American Pastoral Rhetoric

The American Dream, in essence, is but a faulty perception of the world. It attempts to find felicity in all that is gilt. And guilty is a society that bases happiness on something as worthless as gold; for what does the warm kiss of light on the skin and the taste of water cost man? It is this theme of misconceptions and blindness that recurs through Fitzgerald's work. It stares at us, scrutinizes us, like the gigantic, blue, spectacled and myopic eyes of Dr. Eckleburg. Fitzgerald gives us Dr. Eckleburg to accentuate America's blindness. America is not only blind, but also near-sighted; America lives for today, for pleasure and prodigality. She cannot

He traces the baby-boom generation's involvement with the civil-rights, Vietnam War, and countercultural movements in stunning detail and evidence. Anderson entails insight of how the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, where driving forces and very nearly launched a civil war. The author skewers a system that sent so many impoverished minority youngsters and white American males to Southeast Asia while condemning a national ethos of the communism. Clearly, for him the '60s are very much alive, and his passionate remembrance galvanizes the book. However, it does suffer from some

Through the rise of groups such as the Black Panther Party, violence became increasingly prevalent. “The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense calls upon the American people in general and the black people in particular to take careful note of the racist California Legislature which is now considering legislation aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless at the very same time that racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror, brutality, murder, and repression of black people (Document F).” As a result of the lack of movement on the bill previously proposed my Kennedy to remove segregation, many African-Americans began to give up on this method of peaceful protest. “All of these efforts have been answered by more repression, deceit, and hypocrisy (Document F).” This is because as it appeared to them, it was not working and had no effect on the government. Instead, they discovered a much more direct approach which, was assured to catch the eye of the government. This method was violence. “The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense believes that the time has come for the black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late (Document F).” Through violent “black power” groups such as the Black Panthers, the previously peaceful Civil Rights movement began to take on a new

During the 20th century, the people of America had to adjust to new desires, lifestyles, and the new materialistic economy. After entering World War I, the aftermath included false positives that in the end, turned out to be complete negatives. Citizens of America possessed materialistic beliefs that led to disappointments. African Americans were confronted by atrocious social conditions. The frustrations faced by many Americans living in the 1920s, included the desires for materialistic possessions in hopes of contentment, the aspirations for freedom and the dignified need for racial equality, are all elucidated in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “Winter Dreams”, and both poems, “Democracy” by Langston Hughes and “The White House” by Claude Mckay.

The 1960s was crammed full of many impacting events and important figures. From Hitchcock releasing one of the greatest thrillers of all time, Psycho, to Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death, to the infamous Woodstock festival. This era changed history completely and made the United States think twice about its youth. Events of the 1960s are still impacting our country as we know it today. The sudden pull from the conservative ‘50s changed America’s views on all aspects of life, including fashion, entertainment, and lifestyles.

With the overwhelming amount of Levittown houses, the obsession to obtain the perfect American “ideal family” as seen on TV and the unspoken agreement to fear any and all foreign ideas and values, the 1950s were revealed to be a decade of prosperity, conformity and consensus. Just ten years later the atmosphere in America was shockingly different; the 1960s were a decade of turbulence, protest and disillusionment due to the ongoing struggle for civil rights, arising feminism, and the Vietnam War.

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

In the essay, Supermarket Pastoral by Michael Pollan the idea of shopping at Whole Foods and organic foods. While shopping at Whole Foods, Michael was able to understand the context behind the term “organic” and what the terms “humanely raised” and “free range” mean. The rhetorical situation is food items such as, “range fed sirloin steak” that states “it was formerly part of a steer that spent its days ‘living in beautiful places’ ranging from ‘plant-diverse-filled flats’”. Another example is eggs “from cage-free vegetarian hens, milk from cows that live ‘free from unnecessary fear and distress,’ wild caught salmon by Native Americans in Yakutat, Alaska, and heirloom tomatoes from Capay Farm, ‘one of the early pioneers of the organic movement.

