Response 1
We discussed the old south and new south in the previous week. Actually, the disparagement of south is a manifestation of regionalism, which in fact takes place not only in the US but also in many other countries, for instance, my homeland, China. In fact, southerners in China have a long history of fighting for the unfair position in social life and have a lot of experience that worth southerners in America use for reference.
In ancient China, because of the versatile weather and impoverished soil, the south was regarded as a backward region. At that time south was a place to send criminals into exile. Most of them were political offenders, who were well-educated and had no chance to carry out their ideals. When these knowledgable persons suffered from both physical and mental torment, their indignation was aroused and led to the desire of expressing strong feelings. This eagerness resulted in the prosperous aspect of south Chinese literature and painting. Therefore, in spite of suffering hardships, the southerners in the ancient China kept optimistic mentality, created surprisingly amount of excellent works, established their own schools of thought and finally became highly respectable people.
Even with the reputation build up by the predecessors, it is still not enough for the country to respect all southerners. In order to truly change the low positon of south, southerners devote themselves for centuries. They had very brilliant minds of business. In the old days, merchant was not a noble work. People would rather be farmers and peasants, exposing to the sun and rain everyday, but not businessmen. However, the clever southerners caught this opportunity. They realized that business did affect the whole country and the daily life of every normal person. They disregarded the derision from northerners, did every kind of business,from needle to china. Not in a long time, southerners accumulated abundant wealth and improve the living conditions. In spite of lacking political rights, southerners in fact living better lives that most of the northerners.
As time flies, southerners build up their power and expand their advantages in business. In the new period, they make efforts to gather bright people, create comfortable environment and develop the economy. In the background of globalization, southerners today carry forward the persistence and intelligence of their ancestors, make advantage of their experience of business and ability to tackle emergency. They persuade the government to support them develop new economy and ask for additional policy of international trade. Benefit from the cheap labor and increasing demand, southerners constantly expand the scale of manufacture and gain enormous wealth. Today southerners in China not only control the Chinese market, but also have great influence on the global market. Finally, at this time, the word “southerner” is no longer a synonym of humbleness. Southerners can eventually say proudly,” Yeah, I come from south. I am a southerner.”.
Thus, as long as southerners overcome the plight and constantly accumulate the power, they will finally prove that southerners are not humble and they can live even more advantageous lives than northerners.They deserve the same treatment. They deserve respect.
Response 2
The “Lost Cause” culture influenced southern literature and other art works profoundly in the period between antebellum south and southern renaissance. For an example, Gone With The Wind, mainly focused on certain themes, such as slavery, southern conservative culture, the significance of family and religion in southerner’s communal life. However, the key point in this story is that the author presented a wealth of nostalgia and romanticism through depicting the characters’ mentality and behaviors.
Gone With The Wind, a famous historical romance novel, presented multiple images of southerners living under the situation that south was defeated in the Civil War. The writer successfully depicted two different kinds of southerners after the war, the survivors who embraced the new south and the traditionalists who felt great nostalgia for the old south. The most significant survivor in this book was the main character, Scarlett O’Hara. The image of Scarlett was a typical southern bella. She was not physically beautiful but she had an exceptionally charming and amazing heart. She always had positive attitude toward the future and showed great persistance and fortitude when she rebuilt Tara plantation. She overcame the great reversal of wealth in her life and successfully reconstructed Tara and self-awareness. In spite of the positive images of those survivors, there were also numerous characters, for instance, Scarlett’ parents, the loyal slaves, and even Scarlett’ s “Dream Knight”, who were great representatives for southerners having opposite mentality. They not only immersed themselves in the memory of the beautiful life of the past, but they also felt great nostalgia for the old south. However, most traditionalists died at the end of the story and the people embraced the new south survived. There was a metaphor here to insinuate that only those people adapted to the new world could survive and made changes under the new environment.
In addition, the book provided a positive view of the relationship between slaves and their owners. The book was in fact written from the perspective of slave owners and attempted to depict slaves as happy and docile. In the novel, the characters were organized into two classes, the white planter class and the black servant class. The servants, especially Mammy, Prissy and Uncle Peter, were mostly loyal to their owners. For example, the old Mammy devoted herself to Tara planation and never tried to leave Tara although sha had recognized her opportunity to get freedom. She always felt pleased and honorable to work in Tara and regarded her job as a kind of duty she must fulfill. This depiction in fact romanticized slavery in south and had resulted in the lingering stereotypes of nineteenth century slaves.
