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Some aspects of American culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through a number of selected short literary works
1 Part I: Introduction I.1 Rationale I was born to a family whose members are all business people except me My father used to be a successful businessman who traveled all around the world from Asia, Europe, America to Australia After each trip, he told me about the places he had been to and about the people he had met with vivid examples of their culture From my father, I learnt about the beautiful Singapore city and Copenhagen capital of Denmark whose people are very well aware of keeping their city clean and green, about fast-food and the work-oriented and individualistic people in California compared to the out-going and neighborly people in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas My father has left in me the curiosity to learn about culture of the countries around the world Besides, my father and my brother were my first teachers of literature who blew in me the wind of passion to study literature, moving my heart with the poem “Me om” by Tran Dang 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 literary works provoked in me the love for men, the understanding of the people, their culture and the social circumstances in and about which the works were written I am now a teacher of English at Haiphong Foreign Language Center under Haiphong University For a teacher of English, having good knowledge of the culture and society of English speaking countries is of great benefit since such experiences help to make the teaching and learning of the target language easier, more lively and vivid It can not be denied that the teaching and learning of a language would fail if the teacher does not have good cultural and social background knowledge to explain to his or her students the situations in which the native speakers use the language or the social circumstances in which the language is used Once watching the “Sao mai diem hen” and “Bai hat Viet” competitions, the favorite music tournaments of the Vietnamese on television, listening to most competitors singing all pop songs, which originated from the United States, it came to my question that “To what extents has American culture penetrated the Vietnamese?” Beside pop music, we can witness the practice 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 in American style with jeans and T-shirt, through the way we eat fast-food, drink soft drinks and spend money, through the way young people think more practically about love and money and so on No one can say how much we have absorbed American culture, however, it is obvious that American culture has more or less had an impact on the Vietnamese I have recently become interested in American literature, especially the short stories When reading pieces of literary work of this genre, I have in mind a clear mosaic of American people, their culture and society I find it very effective to learn about the culture and society of a country through their literature since literature is the art of words made up from the “raw material of life” Reading literature not only provokes our thoughts and imagination but also enriches 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 economy as the United States of America has become the leading power of the world, and especially witnessed dramatic changes in American society and culture Literary works of this time in general and the short stories in particular have done a good job to depict these changes in the liveliest ways Short stories not require much time and effort to read The reader can enjoy the whole piece of a short story without interruptions or even without changing his or her posture, therefore, he or she can have a more thorough and correct interpretation of the work as 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 American popular culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through highlyappreciated short stories Once at a time, I have chance to study both American culture and society and a special cultural category, that is American literature in general and the short stories in particular People may think that I am too greedy to “catch two birds with one hand” However, I myself acknowledge that this greediness is for the sake of my students’ advantages When their teacher of English has a thorough understanding of one of the target cultures, the students would 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 language in 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, that is to teach the language and the art of language to express the ideas, but it is for the greater aim, that is to broaden the knowledge of the students of the target culture and society With such knowledge, my students would be more conscious of their cultural identity and practice the 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 of the culture and society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries such as individualism, American informality, racial discrimination, modern American women, generation gap and American people in the turbulent ages These are the features of American culture 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 American authors such as William Faulkner, Jesse Stuart, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley and the new generation of writers including Charles Bowden, Tom McNeal, 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 literary essay 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, the aims and objectives, the scope, the design and methodology of the study Part II is the development of the paper, consisting of two chapters Chapter is devoted to the literature review of the subject matter which deals with the concepts including culture and