Assignment Code: MEG-11/ 2021-22

Course Code: MEG-11

Assignment Name: American Novel

Year: 2021-2022 (July 2021 and January 2022 Sesssions)

Verification Status: Verified by Professor

Q 1. Discuss the narrative technique of The Catcher in the Rye.

Ans) J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is a first-person novel. The first person narrative is vital to the reader's enjoyment of the material. The main character in the novel Holden Caulfield prepares to recount his storey to a therapist. The reader becomes an analyst to Holden as a result of the tale, and he addresses each reader individually. The narrative always helps the reader understand why Holden has a nervous breakdown, emphasising its importance to the book.

By reading Holden's thoughts and feelings in first person, the reader feels very close to him. Holden often provides his own comments on the persons and situations he recounts. Throughout the narrative, Holden never openly addresses his emotional state, although he does admit to the reader that he is stressed. Holden also says “I'm feeling lousy,” implying he is emotionally and physically exhausted. He just explains his mounting desperation. The reader is alerted to the fact that the storey is more complex than Holden admits or depicts.

Holden makes it plain from the start of the novel that he struggles at school. Holden does not attend the school football game with the rest of the school. “This game was meant to be huge for Pencey. If Pencey didn't win, you were expected to commit suicide. In other words, it was significant to the school, but not to Holden. Holden not going with the rest of his school, including his peers, suggests to the reader that he is a loner. To emphasise the matches' importance to the school and the students, Holden's suggestion about committing suicide is sarcastic. The storytelling method allows the reader to see Holden as unique. “They kicked me out,” Holden adds. I wasn't meant to return after Christmas break because I was failing four classes and not applying myself.” In fact, Holden has been expelled from school before, as he tells us he "had some difficulties at the Whooton School and at Elkton Hills." Anyone who fails school can be sad, but being expelled can be really depressing. Because this is Holden's third time, it emphasises how depressed he must be and how he may feel like a failure. Salinger's narrative style makes it clear that Holden is despondent and feels he has let his family down. The storey also explains why Holden experiences a nervous breakdown and how bad he feels, as well as why he acts the way he does.

Holden feels guilty about many of his actions. He believes he has let his parents and sister down by being expelled from school again. This demonstrates Holden is aware of how furious and unhappy his family will be when they learn of his condition. Holden feels bad for failing his mother, who is still grieving his brother Allies' death. “I was sad. It was like watching my mother go into Spaulding's and ask the salesman a million stupid questions. Holden feels bad since his mother has gone to great lengths to purchase him a lovely present and he knows he will break her heart once she finds out he has been expelled again. “It wasn't that I didn't take him with me when I went somewhere,” Holden explains. Yes. But I don't keep thinking about it while I'm depressed.” Holden adored his brother but could not forgive himself for this one blunder. Holden also tells the reader that he now amends this day to tell Allie he can come. This makes Holden sadder because he knows this isn't true. The first person narrative and word choice let the reader understand Holden's guilt. Holden Caulfield's nervous breakdown is partly due to guilt.

The first person narrative and terminology used by Holden to convey his feelings and experiences indicate his youth. Words like “phoniest bastard” and “sonovabitch” help portray a picture of a troubled teen. Holden's profanity conveys a deep-seated insecurity. Thus, the novel's language increases thematic themes and characterisation. As a result, the reader fully comprehends Holden's trauma.

To summarise, Salinger's use of first person narrative, among other elements, is critical to the reader's enjoyment of the text. This is because it allows the reader to fully comprehend what the main character Holden is going through.

Q 2. Discuss The Great Gatsby as a novel of social criticism.

Ans) Great Expectations was first serialised in “All The Year Round,” a weekly English periodical, in mid-Victorian England. Dickens used this format to gradually introduce his critiques of Victorian English society to his audience. The author uses context to impact character, showing how people adapt to political, social, and economic elements of society. The Great Gatsby is set in the 1920s “jazz era”. With this novel, Fitzgerald analyses a different civilization with different issues. However, the author exploits the backdrop and character relationship to paint a scathing portrait of 1920s American society.

Dickens attacks three social issues in Great Expectations: the treatment of children, the inhumanity of government and law. Children were objectified as a cheap labour resource during the author's time. Dickens criticises child abuse in Great Expectations through characterization. The story's protagonist, Phillip Pirrip, is referred to as Pip throughout the novel. Pip shows child abuse via example. Throughout his childhood, his sister and guardian Mrs. Joe beat him and harassed him. As an orphan, he is viewed as a burden by Mrs. Joe, her family, and friends, as shown early in the novel by the absence of Joe from the Christmas dinner table. With this general hostility against Pip, the novel's subject of dehumanising children in Britain is established and carried.

