Native American Religious Traditions

The Native American’s have many customs that are in contrary to many American customs. In many ways we differ in spiritual views and in many ways we are similar. Many of the members of various tribes have different religious views ranging from their traditional Aborigine religions to Christian.
Before the arrival of the Europeans to the new world Native American religious traditions originated from aboriginal culture. The way started their traditions is according to the method of acquiring food. Depending if they were nomadic which hunted and gathered or if they had a settlement and had a form of agriculture. With the wide range of tribes all around North America a range of different religions began to form. This mostly having to do with the varying landscape that would affect their habits.
With the arrival of the Europeans to North America everything changed for the Native Americans settled in the land. Millions died due to the different illnesses and diseases that the Europeans brought over from Europe. All of these diseases were fatal to the Native Americans due to the fact that they had never been exposed to anything of the sort. This shocked most of their systems and there were no cures for many of the diseases that they brought over. Not only did they bring diseases but they brought over their Christian views and began to spread the word of God. They began enslaving the Native Americans and exterminating them. Many of the survivors were forced to convert to their Christian views. The Europeans believed that the Native American religions were superstitions created by the devil.
Today there are many devout Christians with in many of the tribes around North America. The Christian values have been brought down through the generations. Many Native Americans, particularly in the south west region of the country, have returned or kept their aborigines values. Most of the Native Americans nowadays have combined both sets of belief systems into their own spiritual tradition. Even with the instilment of Christian values there is a movement called Pan Indianism that is trying to revert Native Americans back to their original Aboriginist and traditional beliefs. This growing movement seeks to unify the many tribes around the country by creating a common and unified Native religion.
The Native American Church which is a continuation of the Peyote Religion has encountered many issues from governments, Christian groups and various tribes. The peyote religion has been around for thousands of years. Although the Native American church was created with the idea to spread Christian values, the issues that the many different groups have with this religious group are one of the integral parts of the religious system. They have been using a cactus called peyote that has psychedelic properties. Many of the Christian religious groups and the government have its issues with this particular element of the religion. The peyote is used in a religious ritual and is only allowed to be used for the ritual. It is non habit forming and not harmful which is why the drug is still able to be used in these rituals. It is also protected under the United States constitution.
The use of sacred pipes, rituals, practices and tools is accepted with in most Native Americans systems of beliefs. Native Americans only take offense to the use of these practices for monetary gain, which has been particularly popular in recent years. These actions are what have been painting the Native Americans in a bad light and why many of the members are against the use for monetary gain.

Works Cited
Native American Customs and Traditions
http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00019/id37.htm

Robinson, B.A. "Development of Aboriginal culture. Absorption of Native beliefs & practices. Tribal recognition." (2008). Religious Tolerance. 13 Jan. 2008. Web. 10 Nov. 2009. .

Works Cited for the Last Blog

Roaring Twenties Rayburn, Kevin (1997-2000). The 1920s. [Online] http://www.louisville.edu/~kprayb01/1920s.html

LITERARY EXPATRIATES IN PARIS, The library of UNC
http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/french_expatriates/paris.html

