Harlem Renaissance PDF
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This document provides an overview of the Harlem Renaissance, a significant cultural movement in the 1920s. It also features a sample of a short story, showcasing the literary elements of the period.
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# Harlem Renaissance - The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s. - It was also known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. - Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, many French-speaking black writers fro...
# Harlem Renaissance - The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s. - It was also known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. - Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance. - The Harlem Renaissance is unofficially recognized to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid 1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer. - The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, was placed between 1924 (the year that *Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life* hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance) and 1929 (the year of the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression). ## Important Features 1. Harlem Renaissance (HR) is the name given to the period from the end of World War I and through the middle of the 1930s Depression, during which a group of talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of literature in the four prominent genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and essay. 2. The notion of "twoness", a divided awareness of one's identity, was introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).and the author of the influential book *The Souls of Black Folks* (1903): "One ever feels his two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." 3. Common themes: alienation, marginality, the use of folk material, the use of the blues tradition, the problems of writing for an elite audience. 4. HR was more than just a literary movement: it included racial consciousness, "the back to Africa" movement led by Marcus Garvey, racial integration, the explosion of music (particularly jazz, spirituals, and blues), painting, dramatic revues, and others. ## Samples of American Fiction: Short Story ### Type of Work - *"The Story of an Hour"* is a short story about an hour married woman of the late nineteenth century as she reacts to her husband's presumed death in a train accident. ### Publication - *"The Story of an Hour"* was first published in December 6, 1894, under the title "The Dream of an Hour." ### Setting - The action takes place in a single hour in an American home in the last decade of the nineteenth Century. ### Observance of the Unities - The story observes the classical unities of time, place, and action. These unities dictate that the events in a short story should take place (1) in a single day and (2) in a single location as part of (3) a single story line with no subplots. French classical writers, interpreting guidelines established by Aristotle for stage dramas, formulated the unities. ### Characters - **Mrs. Louise Mallard:** Young, attractive woman who mourns the reported death of her husband but exults ## Theme ### Oppression - Society in late nineteenth century expected women to keep house, cook, bear and rear children-but little more. Despite efforts of women's-rights activists such as Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, women still had not received the right to vote in national elections by the century's end. Moreover, employers generally discriminated against women by hiring them for menial jobs only and paying them less than men for the same work. *The Story of an Hour* hints that Mrs. Mallard's husband-perhaps a typical husband of his day-dominated his wife. ### Repression - Louise Mallard appears to have been a weak-willed woman, one who probably repressed her desire to control her destiny. Consequently, during her marriage, she suffered constant stress that may well have caused or contributed to her "heart trouble," referred to in the first sentence of the story. ## Figures of Speech ### Symbolism - Examples of symbols in the story are the following: - Springtime (Paragraph 5): The new, exciting life that Mrs. Mallard thinks is awaiting her. - Patches of Blue Sky (Paragraph 6): Emergence of her new life. ### Figures of Speech - Examples of figures of speech are the following: - Revealed in half-concealing (Paragraph 2): Paradox - Storm of grief (Paragraph 3): Metaphor - Physical exhaustion that haunted her body (Paragraph 4): Metaphor/Personification - Breath of rain (Paragraph 5): Metaphor - Song which someone was singing (Paragraph 5): Alliteration - Clouds that had met (Paragraph 6): Metaphor/Personification - The sounds, the scents (Paragraph 9): Alliteration - Thing that was approaching to possess her (Paragraph 10): Metaphor/Personification - Monstrous joy (Paragraph 12): Oxymoron - She carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory (Paragraph 20): Simile - Joy that kills (Paragraph 23): Paradox. The phrase is also ironic, since the doctors mistakenly believe that Mrs. Mallard was happy to see her husband. ## What's in a Name? - Not until Paragraph 16 does the reader learn the protagonist's first name, Louise. Why the author delayed revealing her given name is open to speculation. I believe the author did so to suggest that the young woman lacked individuality and identity until her husband's reported death liberated her. Before that time, she was merely Mrs. Brently Mallard, an appendage grafted onto her husband's identity. While undergoing her personal renaissance alone in her room, she regains her own identity. It is at this time that her sister, Josephine, calls out, "Louise, open the door!" However, there is irony in Mrs. Mallard's first name: Louise is the feminine form of the masculine Louis. So even when Mrs. Mallard takes back her identity, it is in part a male identity. (Michael J. Cummings, Cummings Study Guides) ## Foreshadowing - The opening sentence of the story foreshadows the ending-or at least hints that Mrs. Mallard's heart condition will affect the outcome of the story. Morever, this sentence also makes the ending believable. Without an early reference to her heart ailment, the ending would seem implausible and contrived. ## Author - Kate Chopin (1851-1904) is best known for her short stories (more than 100) and a novel, *The Awakening*. One of her recurring themes-the problems facing women in a society that repressed them-made ## Study Questions and Essay Topics 1. What was life like for Mrs. Mallard in the home of Brently Mallard? 