At actuality, Pip is compelled to work for Joe in his blacksmith shop. Pips indentures are a better option than being sent to a forced labour work mill, which was the norm for orphans and unwanted youngsters. Other minor characters show Dickens' unhappiness with child-friendly society. Trabbs Lad, the young boy of Pips age compelled to work for the tailor and labour at his yoke is only represented as a labour commodity during childhood. The Avenger, a young man employed by Pip after his social advancement and migration to London, is solely portrayed as a domestic worker. Children like Estella are objectified and dehumanised. Although she is never compelled to work as a kid due to her guardian Miss Havisham's wealth, she is raised to be a slave. Making her the harsh and heartless embodiment of Miss Havishams wrath against the world outside Satis House. Dickens' England had a class structure preoccupied with satire and riches. Thousands of individuals laboured as industrial slaves in mills and factories. These people, the majority of the population, were compelled to work twelve hour days and were paid little.

There were no legislative limits to safety or pay at the time. There was no public education, so those who couldn't afford to send their kids to school had to work in awful conditions for generations. Dickens mocks a society that prioritises riches and appearance in Great Expectations. A novel's characters are usually the most honest and moral, while the richest are the most corrupt. It's Joe, Pips's much older brother in law. Joe, a poor blacksmith, is mocked by his wife and a wealthy Pip for his lack of wealth and social status. Despite this, Joe is the story's lone true gentleman, but his poor social standing prevents him from being recognised as such. However, Miss Havisham is a figure who exemplifies the link between money and depravity. She is the novel's most rich and cruellest character. To degrade Pip and make him feel inferior owing to his modest upbringing drives her activities. John Wemmick is a shining example of crooked wealth and honest humility. He works for the wealthy London lawyer Mr. Jaggers. The emotional bereft subordinate who will follow practically any instruction regardless of morality. Outside of work, he is kind to Pip and kind to his ageing father, a result of his surroundings.

Able Magwich is the most obvious example in Great Expectations. Magwich is banished to Australia's prison colony. In the New World, he works hard and accumulates fortune. Magwich is not corrupted by his wealth. The character maintains his moral high ground by freely giving all his money to Pip in gratitude for the supper Pip generously gave him one hard day on the marshes. Pip, after receiving Magwichs' money, falls into moral degradation. Pips' moral restoration occurs after he accepts that he will never acquire Magwichs' money. Pip then saves Magwich's life by trying to assist him avoid the gallows.

In Great Expectations, Dickens used setting to criticise corruption and moral contempt for power and money. This is shown by comparing Miss Havisham's house to Satis and Pip's first home to Joe the smith. The novel's richest family lives in Satis House. Despite Miss Havisham's enormous fortune, the setting is shabby and filthy. This setting symbolises Miss Havisham's malignant madness and the author's topic of reduced morality with money. Conversely, the forge is the home of social humility. Joe works hard and earns little money, but his home is a haven of peace and moral strength. Pips' best recollections are of sitting by the fire with Joe, enjoying the only actual familial relationship he feels throughout the storey.

Dickens uses setting and character to criticise Victorian England's cruel social institutions and legal system. The public sate amenities in Great Expectations are all shown as inhuman. The reader is initially shown the prison ships docked off the marshes. Pip calls them awful ghostly places, the dwellings of society's criminals. In the storey, Pip goes to the county courthouse to have his indentures notarized. Pip is legally enslaved here. Magwich is expelled from England in a London courts. In the same courthouse, affluent criminal Provis can afford a better attorney than Magwich, therefore punishing him for his misdeeds. Finally, Magwich is sentenced to death in a courtroom, illustrating the laws dehumanisation of society as over a dozen men and women are concurrently sentenced to death. As for Dickens' famous comment denouncing the state's dehumanising function, he stated his "political theology", "My faith in the governing is, on the whole minuscule; my faith in the governed, is, on the whole limitless." (Welsh). F. Scott Fitzgerald was another novelist who used setting and characterisation to criticise society.

In The Great Gatsby, he attacks the backwardness of jazz-era social idealism. Although Fitzgerald's world is very different from Dickens', literature is still employed to highlight and criticise social issues. Greed and eroding moral standards are projected in The Great Gatsby. The abundance of greed in The Great Gatsby is self-evident, but society's unshakeable belief and acceptance of it is questioned. Nick Carrawy, the novel's moral narrator, criticises the selfishness, recklessness, and delusional nature of the story's main protagonists. A bond salesman, his duty is to concoct and employ the most efficient techniques of making money, reinforcing Fitzgeralds theme of illusion contrasts reality. Characterization shows the destructive impacts of greed on society.