The Lost Generation and the Expatriate Movement

Many of the expatriates began their exodus from America for a variety of reasons; World War 1 and the effects that it impacted on the writers of the time, the roaring twenties and the post war psychological effects that created the lost generation that many of the writers fell into. This post war attitude and the lost generation inspired such books as Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
Some of the reasoning behind the exodus was the disagreement of the leaders and actions of America at this time. Political reasoning was a forunner of this movement either it be World War 1 or other political viewpoints. The post war veterans were also a major reason for the exodus. The lost generation resulted in many disorders not recognized at the time. Many of the things that they were experiencing, Post traumatic stress disorder, was was not recognized or understood at the time.
The mass exodus that left America was not only of writers and artists but many of the wealthy elite, the intellectuals, the recent college graduates, current students and the lost generation of war veterans. This lost generation of war veterans consisted of soldiers that did not know what to do in this new post war society so they continued to move around Europe finding comfort in what they could find. We see these characters in The Sun Also Rises.
The expatriate movement was all over Europe flocking to cities all around but the main bulk of them and the artist bunch went to France and more specifically Paris. The artist community revolved heavily around Gertrude Stein. She was one of the major American figures in this movement. Writers and artists and expatriates in general tried to have an introduction to her in hopes of getting on her good side. “America is my country, and Paris is my hometown” (stein) this was the basis of the expatriate movement, although the place you were currently living in might be your home but America will always be your homeland.
The Roaring Twenties was also a post war movement. It was a time of post war optimism. People were living their lives like no one had lived before. People were living carefree and embraced ideas of hedonism. The jazz age was a big motivator. It moved people towards economical optimism. Spending what they had and making profits. All of these ideas were other causes for the exodus from America.
Post war generations always have tendencies that differ from the tendencies of the average generations before and after them. Many of the veterans have disillusionment that they do not share with the civilians. They then affect the civilians that they in counter, resulting in the oddities of society post war. These oddities are what started the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz age and inspired such writers such as Scott Fitzgerald to write novels such as the Great Gatsby. It also was the motivator of many of the expatriates that began experimenting with more modernistic views of literature and art.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Janie is the protagonist of the story and the book describes the struggles that she goes through in finding herself. When we are first introduced to Janie she is older but goes into a story describing her past and she takes us back to when she lived with her grandmother. Her grandmother, Nanny was a slave before the emancipation. While she was a slave she was raped by her owner and had a child. Soon after the birth of the child she fled the plantation to try and find a better life for her daughter. She made it her mission to try and give her the life she didn’t have, but she wasn’t able to give it to her she ended up pregnant and she left the baby with Nanny and ran away. Nanny saw this as an opportunity to have a second chance and she can try and give this baby a better life. Nanny tried to push all of her ideals on Janie.
“Honey de white man is de ruler of everything as far as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s someplace way off in de ocean where de black man is in power but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de niggerman tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t do it he hand it to his women folks. De nigger woman is de mule of de world so as far as ah can see. Ah been praying fur it tuh be different wud you.”(14)
Nannys intentions weren’t bad, just trying to get a better life for Janie. Her views of a better life are security, with a man and money. This is why she arranged a marriage between Janie and Logan. He is a farmer and has money and is able to provide for Janie. She tried to love him, giving it time and trying to see the best of him. In this relationship she was just as she was with her grandmother. She wasn’t independent she was property.
When she meets Jody she felt something that she never felt with Logan, an attraction. She feels free and not as confined as she was with Logan. Not long after the freedom dissolved away the relationship began to turn into her last relationship. Jody begins to treat her like a trophy wife not allowing her to wear her hair down and confined her to the things she was able to do. Jody soon became the Mayor and really began to confine her. Her life became mundane, like how it was with Logan. Her life was again unsatisfying.
When Jody died she finally was relived and was able to be independent. He left her with a lot of money so she didn’t not need to continue to find security with a man because she has made her own. So when she meets Tea Cake she doesn’t need to worry about anything other than her feelings for him. She was truly able to evolve with him. He showed her things that the others couldn’t. She wants to go with him to places and work in the field with him. She if a completely different person and she seem to be the most in her element.

Thinking Outside the Box

I think that the piece in its entirety has several patterns that weave through the three sections. I the main pattern is in the things that she is describing. Look at the three section titles; objects, food, rooms. These are all very basic objects, household items that you would encounter on a day-to-day basis. She is trying to give a new perspective on something that you have seen so frequently. You’re not supposed to look at these poems and see the average description of a chair or of a carafe it trying to get you mind to thing of it in a different way. 


“A LONG DRESS.

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist.
What is this current.

What is the wind, what is it.
 Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.”


 Look at this description of a long dress. She describes how it flows and how it moves, the current the flows through it. She also gives you an image of the dress describing the waistline. She talks about the colors of the dress and the separation between them. She almost brings this dress alive and gives it a presence.

 She also has a lot of patterns of repetitions with in the poems. She also tends to use the same word frequently in related poems.
“CHICKEN.


Pheasant and chicken, chicken is a peculiar third.


CHICKEN.


Alas a dirty word, alas a dirty third alas a dirty third, alas a dirty bird.


CHICKEN.


Alas a doubt in case of more go to say what it is cress. What is it. Mean. Potato. Loaves.


CHICKEN.


Stick stick call then, stick stick sticking, sticking with a chicken. Sticking in a extra succession, sticking in.”

These four poems are all related in a few similar ways. They are all in the same section, have the same titles and are located next to one another. But some of these poems have specific factors in each that relate them to one of the others.
- The first and the third share the word “third.”
- The second and the third share a similar word repetition with the word “alas.”
- The first and the third are similar in sentence structure that they have two different statements.
- The second and the last have their repetition of words in common.
They all seem to have a similar description of chickens like eating a chicken and how it sticks or how dirty it is. They all are trying to get you to think of a chicken in a different way, in anyway other than what you would normal associate with chicken. She wants you to think outside of the box and don’t think of the box in the normal parameters that a box would be included in.
Stein, Gertrude. Tender Buttons Objects--Food--Rooms. The Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Print.

