example, the way a studentaddresses his teacher or a child addresses his parents with their first name My teacher ofAmerican culture Manvel Victor Bringas often allows us to call him by his first name Manveland in his free time, he sometimes goes on a picnic with us in T-shirt and shorts There are nogaps between teacher and students His informality creates a very friendly atmosphere whichwe usually have with our American teachers in particular and with our American friends ingeneral.

II.2.2 Racial discrimination

Racial discrimination is as old as American history since the first black African slaves came toAmerica over three centuries ago For centuries, the colored people in the United States havesuffered unjust segregation due to the dark complexion that they are born to possess Aslearners of English, we have heard about racial discrimination in America, about Rosa Parks, ablack woman who was arrested for her refusal of the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to awhite rider in Mongomery, Alabama and about Martin Luther King, the leader of the CivilRights movement in the 1960s that resulted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act which transformedthe American society in the late twentieth century and the century to come Nevertheless, wehave not learnt many of the illustrative evidences for racial discrimination itself

In his wonderful short story Big Boy leaves home first published in 1936, Richard N Wright

provides us with a vivid illustration for racial discrimination set in Southern America in theearly twentieth century The story begins with a lively scene of the four black boys Bobo,Lester, Buck and Big Boy, the main character, who are as naughty and lovely as any boys in

the world walking “lollingly in bare feet, beating tangled vines and bushes with long sticks”

(Schorer, p.885), twitting each other in a swimming hole in the woods after playing truantfrom school From the bottom of their heart, they always dreamt of the train that could bring

them to the North which was said to have equal rights for the colored folks “They countedeach train passed by and began to sing the song about “a train bound for glory”” Whilesinging the song, they felt a bright future ahead Wright draws a lively picture with “A blackwinged butterfly hovered at the water’s edge A bee droned From somewhere came the sweetscent of honey suckles Dimly they could hear sparrows twittering in the woods They rolledfrom side to side, letting sunshine dry their skin” (Schorer, p 893) Unfortunately, the black

boys’ happy time did not last long until they were found naked by a white woman In a normalsituation, the woman is supposed to be shy and run away But the woman in Wright’s story

screamed panickly as if she was seeing four monsters “You go away! You go away! I tell yougo away!” (Schorer, p 894), she shouted even when Big Boy said very politely: “Lady, wewanna git our closes.” (Schorer, p 894) The climax of the whole story arises when the

woman’s fiancÐ appeared and immediately shot the four boys Lester and Buck died Bobowas extremely terrified but Big Boy got the riffle and shot him to death What the woman andher fiancÐ did to the four innocent boys represents what the white did to the colored The blackwere treated like animals They would be killed at any time, for any reasons The moreextreme segregation is depicted in the barbarous punishment the white gave to Bobo, one ofthe escaped As Big Boy could see while he was running away from his hometown, the white

men burnt Bobo and “A black body flashed in the light Bobo was struggling, twisting, theywere binding his arms and ligs.” Bobo’s arms and ligs were bound symbolizes the fate of the

black was bound No matter they struggled, they would be killed The injustice and barbarianof the society of the time is shown in the death of the three black innocent boys and theexhausting flee of Big Boy paid for the nonsensical fear of a white woman.

The severe segregation is also revealed in the memoir Prime Time by Henry Louis Gates Jr.when he recalled the murder of the fourteen-year-old Emmette Till in August 1955 in

Mississippi after his friends dared him to ask out a white woman “He whistled at some whitegirl…that’s all he did He was beat so bad that they didn’t want to open the casket.” (Gates, as

cited in Chin et al, 2002, p 1092) For the American and the world, the murder of EmmettTill was an international issue It is well-known that three days after Emmett Till whistled atCarolyn Bryant, a store clerk, he was weighted down by a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan

tied around his neck with barbed wire by Carolyn’s husband and her half-brother Theymutilated his face so terribly that his uncle Wright could only identify the body basing on thering worn on a finger of the dead body If it had been a white man to whistle at Carolyn, thesituation wouldn’t have been so bad This degrading discrimination was not the first of its kindbut it was an alarming point that put the black people in America on fire for justice and peace.Throughout the memoir, Gates provides us with variety of evidences of the segregation of the

time “For most of my childhood, we couldn’t eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn’tuse certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores…Even after basketball games, the coloredplayers had to stand around and drink out of paper cups while the white players andcheerleaders sat down in the red Naugahyde booths and drank out of glasses ” (as cited in

Chin et al, 2002, 1087) Gates gives an example of his family being avoided from sitting downat the Cut-Rate, a restaurant in town, which had a permanent TAKE AWAY ONLY sign forthe colored people Only Gates’s father was not stopped from sitting down As Gatesexplained, it was in part because his father had lighter complexion At this stand we can seethat the reason was only the matter of black or white The lighter one’s complexion was, themore chances for him or her to use public service Another example of Carl Dadisman, whohad vowed not to integrate, was given to support Gates’ irony of discrimination CarlDadisman was a proprietor who ran the taxi service, therefore, he tried to behave nicely, evento the colored However, he did not want the colored to sit in his booths, eat off his plates and

silverware or put their “thick greasy lips” over his glasses Gates’s satire arouse in the way he

described the death of Carl Carl died because of a heart attack in a tiny toilet of his own place

of business “Daddy and some other men tried to lift him up, while he was screaming andgasping and clutching his chest, but he was stuck in that cramped space.” (as cited in Chin et.

al, 2002, 1088) Why Carl had such heart attack in such a “relaxing” place is not given but wecan understand that he was

“attacked” by his own prejudice for his “cramped” mind Lowell, a black brilliant soccerplayer came to saw the toilet to help him but it seemed hopeless Carl cried, moaned and died.