The Sixties, by Terry H. Anderson, takes the reader on a journey through one of the most turbulent decades in American life. Beginning with the crew-cut conformity of 1950s Cold War culture and ending with the transition into the uneasy '70s, Anderson notes the rise of an idealistic generation of baby boomers, widespread social activism, and revolutionary counterculture. Anderson explores the rapidly shifting mood of the country with the optimism during the Kennedy years, the liberal advances of Johnson's "Great Society," and the growing conflict over Vietnam that nearly tore America apart. The book also navigates through different themes regarding the decade's different currents of social change; including the anti-war movement, the civil

When one thinks of the American Dream, it is often associated with a lifestyle especially for middle and upper class Americans, and it is simply a dream for anyone of the lower class. However, both Douglass and Crane introduce works that reflect characters who seek the American Dream despite the oppression that comes with being in the lower class. In both works, readers see otherwise vulnerable characters with the determination to obtain to the ideal “American” dream. By choosing to reflect characters who are driven to obtain the American dream despite the oppressive consequences that come with being apart of the lower class is bold on the part of both authors because they suggest that

This novel features fifteen short stories each about Vietnamese immigrants living in the United States. Their stories are experiences of the war, the effects it had on them and their families, or their lives after moving to a new country. As a reader of Louisiana literature, at first glance, this book did not seem to identify with this subset of literature. Butler surprises his readers with these different short stories bout the Vietnamese people. The blend of Vietnamese folklore and traditional American realities, create this overlapping. Not only does he show another voice in Louisiana literature, but one that would not normally be considered a voice to be heard. Tobey C. Herzog asked Butler, “What is your chief asset as a writer?” Butler’s

The Vietnam War divided the country and led to several americans searching for not only their identity and morals, but the morals of the nation as a whole. Many people questioned what good the fighting was for and saw more and more news coverage about the horrible failures of the War leading to a mistrust in the U.S. government. In Bobbie Ann Mason’s book, In Country: The Story of an American Family, Bobbie Ann Mason tells a coming of age story about Samantha Hughes who searches for understanding and meaning in a War that has affected her family and country greatly. Using dialogue and plot construction, Mason successfully examines the changes in morality towards violence and war.

In the eerie parable American Dreams, Carey grimly satirises the blind acceptance that facilitates and perpetuates exploitation of a naïve townsfolk by American tourists in a small country town. The inhabitants of the town become disillusioned and hollow following the hordes of American tourists that come to see a small model of their town. They first crave the vain ‘American dreams’ shown to them by Hollywood films. They would watch films and ‘dream, if not of America, then at least of [their] capital city.’ They covet trivial and insubstantial constructs such as fame and affluence and are not satisfied with their lives the way that they are, as symbolised by the old cracked paint throughout the town and the cars that captivate them, representative

In the year 1959, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) protested the Vietnam War and other injustices within America, and they only dissented peacefully. But from this came another organization so radical that other radical liberals disowned them. The group stemmed from SDS and many of their members originated in the peaceful movement; however, they grew tired of the miniscule results of nonviolence. The association was ready to do more than hold up signs and hope that someone would listen. They were prepared to destroy and they were prepared for people to get hurt. They were the Weathermen. Their violence ranged from the destruction of buildings, to the injury and murder of innocents and police. Primarily, The Weathermen aimed to

It is not so much that Philip Roth disagrees with the concept of the American dream; he simply does not wish to buy into the myth of it all. In American Pastoral Roth laments the loss of innocence, as exemplified by both Seymour Levov, the protagonist, and Nathan Zuckerman, the narrator. Both grew up in an idyllic Jewish Newark neighborhood, both being the sons of Jewish parents. The separation of their commonality came at a young age, when Zuckerman began to idolize the golden boy of the neighborhood – Seymour “Swede” Levov, born blond haired and blue eyed, and representing everything that a young, Jewish boy would want in a local hero. It is through the narrator’s eyes that we see both the rise and fall of a Jewish family in America,