2. In the report of the train accident, Brently Mallard's name was at the top of the list of fatalities (Paragraph 2). Does this information mean that Mallard was an important citizen in his community? Does it also suggest that perhaps Louise married him, in part, because of his standing in the community? 3. Do you believe Brently Mallard mistreated his wife? In answering this question, keep in mind the following: (1) In Paragraph 13, Louise Mallard recalls that Brently was kind and that "he had never looked save with love upon her." (2) However, Paragraph 8 had previously informed the reader that Mrs. Mallard's face "bespoke repression," and Paragraph 14 says Brently had a "powerful will bending her." 4. How much of Mrs. Mallard's apparent unhappiness in her marriage was her own fault? 5. After Mrs. Mallard receives news that her husband died in a train accident, she goes to "her room." Do these two words mean that she slept separately from her husband? Does the fact that no children are named in the story indeed indicate that she and her husband slept apart? ## Literary Terms - **Character**: The embodiment of a person in a drama or narrative through verbal representation or actions. It is through their dialogs and actions that the readers or audience is able to understand the moral, intellectual and emotional qualities of that character and thus the overall story. - **Foreshadowing** is the use of hints or clues to suggest what will happen later in literature. Foreshadowing is a tool used to give the reader or audience a hint of what may happen ahead. - **Oxymoron**: A literary device in which two words that contradict each other in meaning are used together to form a paradox. Oxymoron is putting two contradictory words together. - Examples: hot ice, cold fire, wise fool, sad joy, - **Plot**: The effect of the structure and relationship of the actions, events and characters in a fictional work. ## Literary Terms - **Point of View**: It is a narrative method which determines the manner in which and the position from where, a story is told. Point of view is the perspective from which a story is told. We may choose to tell our story in: - first person, using "I" or "we"; - third person ("he," "she," "it"), which can be limited or omniscient; or - second person, "you," the least common point of view. - **First person**: limits the reader to one character's perspective. - **Third Person Point of View;** - Though first person can be powerful, third person is actually the more versatile point of view. Third person allows you to create a much richer, more complicated universe. - **Setting** is determining Time and Place in fiction. - **Setting**: Setting refers to the time, place and social circumstances in which a literary work occurs. ## Samples of American Fiction: Novel ### Type of Work - *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* is a novel that does not fit neatly into a single genre. However, it does contain elements of the apprenticeship novel, or bildungsroman, because it presents the experiences of a boy as learns important values and lessons about life. It also contains elements of the picaresque novel, a type of fiction that presents the episodic adventures (each a story in itself) of a person as he travels from place to place and meets a variety of other characters, some of them also travelers. ### Composition and Publication Dates - Mark Twain wrote *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* between 1876 and 1883. ## Setting - The action takes place in St. Petersburg, Missouri, and at various locations along the banks of the Mississippi River in Missouri, Arkansas, and Illinois. The time is the middle of the 19th Century, before the Civil War. ## Main Characters - **Protagonist**: Huckleberry Finn - **Antagonist**: Society and Its Rules and Laws - **Huckleberry Finn**: Loyal, cheerful, fair-minded Missouri boy. Because his father abuses him, he runs away and teams with an escaped slave during many adventures on a raft ride on the Mississippi River. Huck is the narrator of the novel. - **Jim**: The escaped slave who joins Huck. He is a simple, loyal, and trusting man whose common sense helps guide Huck. In a way, he serves as a surrogate father for Huck. - **Pap Finn**: Huck's drunken, greedy, abusive father, who is nearing age fifty. His racism is symptomatic of the racism that infected society as a whole in nineteenth-century America. - **Widow Douglas**: Kindly but straitlaced woman who takes Huck into her home. - **Miss Watson**: The widow's sister and owner of Jim. - **Tom Sawyer**: Huck's friend. He likes to stage mock adventures of the kind he reads about in books. - **Joe Harper, Ben Rogers, Tommy Barnes**: Members of Tom Sawyer's gang. - **Aunt Polly**: Tom Sawyer's aunt. - **Judge Thatcher**: Judge who looks out for Huck's welfare. - **Rev. Mr. Hobson, Attorney Levi Bell, Deacon Lot Hovey, Ben Rucker, Widow Bartley**: Other Friends of the Wilks sisters. - **Slave