Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

http://www.fullbooks.com/Sister-Carrie-by-Theodore-Dreiser1.html

Theodore Dreiser's father was a German immigrant. Theodore Dreiser was a Naturalist writer. He wanted to change things in America to the good, which is the reason I chose him.
In "Diigo" I wrote some notes about his life and his most famous work "Sister Carrie", of which I pasted a link in my blog. On Monday in class I want to add some notes from Diigo to Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie".

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins, Gilman

In today's class we read "The Yellow Wallpaper". After we were done reading the first class, the first thing that came to my mind about this short story was that the woman was "crazy".
Gilman writes from a Feminist point of view, in which the woman was oppressed by her husband (by not letting her write etc.). Even though the husband loves his wife, he does not treat her equal to men and is not enough concerned about her. When the wife tries to talk to him about her problems, for example when the wife wants to pick another bedroom, he does not really care about his wife's opinion and just says that there are no reasons for her appeal.
"The narrator's suggestions about her recuperation (that she should work instead of rest, that she should engage with society instead of remaining isolated, that she should attempt to be a mother instead of being separated entirely from her child, et cetera) are dismissed out of hand using language' that basically calls her "crazy" and "out of her mind".

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

In today's class we read Dr. Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" individually.
In this essay, King "responds to whites telling blacks to "wait" for desegregation by mentioning several atrocities committed by whites on blacks, including lynching, drowning, and police brutality. He continues on these emotional lines by expressing how children begin to become deeply affected by segregation when they realize that they are considered inferior to whites."

He shows how the build-up of these feelings in black children eventually turn into hatred for whites when he says, "There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair." This kind of "threat" refers and confirms the writings of Booker T. Washington. 

"He later discusses how Abraham Lincoln, John Bunyan, and Thomas Jefferson were extremists because they believed in a free nation. King quotes Thomas Jefferson, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal." King emphasizes that principles this nation of America were founded on which evokes nationalism and love for one's country."

Washington, Dubois and Douglass

Since I have been away with the Gap Singers I did not attend the last class period on Friday.
Douglass: he was the first black who wrote about his life as a slave and described how miserable and unequal it was. He wrote about how bad his master treated him and the other slaves and about the cruelty of slavery.
He wrote about his heavily disagreement of the idea of slavery and names good reasons for his opinion.
Washington: Booker T. Washington was the first public offender of slavery and tried politically to change the situation of black people in the South. The result of his effort is the Atlanta Compromise. As the name says it was not a law forbidding the discrimination of blacks in the South but a compromise in which he had to agree with many disadvantages black people would have in comparison to white people, for example the right to vote or the abandonment of receiving higher education.He, for example, wanted white people to give factory jobs to black people instead of the masses of immigrants that came during this time. If he agreed to those conditions because he really thought the black race was "lower" than the white race or if he just thought people of this time were just not ready for totally equality between blacks and whites is not fully clear to me. 
Dubois: Dubois respected Washington's work. However, he disagreed and criticized in many points of his work and the Atlanta Compromise. As a Harvard educated sociologist he wanted completely equality for blacks. In his speech  The Souls of Black Folk he criticized the discrimination of blacks in the South by white people. He wants the right for black people to vote and access to higher education. He was kind of a radical fighter for the right and the equality of the black people in the United States of America, especially in the South where the conditions for blacks during this time were horrible.

The triple paradox in Mr. Washington's position

The triple paradox in Mr. Washington's position is the object of criticism by two classes of colored Americans.
This triple paradox are three points pointed out by W.E.B. Du Bois in which he disagrees with Booker T. Washington's opinion about the rights of the "Negro".


In his first point DuBois criticizes that Washington  tries to make Negro artisans business men and property-owner. He explains that those people under modern competitive methods have no real chance to gain freedom and have it hard to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.


His second point states that he disagrees with Washington who, according to DuBois, silently does not mind the lower status of the Negro in society compared to the whites.


In his third point and probably his most important point, he heavily criticizes Washington's agreement to the avoiding of higher education for the "Negro". He points out that "neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates."


All in all I fully agree with Du Bois's criticism of Washington's Atlanta Exposition, whereas DuBois respected Washington's work. However, the big question, in my opinion, is if Washington really supported his points or if he just thought that the southern white politicians would decline further demands than those he already demanded. 

Naturalism presentations

In today's class, another group presented the authors who supported Naturalism (Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser and Jack London). Andy emphasized the influence of Emile Zola on Frank Norris and the big connection to Darwinism.
They all showed examples of Naturalism by choosing a story of each author listed above, which I found pretty helpful for my better understanding of Naturalism.

Naturalism presentations

In this post I could actually write a whole essay about today's class, which I found very productive and good.

I feel that today's presentations helped me a lot to understand Naturalism better.

I understood that science was probably the basis for the emerge of this movement and that this means it cannot t really mix together with religion and beliefs. Specifically, Darwinism seems to be really important for the emerge of this movement since many writers who supported Naturalism were influenced by it.

Another interesting point is that the movement originally, even if ideas of it emerged even earlier started in France and came over to America. Probably the most important writer who supported Naturalism in France was Emile Zola who inspired and influenced many Naturalist writers such as Stephen Crane, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris.