John Armellino
ERH 206
Major Knepper
Due 5/1/15
Reflective Essay
Within the course of the American Literary Traditions class, I learned a great deal about American gothic horror conventions and even, surprisingly, some history. I suppose that should not come as a surprise to me. Most of these works were all written during the 18th and 19th centuries. Among the writers we have explored in this class are Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, and Charles Chesnutt. I even showed a presentation on Frederick Douglass, a former slave turned author and statesman. An interesting thing I learned about all these authors (except perhaps Douglass) is their use of the element of the uncanny and supernatural in their works to point out specific issues in society, one of the most notable issues being slavery in America. American gothic horror appears to be a way for Americans to criticize their society without seeming like hypocrites. Throughout the course, all the works I have read were creative metaphors for America’s dark, untold history, and I have learned much from it. All I had to do was read, and reflect on what I have read, and the connections were there.
I enjoyed writing about all of these authors, particularly Poe and Hawthorne. The two authors are notorious for writing strange, uncanny stories. The protagonists of these stories are often unreliable narrators and/or slowly losing control of themselves. I wrote about two of these works in my research essay, “Hop-Frog” and “My Kinsman, Major Molineux.” In another essay I wrote about the element of the uncanny, I mentioned Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” All three of these works I have read seem to provide some commentary on post and pre-revolution America. However, all three have a different message about society.
From “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” I took note of the “coming of age” type story. This could easily be translated to a metaphor of Colonial America maturing and becoming the nation it was meant to be, albeit at a heavy price. America was “forced to grow up.” From this work I took away the lesson that American history was never as clean cut and black and white as it was made out to be in grade school. “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” is a personal story that I could easily translate into a metaphor for the United States’ bloody history.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “Hop-Frog” may also serve as a metaphor. Besides revealing an “ugly truth” within the main character, the story can also be a symbol for slavery. The main character is treated as a slave himself, being a man taken far away from his home and mistreated by a cruel council. It was not too difficult to make the connection. They stripped away Hop-Frog’s true name and christened him with the namesake of an animal, much like enslaved Africans had their identities stolen, and were treated like animals rather than human beings. The more I thought about it, the more the analogy made sense to me. These are basic metaphors. What I was truly interested in, and really learned from was the use of the uncanny to convey a message.
I have always loved gothic literature, but in this course I started to understand the nuances behind it. Why did the authors feel it was necessary to use the factor of the uncanny in their works? By “taking a reader out of his or her comfort zone” the authors of these works lead their audience to engage in some critical thinking and reflection. I know I started to think about literature on a more critical level because of this. Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” got me started. The small village that is the namesake of the story rested “on the very edge of the bizarre.” It felt as though it resided in it’s “own separate plane of existence.” I only began to understand why after several class discussions of the subject. The town of Sleepy Hollow feels so strange to us because it is full of unique traditions that stem from a foreign land, something that many Americans were (and still are) uncomfortable with. I began to understand that the American experience was seen as constant change and creating new traditions. The older ways of doing things may have been looked down upon and even feared a little bit. If Ichabod Crane was supposed to represent the common American at the time the story was written, then it is almost certainly a commentary on their shortsightedness and disregard for foreign cultures.
It may be difficult to see where I made these connections, how I learned these things, but it really just came down to thinking. The class discussions helped me tremendously, when it came to analyzing the individual works we have read. All I had to do was ponder what I have just read and the more I did that the more conclusions I reached, right or wrong. Of course, it helped having basic knowledge of American history, but other than that all I needed was to read.