society, literature, short stories and other genres of literature, techniques in storytelling, and short literary works and their portrayal of culture and society Besides, the first chapter also provides an overview of American society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Such overview 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 American culture and society in the 20th and 21st centuries reflected in the short literary works The explicative method is employed to exploit the cultural and social circumstances embedded in the literary works since this research does not aim at studying thoroughly the techniques of the writers Part III gives the conclusion of the whole discussion in part II along with implications for teaching Part II: development Chapter : Literature review 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, techniques in storytelling and moreover, short literary works and their portrayal of life With the understanding of such concepts, our discussion on some aspects of American culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through literature in the next chapter would be more precise II.1.1 Culture and society For many people, culture is an abstract and, therefore, it is very difficult to give a brief definition 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 hardworking Japanese people Regarding Vietnam, international friends discuss our charming women in the “all revealing and all concealing” “ao dai”, “pho”, “Ha Long Bay”, “Hue ancient town”, the street sellers and the brave and intelligent Vietnamese who won the victory in our struggle against the American Meanwhile, when the United States is considered, no one can exclude their hamburgers and fast-food industry, the jeans, the White House, the Statue of Liberty, the skyscrapers, Hollywood, the king of pop Michael Jackson, the king of basketball Michael Jordan and the “golfing genius” Tiger Wood These examples are to prove that culture is not unfamiliar with us, but it is anything, both tangible and intangible, that we have, we think and we 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 he knows, 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 relationship with 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 Kammen in 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 is made visible in their arts, in their social system, in their habits and customs, in their religion…” (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 who share the same customs, laws, etc.” Such customs, laws and etc make up a culture Culture and society are closely related We not have two different societies with exactly the same culture or one society with completely different culture Let consider American society and Vietnamese society The two communities live in different parts of the world on different continents With different geographical features and history, each community develops their economy in different ways, therefore, each country has a distinguished culture With its origin in water-rice agriculture, the culture of Vietnam is often regarded as community-based culture whereas the American tend to develop their individualistic culture owing to their hunting, and farming origin supported by developed industry Within the American society, there are many races 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 around the world However, when all these races live together in one united society, they share the mainstream culture such as fast pace of life, individualism, informality, modernity although their practice of these criteria varies in terms of degree II.1.2 Literature II.1.2.1 Definitions Before having a discussion about literature, I would like to spend some words for Earnest Hemmingway, one of the greatest American writers, who I find some similarities with the excellent writer Nguyen Tuan of Vietnam Earnest Hemmingway and Nguyen Tuan, who were restless, share the passion for traveling and writing about the people and places they had been 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 Red Cross in Italy during the World War I, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom 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 an adventurer and a motionist of Vietnamese literature, gained great success in variety of literary forms, one of which is essays (tuú bót) with the works such as Mot chuyen di (A Trip), Vang bong 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 art of employing language as a tool of symbolizing what the writer sees, hears, feels, involves in and understands real life A writer can not stay in one place all his life if he wants to sharpen his 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 of life, 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 and story telling, that is entertaining and provoking thoughts, but also reveals the realistic basis of literature It is obvious that the ideas which inspire writers for a worthy piece of literary work often come from real life Therefore, it can be understood that literature is a tool for the reflection 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 critical thinking 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 is not 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 including culture and society Literature is not only concerned with problems of a culture and society but also reveals how the writer deals with such problems The writer approaches the subject matters 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 compare with 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 categories including theme, form, technique, tone, length and others Regarding the form, literature is traditionally divided into three main genres including prose, poetry and drama Prose is distinguished from the other genres in the way the ideas