Q 3. Discuss the distinctive feature of the American novel.

Ans) There may be two major features for nineteenth-century American novelists, both of which are intertwined. These authors' primary concern is to depict the individual's relationship with his society. If the many-sided relationship of the individual to his society was portrayed directly in writers like Cooper and Mark Twain, by dealing with his morals by signifying characters like the Leatherstocking hero (in Cooper's novels) as the edifice morality in life, Melville and Hawthorne, by romanticising the mysterious and mythicizing the reality, dealt with the contemporary social reality in a more indirect manner. In any event, the central concern of the nineteenth-century American novelist is man's relationship to his society. Furthermore, because the American novel is distinct in its definition due to historical causes for the establishment of the American character, its definitions of the novelistic form differ from those of a novel with a European connotation. Because, whereas the nineteenth-century European novel represented an established social reality, with its major concern for class strife in a bourgeois setting, the nineteenth-century American novel had to cope with a still-forming society due to the historical evolution of a new society. It was a place of social experimentation, with the goal of "exploring" the moral ideals that underpin an individual's interaction with his society. In this sense, Lionel1 Trilling claims, "the genius American writers have not turned their minds to society." Furthermore, he claims that at the time, American novelists were only interested in "a tangential" link with society. Because there was no conflict between the middle class and the aristocracy in America, the novel's true base never existed.

In any event, the major objective of the nineteenth-century American novel was to represent the complex of ideas and ideals that marked the beginnings of the great American enterprise, in the New World, with its own religion, culture, and environmental and historical compulsions. If Dickens and George Eliot's 19th-century English novels explored the impact of society on the individual, the American book of the same era was defining an individual via his steadfast dedication to (above all else) his authentic and unmistakable imprint of individualism. So, for the American mind, the stress on the person as the only valid unit of a social definition, as well as the notion that society was "an creation" of civilization that could be destroyed simply by wishing it away" was a key concept. For, instead of a European image of a class-laden society, we have the experience of community life in the American imagination of the nineteenth century. This is a nebulous ideal. It is a form of personal liberty that does not devolve into selfishness or irresponsibility. It establishes a set of ideals for interpersonal relationships in order to produce a morally sustainable social living environment free of the risks of greed, acquisitiveness, and cruelty. Jhon Winthrop's works best reflect this idea of natural piety in inoral values in human connections, saying that we should always maintain "before our eyes our commission and community in the task, our community as members of the same body." This 19th-century concept of communal life resembled the original settlement of Christian principles that inspired the Puritan pilgrims. The core spirit of describing an individual as part of a selfless collective life was developed by religious ardour. Thus, through the figure of Daniel Boone and his Western myth, the wilderness is a picture of ideal human contact in a near pastoral condition, just as it is in Cooper's frontlei fantasy. The major goal is to combine individual independence, such as Natty Bumppo's, with social life without jeopardising his moral, spiritual, and emotional demands.

Thus, the individual's goals in relation to his society were essentially depicted in the 19th century American novel, first under agarian settings, then in the domains of growing economic forces. Finally, the notion of connecting man's social life to broader metaphysical concerns proved to be a significant one. In any event, the major focus of the 19th century American novel was the vital portrayal of the individual in his different levels and forms of engagement with his society.

Q 4. Comment on the notion of mothering in The Color Purple.

Ans) In the novel, black motherhood goes beyond biological motherhood and emphasises aesthetic or spiritual motherhood, proposing the hypothesis of the possibility of female bonding based on shared patriarchal oppressions. Furthermore, Black motherhood has been shaped by socioeconomic factors that not only define but also control the black mother in African American households. However, despite harsh socioeconomic situations and racial and patriarchal oppression, black moms' love and care for their children has never wavered. The patriarch's tyranny of the Black mother in the family is also explained in the novel as a result of their passive acceptance of the persecution. The oppression is overcome if the black mother makes a stand.

