Luận văn Discuss some of the most prominent aspects of the culture and society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries

PART I: INTRODUCTION
1.1.Rationale
I was bom to a family whose members are all business people except me. My father used to be a
1
successful businessman who traveled all around the world from Asia, Europe, America to Australia.
After each trip, he told me about the places he had been to and about the people he had met with vivid
examples of their culture. From my father, I learnt about the beautiful Singapore city and Copenhagen
capital of Denmark whose people are very well aware of keeping their city clean and green, about fastfood and the work-oriented and individualistic people in California compared to the out-going and
neighborly people in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas. My father has left in me the curiosity to learn
about culture of the countries around the world. Besides, my father and my brother were my first
teachers of literature who blew in me the wind of passion to study literature, moving my heart with the
poem “Me om” by Tran Dang Khoa, “Nguoi thay dau tien” translated from a Russian short story by a
Russian writer, “Chiec la cuoi cung“ translated from an American short story by O’Henry. These
literary works provoked in me the love for men, the understanding of the people, their culture and the
social circumstances in and about which the works were written.
I am now a teacher of English at Haiphong Foreign Language Center under Haiphong University. For a
teacher of English, having good knowledge of the culture and society of English speaking countries is
of great benefit since such experiences do help to make the teaching and learning of the target language
easier, more lively and vivid. It can not be denied that the teaching and learning of a language would
fail if the teacher does not have good cultural and social background knowledge to explain to his or her
students the situations in which the native speakers use the language or the social circumstances in
which the language is used.
Once watching the “Sao mai diem hen” and “Bai hat Viet” competitions, the favorite music
tournaments of the Vietnamese on television, listening to most competitors singing all pop songs, which
originated from the United States, it came to my question that “To what extents has American culture
penetrated the Vietnamese?” Beside pop music, we can witness the practice of American culture by a
large number of people in our country, especially, by the young generation, through the way they sing
pop, rock, Hip-hop songs, dance and dress in American style with jeans and T-shirt, through the way we
eat fast-food, drink soft drinks and spend money, through the way young people think more practically
about love and money and so on. No one can say how much we have absorbed American culture,
however, it is obvious that American culture has more or less had an impact on the Vietnamese.

I have recently become interested in American literature, especially the short stories. When reading
pieces of literary work of this genre, I have in mind a clear mosaic of American people, their culture and
society. I find it very effective to learn about the culture and society of a country through their literature


since literature is the art of words made up from the “raw material of life”. Reading literature not only
provokes our thoughts and imagination but also enriches our knowledge of the people, and aspects of
the target culture and society.

2
The twentieth and twenty-first century have witnessed a breakthrough of American economy as the
United States of America has become the leading power of the world, and especially witnessed dramatic
changes in American society and culture. Literary works of this time in general and the short stories in
particular have done a good job to depict these changes in the liveliest ways. Short stories do not require
much time and effort to read. The reader can enjoy the whole piece of a short story without
interruptions or even without changing his or her posture, therefore, he or she can have a more thorough
and correct interpretation of the work as well as of the cultural and social context in which the work is
written.
1.2.Aims and objectives
Doing this research, I wish to gain an in-depth understanding of some aspects of American popular
culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through highly- appreciated short stories.
Once at a time, I have chance to study both American culture and society and a special cultural
category, that is American literature in general and the short stories in particular.
People may think that I am too greedy to “catch two birds with one hand”. However, I myself
acknowledge that this greediness is for the sake of my students’ advantages. When their teacher of
English has a thorough understanding of one of the target cultures, the students would benefit. Instead
of being taught about the language, they are explained about the cultural and social contexts in which
the language is used. Thus, they could use the language in a more natural way and, therefore, engage in
language activities more actively.
I have always insisted that teaching literature in a foreign language is not for the sole aim, that is to

teach the language and the art of language to express the ideas, but it is for the greater aim, that is to
broaden the knowledge of the students of the target culture and society. With such knowledge, my
students would be more conscious of their cultural identity and practice the target culture more
selectively.
1.3.Scope of the research
Within the limitation of a minor thesis, I only discuss some of the most prominent aspects of the culture
and society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries such as
individualism, American informality, racial discrimination, modem American women, generation gap
and American people in the turbulent ages. These are the features of American culture and society that
arise most prominently in the short stories I luckily came across.