are organized in paragraphs made up of complete sentences Short story is a sub-genre of prose Regarding the technique whether to use 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 in fiction 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 which resemble ones in the real life This genre comprises short stories, novels, poetry, dramas and others 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 this umbrella 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 422) The genres of literature used in this study are primarily short stories supported by a memoir and 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, what is the criterion to say that one work is short and the other is long In the Preface of the book Fiction – 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…typically reveal 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, the readers can understand the characters, which contribute to the understanding of the underlying ideas 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 that support 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 third person 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 the society and the solution and so on The theme can be explicitly stated or implicitly presented, which encourages readers to consider all the elements of the story in order to 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 – the highest emotional or turning point of the story; falling action – the action that the characters after the 10 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 recognized Dominican - American fiction writer (as cited in Chin et al, 2002, p 1032) “I” – an immigrant, spent her first year in New York studying at a Catholic school “I” learnt the first new words including snow Exposition “I” had airraid drills and learnt about 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 Rising actions “I” shrieked “Bomb! Bomb!” seeing the sky dotted with snow Climax The teacher told “I” that it is snow, not bomb “I” watched the snow and found each snowflake irreplaceable and beautiful, like a person, Falling action Resolution As seen from the diagram, the climax is drawn from a number of rising actions and after the climax 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 be highly considered The climax of this short story, which is the extreme anxiety of the young immigrated girl when mistaking snow for bomb, was not only the suffering of a single character in the story but of a number of real American people during the nuclear age in the 1960s Although their characters, actions and dialogues can be invented, short stories often portray real cultural and social subject matters II.1.2.2.2 Essays 35 which resulted in her pregnancy before marriage For the young generation of the 1980s in the United States, her practice seemed widely acceptable Nevertheless, this casualty was a disgrace to her mother Mabel never forgave her daughter and her husband for that The ending of the story that Norma and her husband splitted up in Shiloh was the beginning of another war, the war between Norma Jean and her mother It is undeniable that, the more modern and independent the young generation become, the greater the gap they create between themselves and the older generation since the two generations live at different time and they respect different values II.2.5 Individualism One of the most typical aspects of American culture and society is individualism From the early time of their lives, American children are trained to be independent and considered themselves as individuals who take responsibility of their own problems or situations They are not supposed to depend on their parents on any of their “close-knit”, groups or their nation Let consider the practice of individualism of the young boy called Dave in the short story Split Cherry Tree written by Jesse Stuart (retrieved on Nov 9, 2008 from http://www.americanliterature.com/Stuart/SS/SplitCherryTree.html) The story takes place in the rural America at the beginning of the 1940s when the United States were dominated by World War II and life, especially in rural areas, was very hard Dave was born into a farming family whose members work hard from four o’clock in the morning to supper time at night except himself, who only worked after school with “Seven cows to milk Nineteen head of cattle to feed, four mules, twenty-five hogs, firewood and stovewood to cut, and water to draw from the well.” Dave was the first of his people to study at high school He understood the hardship his father had to overcome to send him to school That was why he insisted his teacher, Professor Herbert, to punish by whipping him with a witch in return for one dollar fine Herbert had paid for his participation in breaking a cherry tree with other five students during their biology field lesson Dave did not mind the punishment not only because he was so terrified of being whipped by his father for coming two hours late (Professor Herbert finally accepted that he stayed two hours after school to work out his fine by sweeping the schoolhouse floor, washing the blackboards and cleaning the windows.), but also because he was a brave boy who was aware of 36 his responsibility for his own mistakes The split cherry tree was his fault so it was not his father to pay for that It was his father who sacrificed to send him to high school so it was not fair to bother him with such fine Dave acknowledged everything that Pa had done for his brighter future, therefore, he tried to all the work with great effort to satisfy his father Dave was really a responsible boy who had no intention of relying on his parents at a very young age, in such a difficult time of his family Another variation of individualism is indicated in the short story The First Seven Years by Bernard Malamud The story takes