Walker does not stop at detailing the sufferings of African-American women; she also recommends a path for all women to follow in order to be free of patriarchy and sexism. Celie, the protagonist, succeeds in transforming herself from a sexually tortured slave woman to a financially, physically, and spiritually liberated woman. Education is one of the most important aspects of her emancipation process, which begins with letters to her sister Nettie. Another feature is her sister Nettie's, stepdaughter Sofia's, and close friend Shug Avery's close female bonding. Celie's friendship with these women, as well as her literary skills, enable her to establish her female body and achieve spiritual and financial independence. One of the most striking qualities of The Color Purple is the sense of hope, even in the face of sorrow. Despite the fact that Celie, the main character, is greatly affected by sexism and racism, she never gives up on claiming triumph. Celie, a black, poor, and uneducated woman, manages to free herself from patriarchy's ills, which seemed impossible at the time. The research will lead to and investigate Celie's approach to achieving her ultimate goal of obtaining freedom at all costs. Celie has numerous opportunities to meet and engage with other women throughout her life, resulting in a feminine bonding that leads to her liberation. Celie also used to put down her thoughts and ideas, as well as her feelings, in letters. Celie's penchant for writing may be a manifestation of her suppressed desires for expression. As a result of her female bonding and writing, she develops into a completely self-sufficient lady by the end of the storey. Although The Color Purple is a work of fiction, the main character Celie's moral evolution would be a powerful and great way to teach moral development.

Although there are as many men as there are women in The Color Purple, it is overwhelmed by female bonding in terms of both topic and narrative tactics. The work also depicts a conflict between atonement and vengeance, with the strength of women's relationships serving as the primary agent of redemption: friendship, love, and shared oppression. Women are among the sympathetic characters in the novel, in addition to the protagonist. Women care for, support, wrangle with, and heal one other. They become feminine, and the plot takes on a feminine tone. This feminine bonding is sometimes referred to as lesbianism, sometimes as sisterhood, and always as motherhood, which is a combination of the two. The broader concept among the three to be examined and elaborated on in this chapter is 'Motherhood.' Along with the novel's evolution, motherhood and mothering are essential elements. It provided Celie, the novel's central character, a new and emancipated dimension, as she received biological, psychological, and spiritual mothering in the guise of the captivating, dazzling, and seductive blues singer Shug Avery. Celie's first satisfying and reciprocally loving relationship was with Shug, and it will live on in her heart, mind, and soul for the rest of her life. Shug tried her hardest to turn a silent, suppressed, and more than enough promising and accommodating Celie into an assertive, confident, energetic, satisfied, and sometimes resentful Celie by teaching her every lesson a mother would teach her child. To be more specific, The Color Purple can be described as a novel about black women's heroism.

The novel makes the assumption that Celie, the protagonist, can free herself by sending letters and enlisting the support of other women. Pouring her pain into a piece of paper is a form of treatment that allows her to survive and perhaps release herself. In order to gain a better understanding of her oppression and freedom, some theories can be considered. Radical feminism is a 'current' within feminism that focuses on patriarchy as a power structure that organises society into a complex of connections based on the assumption of'male supremacy' that is utilised to oppress women. By rejecting traditional gender roles, radical feminism seeks to fight and overthrow patriarchy. They see this as male domination of women and demand a dramatic societal reorganisation. Socialist feminism is a subset of feminism that emphasises both the public and private sectors of a woman's life, arguing that freedom can only be accomplished by addressing both the economic and cultural origins of women's oppression. Celie's independence is aided by socialist feminism, sisterhood, motherhood, and literature.

Throughout the novel, the women in the novel, even those who have romantic interests in the same men, band together to support and nourish one another. People who have struggled for a long time eventually succeed and achieve the happiness they deserve. As a result, The Color Purple not only encourages black women, but all oppressed women around the world, to live a physically and economically independent existence. To finally be free of patriarchal dominance and develop a harmonious connection with men, women must learn to be self-sufficient and continue to battle against prejudice and patriarchal dominance from males, as it is generally said: any revolution begins in the head. So, like Celie, if a woman wants to alter her life, she must battle.

Q5. Attempt a critical analysis of Light in August.

Ans) The novel is set in the 1930s in the American South, between Prohibition and Jim Crow laws that sanctioned racial segregation. Lena Grove, a young pregnant white woman from Doane's Mill, Alabama, sets out to find Lucas Burch, her unborn child's father. He was sacked from Doane's Mill and travelled to Mississippi, vowing to contact her when he found work. Lena treks and hitches to Jefferson, Mississippi, in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, after not hearing from Burch. She expects Lucas to be waiting for her at another planning mill. They doubt she will find Lucas Burch or that he will uphold his vow when she catches up with him. In Jefferson, Lucas is there, but he's now Joe Brown. Finding Lucas, Lena meets quiet, mild-mannered Byron Bunch, who falls for her but must help her find Joe Brown. Byron is superior to Brown in every regard, save his timidity.