The literary works used for analysis are the short stories written by recognized American authors such
as William Faulkner, Jesse Stuart, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley
and the new generation of writers including Charles Bowden, 3Tom McNeal, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bobbie
Ann Mason, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Nathaniel Bellows, Julia Alvarez, Akhil Sharma and others.
Besides, I include one piece of memoir and a literary essay which I find help fill to support my
discussion.
1.4.Design and methodology
The paper is divided into three main parts:
Part I presents an overview of the whole research, providing readers with the rationale, the aims and
objectives, the scope, the design and methodology of the study.
Part II is the development of the paper, consisting of two chapters. Chapter 1 is devoted to the literature
review of the subject matter which deals with the concepts including culture and society, literature,
short stories and other genres of literature, techniques in storytelling, and short literary works and their
portrayal of culture and society. Besides, the first chapter also provides an overview of American
society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Such overview of American society, along with the
theoretical background in the previous section are the bases for chapter 2, which discusses the main
issues concerning aspects of American culture and society in the 20 th and 21st centuries reflected in the
short literary works. The explicative method is employed to exploit the cultural and social

circumstances embedded in the literary works since this research does not a im at studying thoroughly
the techniques of the writers.
Part III gives the conclusion of the whole discussion in part II
along with implications for teaching.

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

@hapler /: LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, an attempt is made to clarify some basic concepts such as culture, society, literature,
short stories and other genres of literature including essay and memoir, techniques in storytelling and
moreover, short literary works and their portrayal of life . With the understanding of such concepts, our
discussion on some aspects of American culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
through literature in the next chapter would be more precise.
II.1.1.

Culture and society

For many people, culture is an abstract and, therefore, it is very difficult to give a brief definition of it.
Nevertheless, culture is a very simple term to me. When we talk about Japan, people think of cultural
artifacts such as “kimono” “shusi”, “gheisa”, tea art, and the hardworking Japanese people. Regarding
Vietnam, international friends discuss our charming women in the “all revealing and all concealing” “ao
dai”, “pho”, “Ha Long Bay”, “Hue ancient town”, the street sellers and the brave and intelligent


Vietnamese who won the victory in our struggle against the American. Meanwhile, when the United
States is considered, no one can exclude their hamburgers and fast-food industry, the jeans, the White
House, the Statue of Liberty, the skyscrapers, Hollywood, the king
4 of pop Michael Jackson, the king of
basketball Michael Jordan and the “golfing genius” Tiger Wood. These examples are to prove that
culture is not unfamiliar with us, but it is anything, both tangible and intangible, that we have, we think

and we do. As M. Thomas Inge and Dennis Hall pointed out in their book The Greenwood Guide to
American Popular Culture, “Man’s culture is the complex of all he knows, all he possesses, and all

he does.” (2002, xix) “All he knows” can be his knowledge and ideas of life, science and his
explanation of the relationship among people, their customs, religion or so. “ All he possesses” includes
all his material property, his family, his relationship with other people, his belief and values, his
personality as well as his talent. And “a// he does” is concerned with either his material or spiritual
activities. In the same light, Michael Kammen in his book “American culture, American tastes, social
change and the 20th century” identifies culture as “the way of life of particular people living together

in one place. That culture is made visible in their arts, in their social system, in their habits and
customs, in their religion...'1'’ (1999, p.8) What Kammen meant by the “ particular people living
together in one place” is what we call society. In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, society is
defined as “people in general, living together in communities ” or “a particular community of