place in the prosperous time of American history in the 1950s when the World War II had ended and the Baby boom was “in full swing” Like Dave’s father and many other parents of his time, Feld, a shoe maker believed that education could help improve the life of one person Then, he begged his daughter Miriam to go to college, raising her awareness that many parents of the time could not afford to send their children to college However, his daughter did not mind his idea She wanted to be independent and to find a job Her decision grieved her father but he had to respect her choice And the father had to respect the choice of his daughter once again when she denied the boy her father had tempted to match with her At first Miriam respected the intention of her father to have an appointment with the boy, who was a college student Unexpectedly, her realization that he was “nothing more than a materialist” who “had no soul” was made used for her getting rid of him She did not pay any more attention to the boy It was Miriam herself to decide her own life Her father, although he was “deeply hurt”, he did not argue with her He respected the decision of his daughter He had never imposed anything upon her Like when the idea to make Miriam and the boy a couple arouse, and after they had met once, he was so embarrassed to talk to his daughter about the boy “Often he was tempted to talk to Mirriam about the boy, to ask whether she thought she would like his type – he had told her only that he considered Max a nice boy and had suggested he call her…” (Malamud, as cited in Kinsella et al, 2005, p 992) The embarrassment of the father, indicated in the way he cleared his throat whenever he concerned her of the matter, was due to his fear of hurting his independent daughter He desired to something good for her future but he only wanted to play the role of a guide who made suggestions because her life was her own He treated her as an independent individual 37 Although the two stories were written long time ago but the practice of individualism conveyed in them is still shared with that in the recent literary work Let consider the example of a fourteen- year-old girl in the short story First Four Measures by Nathaniel Bellows collected in The Best American Short Story 2005 The impression that the girl leaves in me when I read the story is that she behaves more maturely than her age As a fourteen-year-old-girl, she did not want her parents to hire somebody to look after her while they were away from home for a month When Mrs Spencer, the woman her parents wanted came, the girl did not want her to take her to school in her car but she took the bus by herself As a fourteen-year-old-girl, she was aware of her own abilities, blaming her old piano teacher for always having her “play pieces that were slightly below” what she thought she could play Another evidence of her individualism is indicated in the way she coped with the strange behavior of her new piano teacher who tried to touch her in every lesson The girl felt strange and managed to avoid his touching However, she did not tell the story to anyone, even her parents until they were told by Mrs Spencer since she had witnessed what the piano teacher had done to their daughter To the surprise of the parents, she was not bewildered but, instead she answered them firmly: “It’s an issue of perspective…and scale.” (Bellows, as cited in Chabon & Kenison, 2005, p 122) This is her imitation of the way her parents often judge a thing The answer revealed that she always tried to show herself as more mature than her age She did not want her parents to get involved in such, for her it was perhaps, a nonsense matter And it was the girl herself solved her own problem for she had decided not to come back to the piano class Mrs Spencer insisted that the girl let her speak to the teacher because she really wanted to something for her Nonetheless, the girl had made up her mind to that as she emphasized: “I’ll it by myself.” (Bellows, as cited in Chabon & Kenison, 2005, p 124) Like Dave in Split Cherry Tree, the girl was well aware of her responsibility for her own situations and like Mirriam in The First Seven Years, she wanted to be treated as a mature individual who could look after herself and solve her own problem As Doctor Spock appealed in his book Baby and Child Care “In the United States…very few children are raised to believe that their principal destiny is to serve their family, their country or their God…Generally children [in the United States] are given the feeling that they can set 38 their own aims and occupation in life, according to their own inclinations We are raising them to be rugged individuals…) (Spock, as cited in Althen, Doran & Szmania, 2003, p 7) This practice can be seen apparently in a very well-known “student-centered” teaching approach of American education which activates the competence of every individual student in their learning process Additionally, the students participate in self-assessment activities through which each student himself can evaluate his own achievement This approach of teaching and learning is illustrated in the short story Accomplice by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum The protagonist, Ms Hempel, a secondary-school-teacher of English pondered upon an idea whether to let the students to write their own anecdotals about themselves and their study to their parents with her remarks Through this assignment, she hoped that her students “could give voice to their own visions of themselves, visions that might differ from those held by their teachers, parents or friends.” and that they would be able to “identify and celebrate what they see as their greatest strength During this crucial stage of their development, kids need…to articulate what they believe themselves capable of.” (Bynum, as