In conclusion, the novel Gone With The Wind successfully depicted the lives of southerners who made different choices under the background of the “Lost Cause” culture. “Lost Cause” indeed presented the idea that southerners had to admit the fact that South was defeated by the North in the Civil War and move on in their lives. However, at the same time it also brought profound nostalgia to southerners because of its overwhelmed rendering of the romanticism of the south’s defeat.
Response 3
Different from the writers influenced by the “Lost Cause” culture, southern writers during the Southern Renaissance tended to bring more objectivity to writings about the South. They shifted their focus from repetitive rendering of the southern heroism and morality to criticisms of Southern cultural and intellectual life. As I lay Dying, one of the famous novels written by William Faulkner, is a typical literary work during the Southern Renaissance. It not only fully applies new modernistic techniques such as stream of consciousness and complex narrative techniques, but also discloses the melancholy southern life from many different perspectives.
The artistic accomplishment of As I lay dying is one of significant factors that make it an epochal work. William Faulkner presents fifteen different points of view and each chapter is narrated by one character throughout the novel. In fifty-nine chapters titled by their narrators’ names, the character are developed gradually through each other’s perceptions and opinions. This narration method combined with the application of stream of consciousness monologues, in which the characters’ thoughts are presented in all their uncensored chaos, promotes both the mystery of the story and the difficulty of understanding. The stream of consciousness is about the only stylistic continuity between all fifteen narrators of As I Lay Dying. Faulkner personalizes the language and style used by each character, and each particular style fulfills each particular character. For instance, Jewel is a man of few words, reminding that he is a rugged man of action instead. Darl is incredibly cerebral, eloquent, incisive, and even poetic in his language. Vardaman looks at the world, predictably, with the eyes of a small child. Anse is poorly educated and his language reflects this characteristic. Thus, the application of the stream of consciousness makes As I lay dying more unique and expressive, revealing the psychological activities of all characters.
Except for extraordinary application of writing techniques, As I lay dying discloses the melancholy southern life and reflects profoundly on the meaning of life. Throughout the book, William Faulkner presents several themes by depicting the story happened around the Bundren family. One of the most significant theme is alienation and loneliness. Although the reader is privy to the characters’ thoughts and emotional responses, none of the characters adequately expresses his or her dilemmas or desires to others. Outside of Darl, who knows Addie’s and Dewey Dell’s secrets through intuition, other characters can only guess at the motivations and feelings of others. As a result of this communication problems, members of the Bundren family live alienated from each other. In particular, Addie is a striking example of someone who longs to transcend this isolation but stubbornly works to maintain an impenetrable individuality. In addition, the alienation even extends to neighbors, who always misinterpret or simply cannot fathom the family’s actions. This stress on alienation and loneliness reveals the William Faulkner’s criticism of southerner’s apathy to other people and exposes the inefficient communication between families and friends in daily life.
In spite of the focus on the melancholy alienation, love and passion are also major themes of the novel. The relationships and destinies of the characters rely heavily on love and intense emotions. In particular, Addie is defined by passion. Her affair with Whitfield results from genuine feeling, and the rejection of her husband and three of her children is equally intense. Her commitment to Cash and Jewel is fierce and loving. This love helps them to nurture a strong self-identity, which Darl, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman often lack. This depiction in fact underscores overall insanity and sadness of the whole story and emphasizes the existence of genuine care and emotions, which devoted to reawaken the optimistic mentality among readers.
In general, As I lay dying depicts a complicated, insane and melancholy story happened in a normal southern family. William Faulkner deploys the new modernistic techniques in the novel and greatly influences later southern writers during the South Renaissance. Instead of stressing on the southern romanticism, writers in this renaissance indeed present more critical and objective views on southern life at that time.
Response 4
As the semester is getting close to the end, it is exactly the time for us to review what we have learn for the past two and a half months and to contemplate what we gain from all the readings and writing assignments we did. As a non-native speaker, I began my college life in Emory University full of anxiety and excitement. Among all the possible obstacles and difficulties I had to tackle, I found it most challenging for me is that I have to live in this pure English environment. English is no longer a subject I studied in school but a fundamental tool that I need to use everywhere and every time in my life. English writing class helped me develop my skills of utilizing English to communicate and write, supporting me to adjust the new living environment and enjoy my college life.