people who share the same customs, laws, etc.” Such customs, laws and etc make up a culture.
Culture and society are closely related. We do not have two different societies with exactly the same
culture or one society with completely different culture. Let consider American society and Vietnamese
society. The two communities live in different parts of the world on different continents. With different
geographical features and history, each community develops their economy in different ways, therefore,
each country has a distinguished culture. With its origin in water-rice agriculture, the culture of Vietnam
is often regarded as community-based culture whereas the American tend to develop their
individualistic culture owing to their hunting, and farming origin supported by developed industry.
Within the American society, there are many races such as white, black or African-American, American
Indian or Alaska native, Asian, native Hawaiian, other Pacific Islander and ethnic groups due to
immigrations from all around the world. However, when all these races live together in one united
society, they share the mainstream culture such as fast pace of life, individualism, informality,
modernity although their practice of these criteria varies in terms of degree.
II. 1.2. Literature II.
1.2.1. Definitions

Before having a discussion about literature, I would like to spend some words for Earnest
Hemmingway, one of the greatest American writers, who I find some similarities with the excellent


writer Nguyen Tuan of Vietnam. Earnest Hemmingway and Nguyen Tuan, who were restless, share the
passion for traveling and writing about the people and places they had been to. Hemmingway spent his
whole life traveling all over America, Europe, Cuba, Africa and5wrote his masterpieces A Farewell to
Arm when he was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in Italy during the World War I, The Sun Also

Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls and Death in the Afternoon based on his
experiences while living in
Spain and joining the Spanish civil war. Meanwhile, Nguyen Tuan, who is claimed to be an
adventurer and a motionist of Vietnamese literature, gained great success in variety of literary forms,
one of which is essays (tuy but) with the works such as Mot chuyen di (A Trip), Vang bong mot thoi
(Echo and Shadow Upon A Time), Chiec lu dong mat cua (The Crab-Eyed Copper Censer), Song Da
(Da river) and others. These brilliant works are the result of his never-stopped watching, listening,
involving and writing.
The examples of Earnest Hemmingway and Nguyen Tuan are to prove that literature is the art of
employing language as a tool of symbolizing what the writer sees, hears, feels, involves in and
understands real life. A writer can not stay in one place all his life if he wants to sharpen his senses
for the production of literary works. As David Stuart Davies has appealed, writers in general and
story tellers in particular are the “ magicians who can take the raw material of life, enhance it and

mould it into something that both entertains and provokes thoughts” (2000, p. vii). This statement
not only points out two of the many functions of literature and story telling, that is entertaining and
provoking thoughts, but also reveals the realistic basis of literature. It is obvious that the ideas which
inspire writers for a worthy piece of literary work often come from real life. Therefore, it can be
understood that literature is a tool for the reflection of life and for the expression of viewpoints of the
writers . Davies emphasized that “True literature is not just there to entertain...it is there to help

us understand ourselves and the world in which we live that little bit better. ’’ (2000, p. viii) As he
suggested, a real literary work does not only provide readers with pleasure but also helps to improve
their critical thinking of their own ways of life, their belief, their religion, which means their culture
and “the world in which ” they live in, which is the society. In the same light, Norman N. Holland
also stressed the roles of literature in providing readers with knowledge of the world and, moreover,
with approaches to their understanding that world. He insisted that “ Literature is not things but a

way to comprehend things.” (as cited in Beaty, Booth, Hunter & Mays, 2002, p. xxviii) What
Holland meant by “things” here is everything in the world around us including culture and society.
Literature is not only concerned with problems of a culture and society but also reveals how the
writer deals with such problems. The writer approaches the subject matters in one way and the reader
may approach them in a different way but the thing is, the


writer brings about his experiences and views of life for the reader to expose to, to compare with and to
sharpen his owns.
II.1.2.2.