cited in Morre, 2004, p 71) The students would, therefore, discover themselves and be highly responsible for their own study In such an individualistic culture like the United States, competition is a common practice There is fight for jobs and for personal wealth Everyone tries their best to support their selfimage by studying hard and working hard Such effort is described through many characters in short stories such as Dave, the boy in the short story Split Cherry Tree set in rural America in 1940, whose parents worked from four o’clock in the morning until night in order to able to send their son, as the first person among their people, to high school Another example is Julian in Everything That Rises Must Converge written in 1950, who had first-rate education thanks to his devoted mother who pondered very much on buying a hat at one dollar and a half for herself Not only the male had the ambition to study but the married woman in Shiloh named Norma Jean also devoted herself to study After a whole day standing at the cosmetic counter, she spent the night on an adult-education course in composition at Paducah Community College and did not mind staying up late to write composition In recent literary works, many motifs of characters to represent the talented and diligent American, who crave for success in life, have been created by many authors including Jhumpa Lahiri with her world of intellectuals in the 39 short story Nobody’s Business, first published in 2001 Such world has Paul, who worked as a teacher at a graduate school in Boston with his Ph.D from Harvard on literature and was studying for another important exam; Sang, who dropped out of Harvard for her doctorate and was working part-time at a bookstore; Sang’s boyfriend, Farouk, an Egyptian American who was teaching Middle Eastern history at Harvard; Heather, the housemate of Sang and Paul, who was a law student at Boston college and her boyfriend, Kevin was working as a physicist at MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) These young people, though have different ways of life, share the same serious attitude to their study It is no doubt that such attitude is resulted from their desire for a high position in the society Even for the talented fourteen-year-old girl in The First Four Measures by Nathaniel Bellows discussed above, in addition to her study at school, she had a passion for piano She was well aware of her ability for piano and practiced very hard to master the more challenging pieces firstly with the first four measures with one hand, then with both hands on the same four measures and finally, she could go through the challenging pieces without much difficulty with both hands on all eight measures Such evidence of great efforts made by a young girl represents the ambition of the young American to achieve success in life and to prove their own talent and abilities as an individual in such society of competition II.2.6 The American in turbulent ages “Stop it this minute, he says Oink oink, says the little girl What’d you say? Oink oink, she says The young father says What! Three times Then he seized the child, raised her high above his head, and sets her hard on his feet…Just hold my hands, screams the frail and angry father.” (Paley G, as cited in Kinsella et al, 2005, p 832-833) Why did the young father get so angry? Was that because the child wiggled too much or because of other reasons? The questions were put forward by an old lady who had been watching the man and the other fathers picking up their children from the school through the glass window of her marigold greenhouse garden The woman, before raising her questions to the father, was so 40 anxious, leaning herself far out of the window crying Stop! Stop! Why was the woman so anxious seeing a strange man getting crazy with his little daughter? As this story, Anxiety by Grace Paley takes place during the 1950s, one of the most turbulent period of American history, the answers given later in the story not require much efforts to be understood When the woman approached the father leaning “two, three dangerous inches toward him”, she explained about her anxious involvement that “… madmen intend to destroy this beautifully made planet That the murder of our children by these men has got to become a terror and a sorrow to you, and starting now It had better interfere with any daily pleasure.” (Paley G, as cited in Kinsella et al., 2005, p 833) Who and what did Paley refer to by “madmen”, “murder”, “terror” and “sorrow”? The evidences can be traced back to the 1940s and 1950s era which held numerous events that brought about great anxiety for the entire nation The beginning of the 1940s was marked by the assault of the Japanese on Pearl Habour in 1941 which led to several nuclear bomb schemes and experiments in the United States in preparation for the revenge of the United States by exploding two destructive atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 The death of between 130,000 and 200,000 people including the injured and disappeared in the bombings over Japan, (Turnbull S & Holmes R, retrieved on Feb 4, 2009 from http://www.answer.com/topic/bombings-of-Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki) followed by the killing of millions Jews by the Nazis and the aftermath of World War II with approximately 60 million people worldwide lost their life, (Graebner W & Swansinger J, 1997, p 2) made up the excessive pervasive anxiety of all Americans There were many factors linked to the fear of the American but most of all, it was the fear for nuclear warfare mounted by the threatening of the Soviet Union and the communist regimes during the Cold War time from the mid-1940s to 1960s The “madmen” referred in the story implied the authority, those who started the wars, which caused the death of millions of American