As Dr. Lauren said in the beginning of the semester, “I am sure that all of you will become better communicator and writer at the end of semester”. At the first time I listened this, I truly doubted Dr. Lauren’ s confidence because in fact I lacked confidence for myself. I always thought there was a huge gap between those native speakers and me. However, the systematic study of English in writing class helped me stride over that gap. Grammar study provided me the opportunity to review and reorganize all the grammar rules I had learned before. Presentation made me to acknowledge a new presentation form-pecha kucha and required me to deliberate how to impress my audience and cooperate with my partner. Group reportage left me a very unique experience of writing paper because before this I had never tried to write a paper together with other people. I used to elaborate the ideas by myself, but when I worked on the group reportage I was not able to just separate the paper into two parts and worked on my part. I had to discuss and collaborate ideas with my partner and write with her so that the reportage would not be fragmented and inconsistent. However, among all of these assignments, I learned most from the various papers. I have always tried to make progress and improvement when I worked on a new assignment. I found it truly useful for me to brainstorm, make outlines and do free write before I started to write a formal essay. I believe this is the method that fits me most and I summarize it through repetitive exercise.
In addition, this class helped me build the fundamental understanding about the Southern American culture. Studying in Emory University and living in Atlanta, one of the major cities in the South, I deem it very necessary to acknowledge the southern history and southern spirit. We studied across a long time period, from the Antebellum South to contemporary South. We read materials from classical literature, such as Gone with The Wind and As I lay Dying, to recent newspaper and journals. We compared the difference between southern and northern spirit. We examined how the “Lost Cause” culture overwhelmingly rendered the southern heroism and romanticism and how it influenced the temporary literature. We also discussed the significant writing technique-the stream of consciousness, which was applied in the famous William Faulkner’s novel As I lay Dying. We recognized that chivalry and uprightness had deeply rooted in southerners’ spiritual world and resulted in their emphasis on personal ties, such as family and social life.
In general, I have learned so much from the writing class in this semester. Although I sometimes endured hardship when I worked on those assignments, I find it worthy because I can truly feel my improvement after these few months. This class lets me understand that as long as I struggle, I can finally get what I want and fulfill my goal. Except for the academic development and accumulation, I really appreciate this class because I meet a lot of friends here, both my talented classmates and the lovely teachers, Lauren and Jane.
We discussed the old south and new south in the previous week. Actually, the disparagement of south is a manifestation of regionalism, which in fact takes place not only in the US but also in many other countries, for instance, my homeland, China. In fact, southerners in China have a long history of fighting for the unfair position in social life and have a lot of experience that worth southerners in America use for reference.
In ancient China, because of the versatile weather and impoverished soil, the south was regarded as a backward region. At that time south was a place to send criminals into exile. Most of them were political offenders, who were well-educated and had no chance to carry out their ideals. When these knowledgable persons suffered from both physical and mental torment, their indignation was aroused and led to the desire of expressing strong feelings. This eagerness resulted in the prosperous aspect of south Chinese literature and painting. Therefore, in spite of suffering hardships, the southerners in the ancient China kept optimistic mentality, created surprisingly amount of excellent works, established their own schools of thought and finally became highly respectable people.
Even with the reputation build up by the predecessors, it is still not enough for the country to respect all southerners. In order to truly change the low positon of south, southerners devote themselves for centuries. They had very brilliant minds of business. In the old days, merchant was not a noble work. People would rather be farmers and peasants, exposing to the sun and rain everyday, but not businessmen. However, the clever southerners caught this opportunity. They realized that business did affect the whole country and the daily life of every normal person. They disregarded the derision from northerners, did every kind of business,from needle to china. Not in a long time, southerners accumulated abundant wealth and improve the living conditions. In spite of lacking political rights, southerners in fact living better lives that most of the northerners.
As time flies, southerners build up their power and expand their advantages in business. In the new period, they make efforts to gather bright people, create comfortable environment and develop the economy. In the background of globalization, southerners today carry forward the persistence and intelligence of their ancestors, make advantage of their experience of business and ability to tackle emergency. They persuade the government to support them develop new economy and ask for additional policy of international trade. Benefit from the cheap labor and increasing demand, southerners constantly expand the scale of manufacture and gain enormous wealth. Today southerners in China not only control the Chinese market, but also have great influence on the global market. Finally, at this time, the word “southerner” is no longer a synonym of humbleness. Southerners can eventually say proudly,” Yeah, I come from south. I am a southerner.”.