Short stories, memoirs, essays and other genres of literature
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The classification of literary genres or types of literature is often based on many categories including
theme, form, technique, tone, length and others. Regarding the form, literature is traditionally divided
into three main genres including prose, poetry and drama. Prose is distinguished from the other genres
in the way the ideas are organized in paragraphs made up of complete sentences. Short story is a subgenre of prose. Regarding the technique whether to use real or imaginary materials, literature comprises
of fiction and non-fiction As defined in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, fiction is “a type of

literature that describe imaginary people and events, not real ones”. The characters and events are
invented to promote the writer’s point of view or ideology about life. However, there is still some real
in fiction. As I have said in the definition of literature, a piece of literary works is made up from the

“raw materials of life". Therefore, there must be something true in the work. The “something” here
can be either the social context or the features of the characters which resemble ones in the real life.
This genre comprises short stories, novels, poetry, dramas and others.
On the contrary, non-fiction, the broadest “category ” of literature is a type of writing about real
subjects although the characters or events can be imaginative or invented. “ Under this umbrella term

come autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, essays, speeches, travelogues, news
articles and many more types of writing.” (as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p. 422)
The genres of literature used in this study are primarily short stories supported by a memoir and a
literary essay.
II. 1.2.2.1 Short stories
As the term itself suggests short stories are pieces of writing which are short. However, what is the
criterion to say that one work is short and the other is long. In the Preface of the book Fiction - An
Introduction to the Short Story, Jane Bachman Gordon and Karen Kuehner (1999) argue that a short
story often contains around five hundred words. Those contain much less than five hundred words are
considered short-short stories. And if a story is made up of about fifteen thousand words, people call it
a novella, a short novel. However, what is counted here is not only the matter of the length of a story.
Edgar Allan Poe described a short story as “
one or two hours in its perusal.” (as cited in Gordon & Kuehner, 1999, p. vii).
Regarding the form of a short story, Robert DiYanni pointed out: “ Short stories...typically reveal

character in dramatic scenes, in moments of action, and in exchanges of dialogue.” From the
scenes, the moments of action and what the characters speak to each other, the readers can understand


the characters, which contribute to the understanding of the underlying ideas of the author as well as the
cultural features and social aspects of the time.
Like other types of story, a short story consists of five elements:7

Setting is the time and place in which the story takes place. The setting here means either the
physical environment or the belief, values, ideas, traditions and customs. Characters are the
people, animals or anything that the writer chooses to act in the story. The main character is
called the protagonist and the other characters that support the conflict of the story are the

antagonists.
Point of View is the '‘''vantage point'’ of the author from which the story is told. This
“vantage point” can be depicted from the first person stand (The first person is the narrator
named “I” or “me” that tells the story.) or the third person stand (The third person can either
be an omniscient narrator who knows everything that happens or a limited narrator who is the
outsider of the events and describes from the points of view of one character in the story.)

Theme is the message of the story that the author wants to send to readers. The message is
often about human behavior and relationship, human nature, conflicts in the society and the
solution and so on. The theme can be explicitly stated or implicitly presented, which encourages
readers to consider all the elements of the story in order to infer the message.


-

Plot is the sequences of related events which help conveying the theme and the point of view. A
plot is often developed in five stages: exposition, which provides introductory information for
the setting, the characters and the conflict; rising action,
8 which develops and complicates the
conflicts, which then leads to the climax - the highest emotional or turning point of the story;

falling action - the action that the characters do after the climax, which brings about the
resolution which deals with how the conflicts are resolved.
Let consider an example with the short - short story “Snow” by Julia Alvarez, a recognized Dominican American fiction writer (as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p. 1032)

“F had
airraid drills
and learnt
about

nuclear
“I”
- an
immigrant,
spent
her first year in New
York
studying
at
a

“F learnt
the first

new words fallout and
including  bomb

Her
teacher
drew a
picture
dotted a
flurry of
chark
marks to

illustrate
the dusty
fallout
that

“F shrieked
“Bomb!
Bomb!”
seeing the sky
dotted with
snow

The
teacher
told “F
that it is
snow,
not

‘F watched the
snow and
found each
snowflake
irreplaceable
and beautiful,

Falling action Resolution
Rising actions
Exposition
As seen from the diagram, the climax is drawn from a number of rising actions and after the climax

come a falling action which perform a lead to the resolution, which indicates the theme
-

the message the writer wishes to present to readers, that is the value of life, which should be highly
considered. The climax of this short story, which is the extreme anxiety of the young immigrated girl
when mistaking snow for bomb, was not only the suffering of a single character in the story but of a
number of real American people during the nuclear age in the 1960s. Although their characters, actions
and dialogues can be invented, short stories often portray real cultural and social subject matters.