people that Paley called “the murder of our children” Such murders had caused a terror and sorrow in the frail father, whose consequence was an obsession in the father whenever he heard the sound “oink, oink”, which reminded him of the “cops”, the police, their “demonstrations” in their training sessions for the coming war Additionally, his anxiety is revealed in the way he mistook the wigging of his little daughter for her dealing with him as if he had been a “figure of authority” “It’s not my thing, never has 41 been, never will be.” (Paley G, as cited in Kinsella et al., 2005, p 834) By saying this, the man expressed his disapproval of the authority and, moreover, his disgust upon the authority The anxiety, disapproval and disgust of the man implied the same feelings and attitude of the author The old lady in the story is the embodiment of Paley herself She was so worried and anxious about the safety of the American people in the nuclear age Therefore, as the fathers hoisted their children on their shoulders and galloped away, the old woman cried once more and insisted “Be careful! Stop!” (Paley G, as cited in Kinsella et al., 2005, p 834) She could feel dangers lying ahead such innocent people And such dangers deeply rooted in the excessive boom of technology in the 1940s and 1950s when nuclear bombs were invented and the automobile industry thrived The advancement of technology, along with its recognizable benefits, had stolen the life and the peace in the mind of every individual As Paley wrote “I sit in the light and wonder how to make sure that they gallop safely home through the airy scary dreams of the scientists and the bulky dreams of automakers.” (Paley G, as cited in Kinsella et al., 2005, p 834) What Paley made clear is that it was the innocent ordinary people who had to pay for the insensible dreams of the scientists and the automakers For such dreams, the ordinary people, including the children had to sacrifice their normal leisure, that is to “sit down at their kitchen tables for a healthy snack…before going out into the new spring afternoon to play.” The metaphorical image of the marigolds planted by the old woman at the beginning and at the end of the story conveys the desire of every single American for a bright future, for peace and the longevity of the whole planet without the threat of nuclear war, where the marigolds can grow In the war time, the children often suffer the most This fact explains why literary works against wars usually deal with children and their anxiety In another story named Snow by the Dominican-American fiction writer Julia Alvarez, we, again, come across a vivid illustration of the American anxiety in the 1960s The story takes place in 1962 As a common knowledge, the beginning of this decade held one of the tensest periods in American history in particular and in the world history in general, which was known as the Cuban missile crisis The crisis commenced in October 1962 when American spy flights over Cuba discovered the presence of Russian missile sites here In association with an order for “naval blockage” to avoid missile shipment to Cuba, President John F Kenedy demanded the withdrawal of the missiles and 42 launch sites of the Soviet Union While waiting for the respond from Russia, the American and the world were put under pressure for fear of another destructive nuclear war The same feelings are described concisely in the story as the young girl, the only and new immigrant in the class, was taught about snow and was explained by her teacher about the possibility of a nuclear war in the near future After several air-raid drills, the fear of the little girl reached its climax when she saw real snow falling out of the window As usual, the girl should have shouted excitedly “Snow! Snow!” However, to our surprise, she turned out to shriek “Bomb! Bomb!”, causing other girls to start crying and her teacher to jerk around with shock Her reaction indicates a regular anxiety and fear lied deep in her mind, which led to her mistake of snowflakes for bombs The fear did not only place in the girl but it was the common feeling of every American at the time Only in this time could any ordinary person realize the value of life As the girl discovered while she was watching the “fine powder dust” falling “Each flake was different…, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful.” (as cited in Chin, 2002, p 1032) The message Julia Alvarez wanted to convey is: let save every single life because each life is worth and each person is a unique beauty The existence of one person is as natural as the existence of the snow that falls down American sky every winter Throughout the time such respectful attitudes of Paley and Alvarez towards the value of life are always appreciated, especially in the contemporary age of technology, diseases and social evils, which has caused escalating personal anxiety in the United States Such anxiety is depicted vividly in the continuous reminiscence of the narrator of the death of his friends in the essay The Bone Garden of Desire taking place in 2000 by Charles Bowden The first person to leave him was Paul, a drug-addicted artist, who himself with a rope The second person was Dick, a businessman, who died after several attempts to commit suicide due to depression The third friend to die was Art, a navy officer, who died of cancer, the modern fatal disease which killed his last friend, Chris, a carpenter It is undeniable that drug addiction, depression and cancer have been the causes of major anxiety in the modern time nowadays According to statistics, in the year 2000, about 552,200 American people, which meant more than 1,500 people daily, died of cancer (Gullota T & Bloom M, retrieved on Jan 06, 2009 from http://books.google.com/books?), compared to over 500,000 Americans died from cancer in 