Then Gates says that “By then it made little difference to Carl that Lowell was black.” Yet, it

is so ironic that not until a “white” dies that his prejudice of black or white might be blurred.

Like in Big Boy Leaves Home, the colored people in Gates’s memoir also show their thirst forequality This thirst is embedded in their excitement to see the shows on television such as

“the all-colored world of Amos and Andy” which is full of black lawyers, black doctors andnurses “We were starved for images of ourselves and searched TV to find them.” (p.1089) But

for other fields, the colored people were well-known for their sport ability This is the reasonwhy the people in Piedmont, where Gates spent his childhood, kept track of every sport

programs which the colored played in “We’d watch the games day and night, and listen onradio to what we couldn’t see.” (p.1089) and “Colored, colored, on Channel Two.”

(p.1091)All these thirst and excitement to see their own images and success reveal the desireof the colored people to be recognized in the society They wanted to have the same stand and

to enjoy the same lives as the white “With a show like Topper, I felt as if I was getting aglimpse, at last, of the life that Mrs Hudson, and Mrs Thomas…must be leading in their bigmansions… Smoking jackets and cravats, spats and canes, elegant garden parties andmartinis… This was a world of so elegantly distant from ours, it was like a voyage to anothergalaxy.” (p.1090) By then, all the advantages seen on television that the white came in forseemed “just out of reach” of the colored in Piedmont in West Virginia In the third part of the

memoir, Gates gives us lively facts of the Civil Rights movement, of the black childrenintegrated into Little Rock high school in Arkansas, of the soldiers from the National Guardand the state police who surrounded these black children and how the people in Piedmontreacted to the news Nonetheless, all these facts were seen only on television The people inPiedmont still had to face with segregations

While in Gates’s nonfiction, we learn about the cheerleaders, in the Civil Rights era, from

all-white high school with a big red C for “central” on their chest waved and cheered “Two, four,six, eight – We don’t want to integrate.” (as cited in Chin, 2002, 1094), we know more

evidences of this offensive attitude in many other fictional works including Everything That

Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor From the beginning to the end of the story, the

writer reveals her light irony when describing Julian’s mother and other passengers and theirhostile attitudes toward the Negro people in general and the Negro passengers on the bus.Julian’s mother was so afraid to ride the buses alone at night because the buses at the time had

been integrated Therefore, after looking up and down the bus and acknowledging that therewere all white on the bus on the first route, she was so happy “I see we have the bus toourselves,” said her She did not expect any others of colored complexion to join her world.Her negative attitude was shared by other passengers on the bus as the Negroes got on the nextroute A woman stood up immediately and found another seat far away when a Negro satdown next to her while the other protruding woman looked at the Negro avidly as if he were atype of monster These resentful reactions, unlike those in the early twentieth century revealedin Big Boy Leaves Home, were not open and vigorous but in a silent way Her attitude was typical of many white people toward the colored in the early 1950s and evenafter the Civil Rights Act took effect in 1964

Throughout American history, the attitudes of the white people toward the colored havechanged considerably as it can be inferred from the analysis above In addition, we canwitness these changes in the language used to address the colored people In the early

twentieth century, the colored was called nigger by many white people This hostile wordappeared repeatedly in A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner to speak to and about the

colored By then came the term Negro, Afro-American, the black and nowadays, AfricanAmerican is used to convey a neutral and more respectful attitude The late twentieth centuryand the early twenty-first century have witnessed great innovation in the thinking of Americansociety on the whole While Miss Emily in the early part of the previous century had to hideher beloved dark man Homer Barron in her house until he died to avoid rumors, AfricanAmerican people nowadays are much more confident than ever before in showing themselvesin front of the public The evidences are since the African American Vanessa William was thefirst to be crowned Miss America in 1984, there have been a large number of colored womento win this honor including the 2008 Miss America Crystle Stewart Besides, AfricanAmerican have widely appeared on the cover of mass consumer magazines such as Seventeenand Cosmopolitan, made up 20 % of the models to appear on 471 covers of 31 magazinespublished in 2002 (Garcia G, 2004, p 43) Many African American have come into power inthe society of which nearly three-forth of the population is white (Garcia G, 2004, x)Typical examples are the first black woman Condoleeza Rice who served as the 66th Secretary