Wharton writes what she knows

After reading a few works by Edith Wharton in several of my classes you begin to see what she writes about. The Gilded Age and the life of the rich and famous, she writes about old New York and Europe. There is always a scandal or controversy and a loss of status or monetary inflow such as Lily Bart in the House of Mirth or the Countess Ellen Olenska in the Age of Innocence. Lily Bass desperately searches for money and social rank that ends in her death in the end on the novel, while Countess Ellen Olenska seeks to escape from a horrible marriage with her cheating husband. Now these stories may not fully represent Edith Wharton’s life but there are influences of her life that are represented within each novel.
Edith Wharton was born into a rich family in New York City. She lived the opulent life she wrote about. “To escape the bustling city, the family spent summers at ‘Pencraig’ on the shores of Newport Harbour in Newport, Rhode Island. When Edith was four years old they moved to Europe, spending the next five years traveling throughout Italy, Spain, Germany and France. Back in New York young Edith continued her education under private tutors. She learned French and German and a voracious reader, she studied literature, philosophy, science, and art” (Merriman) You can see some of the similarities in her life style and the lifestyles that her characters live in her books.
One of the biggest similarities that I saw between her and her works was the character of Countess Ellen Olenska and the situation that she was put into. Edith Wharton married banker Edward Robbins Wharton in Trinity Chapel on April 29 1885. They honeymooned in Europe and spent the next few years traveling Europe. They came back to the states and moved to New York on Park Avenue next to the park. Their marriage at first was good he helped her publish some of her works in magazines such as; Scribner’s Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Century Magazine, Harper’s, Lippincott’s and the Saturday Evening Post. “While in Paris, Wharton met journalist Morton Fullerton, who would become a close friend and was instrumental in getting some of her works published in France. They also had an affair that lasted three years. Teddy had a mistress and had been embezzling funds from Edith to support her. They were divorced in 1913.” (Merriman) There are some differences between Edith Wharton on Countess Ellen Olenska yet I feel that Wharton must have drawn on her personal experiences to create the situation between the count and countess in Age of Innocence. The differences in when the novel takes place and the actual events of Wharton’s marriage take place in two different points in time which is why they were treated differently.
In most of Edith Wharton’s writings she is making fun of the society that she grew up and lived in but most good writers write what they know and draw from personal experiences. Which is what I believed made Wharton’s writing so authentic.
Merriman, C. D. "Edith Wharton." Online-literature.com. 2007. Web. 20 Sept. 2009.

American Romanticism in The Scarlet Letter

From its poetic language to its supernatural influences The Scarlet Letter is a novel that clearly defines the American Romantic movement. It covers all of the main points of Romanticism; exotic local, supernatural influences, poetic language, symbolic undertones and the fight between good and evil. We also see the connection to Romanticism through the characters themselves.
One of the most prominent romantic issues in this novel is the fight of good versus evil. The true evil in this novel being Chillingworth, the spiteful husband of Hester Prynne. His entire presence in the novel is only to stir up mischief. From the first moments when he is introduced it is clear he is up to no good. “It was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt him and her, than to greet him, face to face, they two alone. She fled for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its protection should be withdrawn from her.” (46) His involvement in the novel is purely out of spite for Hester. Even his appearance begins to change throughout the novel he begins to embody the evil that has consumed him.
There are many supernatural elements in the novel, mostly pertaining to the scarlet letter. One of the most important one is the letter that burns on Dimmesdale’s chest. It burns through the entire novel as his guilt grows over the seven years of hiding his secret. It is the burden he must live with as he lives in the shadow of his actions. At the end when he reveals it to the community many see it and some don’t. The letter isn’t the only supernatural element in the novel; Pearl is referred to in the story as “the devil child by Mistress Hibbens, a witch. In the governor hall, the narrator describes Pearl as, "There was a fire in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment" (69)
One of the main influences of the romanticism is symbolism in objects and nature. One of the most common natural symbols in the novel is the rose bush that is mentioned in many instances through the story. It serves many meanings mostly representing Hester. “This rose bush, by strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of stern wilderness… or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson.”(37) Another example of the natural symbolism is when Hester and Dimmesdale have their meeting where they discuss fleeing to Europe. They meet out in the deep parts of the forest outside the boundaries of the town. To the Puritans, the forest represented evil because this is where witches and other sinners signed their names to the devil. The forest was where they could escape from the city's corruption.
The Scarlett Letter and its protagonist Hester define the romantic movement and Hawthorn is a prime example of an American romantic writer with his poetic language, symbolism and supernatural undertones.