43 2008 (retrieved on Feb 06, 2009 from http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease ) Regarding depression, out of 29,350 people died by suicide in the U.S in the year 2000, 90 percent had a diagnosable disorder, commonly a depressive order (Buchanan, 2007, retrieved on March 06, 2009 from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/09/27/comedians-for-suicide- prevention/) In addition to cancer and depression, drug addiction damaged the health of 14.5 million people in 2000 and 16.6 million in 2001 (retrieved on Feb 6, 2009 from http://www.usnodrugs.com/drug-addiction-statistics.html) Although throughout the essay, Bowden expressed his optimism about life with its diverse of colors, sounds, smells and tastes, who can assure that he did not feel depressed and anxious? As a human beings, no one could keep himself from being unsettled when seeing his four dear friends, in turns, pass away Bowden could not hide his sorrow and anxiety “fuck…too many words choking me, clutching at my throat until they strangle any bad words I might say…I have sat now with something broken inside.” He took a strong drug but his body was still “ravaged by all the love and caring and the colors and forms and the body growing still in the new silence of the room as someone I knew and loved ceased breathing.” (Bowden, as cited in Norris & Atwan, 2001, p 44) To his regret, all his friends had left him, giving up their chances to enjoy life more with him, a life which was full of colors, forms, sounds, smells and tastes, like various kinds of dishes Bowden described throughout the story Even the garden where he scattered the bone and ashes of his friends was very beautiful and lively with variety of colors such as purple, yellow, pink of the walls; dark green, white and yellow of the notocactus and cactus, and all kinds of fragrance from the flowers and herbs together with the singing of the birds It is a garden of desire, the desire to grow and enjoy life Such desire was revealed in the way Bowden described the flower Selenicereus plerantus, which only opened in the darkness of the nights, the hottest nights of the year, “the black evening when the air is warmer than your body…” The flower was an embodiment of desire since no one could be alone when it bloomed “This flower touches your face, it kisses your ears, its tongue slides across your crotch…When it opens its white jaws, the petals span a foot and lust pours out into the night, a lust as heavy as syrup, and everything is coated by the carnality of this plant.” (Bowden, as cited in Norris & Atwan, 2001, p 32) The flower was drawn like the body of a beautiful girl bristling with life, a life which is beautiful but 44 is very short, like the flower, beautiful and full of lust but it only opens once a year around nine at night and closes before sunrise Paul, Dick, Art and Christ understood the flower When they were alive, they often came to the garden and watched the flower while drinking and enjoying the food its owner cooked Even when his friends knew that they nearly died, they came here to watch the flower unfold and felt its lust or their own lust for life Even when they died, their lust, their desire still glowed with life in the growth of the flowers, the cactus, the Madagascar palm tree and the herbs Like the American people, despite their anxiety and sorrow in the troubled time, they still keep going with a desire for a better life The evidence is, after many economic crisis, several wars, terrorist attacks and during this hard time of diseases and evils, the American, though with anxiety, still stand on their feet and hold their heads high to the world Part III: Conclusion III.1 Conclusion In summary, short literary works, especially, short stories, memoirs and essays can tell us many things about the culture and society of a nation Through the American short stories in association with memoir and essay of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I have discovered prominent aspects of American culture and society of the time such as American informality, individualism, racial discrimination, modern American women, generation gap, and, moreover, about the anxious but optimistic American people facing the turbulent ages of the Cold War, the nuclear warfare and the modern time of cancer, depression, drug addiction and suicide While informality and individualism as the lifestyle and value of the American, respectively, have not been changed, the other aspects such as racial discrimination, American women and generation gap have changed noticeably Through the short literary works, I have witnessed not only the severe segregations and gradual improvement in the treatment of American society toward the colored people but also the more independent, freer and more modern American women in the new era with their practical definitions of love and marriage Besides, I have acknowledged the wider gap between the young and the older generation in American society through time due to their greater barrier in values and interests In addition to such cultural and social features of the 45 nation, the short literary works reveal more about the economic as well as political situations of this powerful country, which contribute to my thorough understanding of the American culture and society III.2 Implications for teaching For many people, learning about the art of using the language or, in other words, about the techniques employed to convey the ideas of the writer is the sole objective However, I myself have more interest in finding out as much as I can about the cultural and social elements embeded in any piece of literary work And I have done that In my opinion, providing the students of English with chances to study literary works, especially those of short story genre along with guidance for their understanding