Antoniu Andreea, Spaniola-Engleza, An III

Issues of identity in 19th century American literature

For American literature the 19th century was a very important period of innovation and new horizons. Starting with the frontier, the meeting point between savagery and civilization, the local color fiction centered on a combination between realism and romanticism that lead to the birth of originalism and reaching transcendentalism, American literature has dealt with a number of themes and issues rendered in the short stories of the 19th century. One of these issues is that of identity, that emerged from the troubled history of America, its efforts to release itself from the English power and of finding and creating a New Generation. A number of writers tried to capture this struggle among which we can find Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Sarah Orne Jervett or Stephen Crane. Washington Irving, in his story Rip Van Winkle, created a character which resembled Americas quest for identity. The story begins about five or six years before the American Revolution and ends twenty years later and the action takes place in a village in eastern New York, near the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. Rip Van Winkle, a man who enjoyed solitary activities, didnt like professional work and did not know who he really was, he did not adjust to society and thus he escaped in nature in a sort of mythical past, he slept throughout the Revolutionary War. His escape was timeless, and helped him become, after his return, what he had always wanted to be, a patriarch. He comes back to an idealized America and turns into a link to the past for others. He is now able to communicate by storytelling and both he and the community find their identities. Rip Van Winkle acquires a place in society and is no longer a misfit. The whole story sends a message of freedom and identity to a nation which was starting to

discover itself and Rip Van Winkle was said to be an embodiment of the romantic freedom. In contrast to Rip Van Winkle, Bartleby from Herman Melvilles story Bartleby the Scrivener has a rather different ending, even tragic. Bartleby is a young man who works as a scrivener in a law office. He is a motionless worker who simply copies documents, like a machine. Even from the beginning we can see that he is very quiet and his life is limited only to his job. We know nothing about his private life, because, in fact, there isn't much to know. All that we are told about him is connected to his job, and to his place in the 'System'. Bartleby is a victim of the System in which each individual must do what is expected to do, according to regulations, standards and norms, making it predictable. In order to succeed, the System must destroy individuality, which is unpredictable. That is why Bartleby is a victim. His search is for social stability. He needs to find his place in a totally different system where privacy, mystery and silence are allowed. In other words, he would fit only in a utopian system based on individuality. He is in quest for social and emotional stability, but never finds them. Unlike Rip Van Winkle, Bartleby does not manage to find his place in the world nor in the society he lives in because he does not accept its norms and regulations. While Rip Van Winkle succeeds to connect with the people around him through storytelling, Bartleby dies facing a wall, which is symbolic for his inability to escape the world he lived in. Bartlebys story is one of death and isolation of all those who resist and refuse to fit into the rules of the modern society. A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jervett talks about another type of identity search, an emotional identity. Sarah Orne Jervett tells the story of a girl who is seeking this type of identity. Sylvia is a young country girl who meets an ornithologist trying to find a rare bird. As the story unfolds she decides to help the hunter, pushed by a need to be loved, but by choosing to help him she becomes part of civilization and leaves aside her emotions for

nature and wilderness. She finds herself between two worlds, civilization and nature, and the turning point in her decision is her climb up the tree where the nest of the white heron is. When she sees the rare bird her communion with nature makes her remain true to her own values and thus be a part of nature. Sylvia attained emotional stability by remaining true to her own feeling and beliefs and by refusing to yield to the masculine dominance in a patriarchal world. It is through silence that she rejects the modern society and thus maintains her place in nature, as opposed to the hunter whose world is the modern society, governed by science, language and knowledge. In the case of this story the focus is on choosing between civilization and wilderness and not on trying to penetrate the circle of the modern society. The main character of the story is able to be part of either one of the two worlds and it is only up to her which world she wants to be part of. Her decision is based only on her feelings and not on a desire to be a part of a modern world. But this is not the case of Harry from Ernest Hemingway's short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro. This main character betrays his inner self and his vocation for art and brings himself to a different kind of death, an artystical one. Harrys conflict is between moral idealism and materialism, he chooses a luxurious life at the expense of his emotional fulfillment through art. What tortures him more than the knowledge of approaching dissolution is the consciousness of all the literary riches, none of them committed to paper, which will go with him underground. The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky by Stephen Crane is the story of a sheriff, Potter, who got married and thus deconstructed the myth of the Wild West. Yellow Sky is a town where childish rituals between the sheriff and the inhabitants constantly take place. When Scratchy, an old man who drinks and like to dress like an outlaw, gets drunk everybody knows that the marshal will start shooting and will come and take him to jail. Scratchy refuses to change and wants to pretend to be the bad guy, while Potter wants to change and adjust to the changing world surrounding him, in other words civilization. The town has all the components of civilization: telegraph,

train, but the people refuse to accept them as part of their identity. Even if they need these new facilities, they ignore them and keep living in the Wild West manner. But the sheriff violates some important rules of the traditional Wild West: he gets married and doesn't have a gun. It is at this point that Scratchy understands that he must make way for new realities and accept the end of the Wild West era. Potter is a new man and the dignity of his new "estate" saves him in the moment of crisis between him and Scratchy. He loves his wife and can be man enough and show it to the others. Maybe it was easier for him to shoot than to stand defenseless together with his new wife and declare his new identity. The 'bride' doesn't have a name, she represents the institution of marriage. Potter has reached emotional and cultural stability by accepting reality and adjusting to it, he is in quest for a new identity detached from old myths and legends and in the end he finds it, while Scratchy prefers the Wild West way of life. We have here two cases of struggle for ones identity: Potter who desire to be part of the modern world and Scratchy who cant seem to be able to leave the old and dusty life of the west. As opposed to Scratchy we can look at the Swede from The Blue Hotel also a story by Stephen Crane. The Swede refuses to be part of the society he finds himself in, the hotel, and following his pride, he decides to leave the hotel and enter a new world in which gets him killed. Taking into consideration all the aspects about these short stories we can say that the struggle of finding ones identity has been an important theme for the 19th century American writers because of the period the country of America was going through. It is known that at that time the country was in search of an identity and was trying to create a new world that could be free and independent. Thus the characters we have analyzed were also in search for a place to be a part of, be it the new civilized world or the wilderness that was before the Revolutionary War. Identity was a question of social or emotional identification that depended on ones beliefs and concepts about life.