Servants of the Wilks** - **Sally Phelps (Aunt Sally)**: Tom Sawyer's aunt. - **Silas Phelps**: Sally's husband. - **Old Doctor**: Physician who treats Tom's leg wound. ## Point of View - *Huckleberry Finn* tells the story in first-person point of view. His narration, including his accounts of conversations, contains regionalisms, grammatical errors, pronunciation errors, and other characteristics of the speech or writing of a nineteenth-century Missouri boy with limited education. The use of patois bolsters the verisimilitude of the novel. ## Summary: Chapter One - "when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied." - The novel begins as the narrator (later identified as Huckleberry Finn) states that we may know of him from another book, *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer*, written by "Mr. Mark Twain." Huck quickly asserts that it "ain't no matter" if we haven't heard of him. According to Huck, Twain mostly told the truth in the previous tale, with some "stretchers" thrown in, although everyone except Tom's Aunt Polly, the Widow Douglas, and maybe a few other girls-tells lies once in a while. - We learn that Tom Sawyer ended with Tom and Huckleberry finding a stash of gold some robbers had hidden in a cave. The boys received $6,000 apiece, which the local judge, Judge Thatcher, put into a trust. The money in the bank now accrues a dollar a day from interest. Then, the Widow Douglas adopted and tried to "sivilize" Huck. Huck couldn't stand it, so he threw on his old rags and ran away. He has since returned because Tom Sawyer told him he could join his new band of robbers if he would return to the Widow "and be respectable." ## Summary: Chapter 2 - Huck and Tom tiptoe through the Widow's garden. Huck trips on a root as he passes by the kitchen, and Jim, one of Miss Watson's slaves, hears him from inside. Tom and Huck crouch down and try to stay still, but Huck is struck by a series of uncontrollable itches, as often happens when he is in a situation "where it won't do for you to scratch." Jim says aloud that he will stay put until he discovers the source of the sound, but after several minutes, he falls asleep. Tom wants to tie Jim up, but the more practical Huck objects, so Tom settles for simply playing a trick by putting Jim's hat on a tree branch over Jim's head. Tom also takes candles from the kitchen, despite Huck's objections that they will risk getting caught. - Huck tells us that afterward, Jim tells everyone that some witches flew him around and put the hat atop his head. Jim expands the tale further, becoming a local celebrity among the slaves, who enjoy witch stories. Around his neck, Jim wears the five-cent piece Tom left for the candles, calling it a charm from the devil with the power to cure sickness. Huck notes somewhat sarcastically that Jim nearly becomes so "stuck up" from his newfound celebrity that he is unfit to be a servant. ## Summary: Chapter 43 (LXIII) - "But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before." - When Huck asks Tom what he had planned to do once he had freed the already-freed Jim, Tom replies that he was planning to repay Jim for his troubles and send him back a hero, giving him a reception complete with a marching band. When Aunt Polly and the Phelpses hear about the assistance Jim gave the doctor in nursing Tom, they immediately unchain him, feed him, and treat him like a king. Tom gives Jim forty dollars for his troubles, and Jim declares that the omen of his hairy chest-which was supposed to bring him fortune-has come true. - Tom makes a full recovery and wears the bullet from his leg on a watch-guard around his neck. He and Huck would like to go on another adventure, to "Indian Territory" (present-day Oklahoma). Huck thinks it quite possible that Pap has taken all his money by now, but Jim says that could not have happened. Jim tells Huck that the dead body they found on the floating house during the flood was Pap. Huck now has nothing more to write about and is "rotten glad" about that, because writing a book turned out to be quite a task. He does not plan any future writings. Instead, he plans to head out west immediately because Aunt Sally is already trying to "sivilize" him. Huck has had quite enough of that. ## Themes - **Freedom**: All human beings are free, independent, and equal members of society. The novel celebrates the spirit of freedom and independence through Huck and Jim, escapees from oppression. - **The Primacy of the Moral Law**: The moral law supersedes government law. By protecting the black slave Jim, Huck breaks man-made law and feels guilty. But he refuses to turn Jim in because his moral instincts tell him he is doing the right thing. - **Intuitive Wisdom**: Wisdom comes from the heart, not the head. The educated characters in the novel are often deeply flawed in some way-self-righteous, prejudiced, quixotic, bound to tradition. However, the uneducated-namely, Huck and Jim-exhibit a natural, intuitive understanding of the world. Though ignorant in many ways, they are wise in the ways that count, relying on conscience, common sense, and compassion to guide them. ## A Child Shall Lead - A little child shall lead them. Huck is portrayed as a boy who had a better grasp of morality than the often corrupt civilization around him—a boy worth imitating for his virtues. ## Love of Money - The love of money is the root of all evil. It is the love of money, Huck's, that prompts Pap Finn to gain custody of Huck. It is the love of money that motivates the Duke and the King to work their scams. And, most important of all, it is the love of money that makes southerners retain the institution of slavery. ## Climax - The climax occurs when Tom and Huck free Jim, and Tom-who has suffered a bullet wound in the leg-tells Huck that a provision in Miss Watson's will has freed Jim.