of the cultural and social background of the works would be of great benefit and joy because when the students read short literary works and find out about aspects of the target culture and society, they would be able to memorize the linguistic elements much easier since they understand thoroughly the context in which the language is used and the story is written When they understand about the language, they would have more interest in studying the foreign language as well as the literart works in that language I am now teaching the in-service students of English at Haiphong Foreign Language Center My students are those who spend the whole weekdays at their regular colleges, universities or companies The time they spend studying English is very limited to the weekend Therefore, the short literary works introduced to them must not be too complicated and abstract in the language but rather, they should reflect a variety of cultural and social aspects for the students to discuss together Besides, the works introduced should be of the twentieth or twenty-first centuries because, firstly, these centuries have held the most important events of American culture and society and, secondly, the language as well as the cultural and social elements of the works would be more familiar with that of our time now 46 References Althen, G., Doran, R A., & Szmania, J S (2003), American ways – A guide for foreigners in the United States, Intercultural Press Inc., Maine American cultural history Retrieved on December 12, 2008 from http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu Beaty J., Booth, A., Hunter, P J., & Mays, J K (2002), The Norton introduction to literature, Norton & Company, New York Brinkley, A (2000), The unfinished nation: A concise history of the American people (Volume II from 1865), Mc GrawHill, New York Buchanan, A (2007) Responses to “Comedians for Suicide Prevention” retrieved on March 06, 2009 from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/09/27/comedians-for-suicideprevention/ Chabon, M (ed.) & Kenison, K (2005), The best American short stories 2005, Houghton Mifflin, New York Chin, A.B et al (2002) Literature- The reader’s choice, Mc GrawHill, California 47 Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States (2002) Department of Health and Human Services, Vital Health and Statistics 23(22) Retrieved on Feb 17, 2009 from http://www.unmarried.org/statistics.html Employment Situation Summary Retrieved on March 11, 2009 from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.html 10 Datesman, K M., Crandall, J., & Kearny, N E (2005), American ways - An introduction to American culture - Third edition, Longman, New York 11 Davies, S D (2000), Short stories from the nineteenth century, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, Great Britain 12 Divorce rate - U.S.A Retrieved on February 15, 2009 from http://www.aboutdivorce.org/us_divorce_rates.html 13 Garcia, G (2004), The new mainstream: How the multicultural consumer is transforming American business, Harper Collins, New York 14 Gordon, B J., & Kuehner, K (eds.) (1999), Fiction – An Introduction to the Short Story, Mc GrawHill, California 15 Graebner, W & Swansinger, J (eds) (1997), The American record: Images of the nation’s past since 1941, McGraw – Hill, New York 16 Gullota, P T & Bloom M (2003), Encyclopedia of Primary Prevention and Health Promotion Retrieved on January 06, 2009 from http://books.google.com/books 17 Health / Medical: Cancer (2009), retrieved on February 06, 2009 from http://www.newsguide.us/health-medical/cancer/ 18 Inge, T M., & Hall, D (eds) (2002), American Popular Culture: Volume I , Greenwood, Oxford 19 Kammen, M (1999), American culture, American tastes, social change and the 20th century, Basic Books 20 Keillor, G & Kenison, K (eds.) (1998), The best American short stories 1998, Houghton Mifflin, New York 21 Kenison, K (ed.) & Miller, S (series ed) (2002) The best American short stories 2002, Houghton Mifflin, New York 48 22 Kinsella, K et al (2005), Timeless voices, timeless themes – The American experience Volume II, Prentice Hall, New Jersey 23 Moore, L & Kenison, K (eds) (2004), The best American short stories 2004, Houghton Mifflin, New York 24 Norris, K & Atwan, R (2001), The best American essays 2001, Houghton Mifflin, New York 25 Pergi, G (1989), Generation of change – the Civil Rights movement in America, Topic magazine, U.S Department of States 26 Schorer, M (1970), The literature of America: twentieth century, Mc GrawHill, New York 27 September 11 attacks Retrieved March 10, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_attacks 28 Stuart, J (1940) Split cherry tree Retrieved on November 9, 2008 from http://www.americanliterature.com/Stuart/SS/SplitCherryTree.html) 29 Turnbull, S & Holmes, R (2009), Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Retrieved on Feb 4, 2009 from http://www.answer.com/topic/bombings-of-Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki 30 Wehmeier, S., Mckintosh, C., & Turnbull, J.(eds) (2005), Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary - seventh edition, OUP, Oxford 31 Yanni, D R (2004), Literature – Approaches to fiction, poetry and drama, McGraw-Hill, New York 32 www.graphicmaps.com ... society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries such as individualism, American informality, racial discrimination, modern American women, generation gap and American. .. economy as the United States of America has become the leading power of the world, and especially witnessed dramatic changes in American society and culture Literary works of this time in general and. .. Pennsylvania about this informal practice, they said that this is typical of the American to serve their guests at home in such an informal way In addition, in the book American Ways, an example of an