The tale then follows Lucas Burch/Joe Brown's companion Joe Christmas. Christmas had been on the run for years, ever since he injured or killed his strict Presbyterian adoptive father. Christmas suspected him of being African American despite his fair skin. He is a vengeful outcast that wanders between black and white culture, always inciting battles with both races. Christmas arrives three years before the novel's events and obtains a job at the mill where Byron and subsequently Joe Brown work. Christmas' position at the mill is a cover for his Prohibition-era bootlegging operation. Abolitionist Joanna Burden, a lady the community despises for her sexual association with him, is a prominent abolitionist descendant. After a passionate start, Joanna goes through menopause and becomes religious, which enrages Christmas. Joanna forces Christmas to kneel and pray at the end of their relationship. Joanna is shortly slain, her throat cut and nearly decapitated.

Who killed Joe Christmas or Joe Brown is unclear in the novel. Brown is leaving Joanna's burning house when a passing farmer investigates and pulls Joanna's body from the fire. After Joe Brown believes Christmas is black, the sheriff launches a quest for Christmas. Christmas arrives unmasked in Mottstown, a nearby town, on his journey back to Jefferson, no longer racing. He gets apprehended in Mottstown and sent to Jefferson. His grandparents visit Gail Hightower, the town's disgraced former preacher and Byron Bunch's friend. Bunch attempts to persuade Hightower to provide Joe Christmas an alibi, but Hightower refuses. A visit from his grandmother in the Jefferson jail convinces Christmas to seek help from Hightower. Christmas escapes from the cops and gets to Hightower's house. Percy Grimm, a childishly nasty white vigilante, pursues him there and shoots and castrates Christmas. After finally redeeming himself, Hightower is shown going into a deathlike swoon, his life flashing before his eyes, including his Confederate grandfather's death while stealing hens from a farmer's shed.

Hightower gives birth to Lena's kid in the cabin where Brown and Christmas stayed before the murder, and Byron arranges for Brown/Burch to visit her. Brown abandons Lena again, but Byron dares him to a fight. Brown defeats the braver, smaller Bunch, then disappears on a train. The narrative ends with an unidentified man telling his wife about two strangers he met in Tennessee who had a child and he wasn't the father. Lena and Byron were searching for Brown and were dropped off in Tennessee.

Themes Alienation

The novel's protagonists are all misfits and social outcasts surrounded by an impersonal and hostile rural community represented by minor or anonymous persons. Jeffersonians have been hounding Joanna Burden and Reverend Hightower for years, trying to get them to leave. Byron Bunch, though more accepted in Jefferson, is still a mystery. The community reacted violently to Joe Christmas, whereas Lena Grove was looked down upon yet received substantial aid in her travels. According to Cleanth Brooks, the conflict between Joe and Lena is a pastoral representation of modern social estrangement.

Anglican parable

The work has several allusions to Christian scripture. Joe Christmas' life and death are reminiscent of Christ's passion, Lena and her fatherless kid are Mary and Christ, and Byron Bunch is Joseph. The urn, the wheel, and the shadow are all Christian symbols.

Agustus Light has 21 chapters, as does JOHN'S GOD Each chapter of Faulkner connects to themes in John, according to Virginia V. James Hlavsa. For example, Lena's unwavering faith in Lucas' "word", echoing John's famous "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God". Christmas' repeated immersion in liquids echoes John 5's healing of the lame man. McEachern's attempts to teach Christmas his catechism mimic the temple instruction in John 7. This happens in John 19, the same chapter when Christmas is killed and castrated. It's more accurate to regard the Christian parallels as pagan idols mistakingly revered as saints.

Race and Sex

His novels, notably Light in August, generally address the Southern fascination with blood and race that has lasted from the antebellum era to the twenty-first century.

Christmas has light complexion yet is perceived as a foreigner by everybody he meets, and the orphanage children label him "nigger." "Memory believes before knowing remembers," begins Chapter 6, which tells of a five-year-old Christmas among the other children's uniform denim. The dietitian who gave him a dollar not to talk about her amorous escapade with an intern doctor is the first to mention him. Doc Hines Joe's insane grandfather put him in the orphanage and stays on as the boilerman. He may have told the other kids the young boy's origin storey. Since Faulkner never confirms Joe Christmas's African American bloodline, he perceives his parentage as an initial sin that has contaminated his body and deeds since birth. Christmas is always on the go due to his intense struggle with his dual identities. He often willingly informs white people that he is black to gauge their strong reactions and goes furious when one white Northern woman reacts calmly. Despite Christmas' horrific acts, Faulkner underlines that he is forced to repeat the role of the mythical black killer and rapist from Southern history.