Thus, as long as southerners overcome the plight and constantly accumulate the power, they will finally prove that southerners are not humble and they can live even more advantageous lives than northerners.They deserve the same treatment. They deserve respect.
Response 2
The “Lost Cause” culture influenced southern literature and other art works profoundly in the period between antebellum south and southern renaissance. For an example, Gone With The Wind, mainly focused on certain themes, such as slavery, southern conservative culture, the significance of family and religion in southerner’s communal life. However, the key point in this story is that the author presented a wealth of nostalgia and romanticism through depicting the characters’ mentality and behaviors.
Gone With The Wind, a famous historical romance novel, presented multiple images of southerners living under the situation that south was defeated in the Civil War. The writer successfully depicted two different kinds of southerners after the war, the survivors who embraced the new south and the traditionalists who felt great nostalgia for the old south. The most significant survivor in this book was the main character, Scarlett O’Hara. The image of Scarlett was a typical southern bella. She was not physically beautiful but she had an exceptionally charming and amazing heart. She always had positive attitude toward the future and showed great persistance and fortitude when she rebuilt Tara plantation. She overcame the great reversal of wealth in her life and successfully reconstructed Tara and self-awareness. In spite of the positive images of those survivors, there were also numerous characters, for instance, Scarlett’ parents, the loyal slaves, and even Scarlett’ s “Dream Knight”, who were great representatives for southerners having opposite mentality. They not only immersed themselves in the memory of the beautiful life of the past, but they also felt great nostalgia for the old south. However, most traditionalists died at the end of the story and the people embraced the new south survived. There was a metaphor here to insinuate that only those people adapted to the new world could survive and made changes under the new environment.
In addition, the book provided a positive view of the relationship between slaves and their owners. The book was in fact written from the perspective of slave owners and attempted to depict slaves as happy and docile. In the novel, the characters were organized into two classes, the white planter class and the black servant class. The servants, especially Mammy, Prissy and Uncle Peter, were mostly loyal to their owners. For example, the old Mammy devoted herself to Tara planation and never tried to leave Tara although sha had recognized her opportunity to get freedom. She always felt pleased and honorable to work in Tara and regarded her job as a kind of duty she must fulfill. This depiction in fact romanticized slavery in south and had resulted in the lingering stereotypes of nineteenth century slaves.
In conclusion, the novel Gone With The Wind successfully depicted the lives of southerners who made different choices under the background of the “Lost Cause” culture. “Lost Cause” indeed presented the idea that southerners had to admit the fact that South was defeated by the North in the Civil War and move on in their lives. However, at the same time it also brought profound nostalgia to southerners because of its overwhelmed rendering of the romanticism of the south’s defeat.
Response 3
Different from the writers influenced by the “Lost Cause” culture, southern writers during the Southern Renaissance tended to bring more objectivity to writings about the South. They shifted their focus from repetitive rendering of the southern heroism and morality to criticisms of Southern cultural and intellectual life. As I lay Dying, one of the famous novels written by William Faulkner, is a typical literary work during the Southern Renaissance. It not only fully applies new modernistic techniques such as stream of consciousness and complex narrative techniques, but also discloses the melancholy southern life from many different perspectives.
The artistic accomplishment of As I lay dying is one of significant factors that make it an epochal work. William Faulkner presents fifteen different points of view and each chapter is narrated by one character throughout the novel. In fifty-nine chapters titled by their narrators’ names, the character are developed gradually through each other’s perceptions and opinions. This narration method combined with the application of stream of consciousness monologues, in which the characters’ thoughts are presented in all their uncensored chaos, promotes both the mystery of the story and the difficulty of understanding. The stream of consciousness is about the only stylistic continuity between all fifteen narrators of As I Lay Dying. Faulkner personalizes the language and style used by each character, and each particular style fulfills each particular character. For instance, Jewel is a man of few words, reminding that he is a rugged man of action instead. Darl is incredibly cerebral, eloquent, incisive, and even poetic in his language. Vardaman looks at the world, predictably, with the eyes of a small child. Anse is poorly educated and his language reflects this characteristic. Thus, the application of the stream of consciousness makes As I lay dying more unique and expressive, revealing the psychological activities of all characters.
Except for extraordinary application of writing techniques, As I lay dying discloses the melancholy southern life and reflects profoundly on the meaning of life. Throughout the book, William Faulkner presents several themes by depicting the story happened around the Bundren family. One of the most significant theme is alienation and loneliness. Although the reader is privy to the characters’ thoughts and emotional responses, none of the characters adequately expresses his or her dilemmas or desires to others. Outside of Darl, who knows Addie’s and Dewey Dell’s secrets through intuition, other characters can only guess at the motivations and feelings of others. As a result of this communication problems, members of the Bundren family live alienated from each other. In particular, Addie is a striking example of someone who longs to transcend this isolation but stubbornly works to maintain an impenetrable individuality. In addition, the alienation even extends to neighbors, who always misinterpret or simply cannot fathom the family’s actions. This stress on alienation and loneliness reveals the William Faulkner’s criticism of southerner’s apathy to other people and exposes the inefficient communication between families and friends in daily life.
In spite of the focus on the melancholy alienation, love and passion are also major themes of the novel. The relationships and destinies of the characters rely heavily on love and intense emotions. In particular, Addie is defined by passion. Her affair with Whitfield results from genuine feeling, and the rejection of her husband and three of her children is equally intense. Her commitment to Cash and Jewel is fierce and loving. This love helps them to nurture a strong self-identity, which Darl, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman often lack. This depiction in fact underscores overall insanity and sadness of the whole story and emphasizes the existence of genuine care and emotions, which devoted to reawaken the optimistic mentality among readers.
In general, As I lay dying depicts a complicated, insane and melancholy story happened in a normal southern family. William Faulkner deploys the new modernistic techniques in the novel and greatly influences later southern writers during the South Renaissance. Instead of stressing on the southern romanticism, writers in this renaissance indeed present more critical and objective views on southern life at that time.
Response 4
As the semester is getting close to the end, it is exactly the time for us to review what we have learn for the past two and a half months and to contemplate what we gain from all the readings and writing assignments we did. As a non-native speaker, I began my college life in Emory University full of anxiety and excitement. Among all the possible obstacles and difficulties I had to tackle, I found it most challenging for me is that I have to live in this pure English environment. English is no longer a subject I studied in school but a fundamental tool that I need to use everywhere and every time in my life. English writing class helped me develop my skills of utilizing English to communicate and write, supporting me to adjust the new living environment and enjoy my college life.
As Dr. Lauren said in the beginning of the semester, “I am sure that all of you will become better communicator and writer at the end of semester”. At the first time I listened this, I truly doubted Dr. Lauren’ s confidence because in fact I lacked confidence for myself. I always thought there was a huge gap between those native speakers and me. However, the systematic study of English in writing class helped me stride over that gap. Grammar study provided me the opportunity to review and reorganize all the grammar rules I had learned before. Presentation made me to acknowledge a new presentation form-pecha kucha and required me to deliberate how to impress my audience and cooperate with my partner. Group reportage left me a very unique experience of writing paper because before this I had never tried to write a paper together with other people. I used to elaborate the ideas by myself, but when I worked on the group reportage I was not able to just separate the paper into two parts and worked on my part. I had to discuss and collaborate ideas with my partner and write with her so that the reportage would not be fragmented and inconsistent. However, among all of these assignments, I learned most from the various papers. I have always tried to make progress and improvement when I worked on a new assignment. I found it truly useful for me to brainstorm, make outlines and do free write before I started to write a formal essay. I believe this is the method that fits me most and I summarize it through repetitive exercise.
In addition, this class helped me build the fundamental understanding about the Southern American culture. Studying in Emory University and living in Atlanta, one of the major cities in the South, I deem it very necessary to acknowledge the southern history and southern spirit. We studied across a long time period, from the Antebellum South to contemporary South. We read materials from classical literature, such as Gone with The Wind and As I lay Dying, to recent newspaper and journals. We compared the difference between southern and northern spirit. We examined how the “Lost Cause” culture overwhelmingly rendered the southern heroism and romanticism and how it influenced the temporary literature. We also discussed the significant writing technique-the stream of consciousness, which was applied in the famous William Faulkner’s novel As I lay Dying. We recognized that chivalry and uprightness had deeply rooted in southerners’ spiritual world and resulted in their emphasis on personal ties, such as family and social life.
In general, I have learned so much from the writing class in this semester. Although I sometimes endured hardship when I worked on those assignments, I find it worthy because I can truly feel my improvement after these few months. This class lets me understand that as long as I struggle, I can finally get what I want and fulfill my goal. Except for the academic development and accumulation, I really appreciate this class because I meet a lot of friends here, both my talented classmates and the lovely teachers, Lauren and Jane.