II. 1.2.2.2. Essays
As our common knowledge, essay, one of the most common types of non - fiction, is a short piece of
writing dealt with a chosen topic which can be of social or cultural issues, personal conflicts and
perception of the world, interpersonal relation and many other subjects.
There are two main kinds of essay: narrative and informative. Narrative essays are short writings
devoted to true stories told from either the first person or the third person point of view. While a short
story has to do with unreal people and things, a narrative essay focuses on real people and events.
However, in some essays, writer employs some imaginary and creative elements to promote a true
story. Informative essays are divided into two main kinds: expository essay which describes a single
issue such as discrimination, American fashion, American women and persuasive essay or

argumentative essay which supports an opinion. The main objective is to persuade readers to share
a common point of view with the writer by offering facts and real-life situations which promote the
main argument. Most of informative essays develop into three stages: The introduction or lead
introduces the topic to readers by using a topic sentence or in other words, a thesis statement,
which can either be implied or explicit. In some essays, a thesis statement may come at the end. The

body develops the topic with a number of supporting details or ideas, from statistics, tables and charts
or facts, personal observations and experience to legal documents. The conclusion provides a
summary of the main points discussed in the body. At the same time, the writer brings readers back to

the thesis statement which has been drawn in the introduction.
II. 1.2.2.3. Memoirs
A memoir is a personal “account’ of the events of the author’s life in the past. In many books they
use autobiography for a memoir. Nevertheless, the two terms represent two different forms of
writing. While an autobiography is a personal “ account’ of the writer’s entire life up to the t ime
followed a chronological order, a memoir tells an “episode” of the whole life of the author, focusing
on particular events or facts in a particular period of the author’s life.
A memoir is a combination of the writer’s memory and his thoughts and feelings about the incidents
described. These thoughts and feeling may not be stated directly but implied in the interaction and
actions of the characters. Most commonly, a memoir is written from the stand of the first person. A


small number of memoirs are written in the third-person to increase the objectiveness of the amount
of narration.
There are two main types of memoirs including personal memoirs and historical memoirs. As a
personal observations of, thoughts of and feelings about the writer’s own life, a personal memoir is
more subjective. Whereas a historical memoir tends to describe historical facts and events on a more
objective stand.
Elements of a memoir are, like a short story, settings, characters, points of view, theme and plot with
conflicts, which may not lead to a climax or require a resolution as in short story. Besides, a memoir,
like an essay is often made up of three parts, introduction, body and conclusion
II.1.2.3.

Some techniques in storytelling

Technique is one of the five major elements of storytelling in association with plot, theme, point of
view, character and setting. Technique has to do with the structuring of the story into the plot so that
the writer can convey the theme and the manipulating of the language in order to express the ideas of
the writer in the most effective way. Hereby, I take into consideration some of the most popular
techniques which have been used so far:

-

Flash-back or “replay” of scenes or events. As Beverly Ann Chin defines it, “ Flashback is a
portion of a story that interrupts the chronological sequences of events to describe what
happened earlier.” (Chin, et al., 2002, p. 813). This technique provides readers with the
background of a setting, an event or a character.

-

Foreshadowing is considered opposite with flash-back as it “gives hints or clues that
suggest or prepare the reader for events that occur later in a work.” (Gordon & Kuehner,
1999, p. 5). However, the writer must be careful when employing this technique because too
apparent hints or clues may result in boredom for the readers as they can speculate exactly the
ending of the story in early stages.

Coincidence is the arrangement of time and place for two characters to meet or two events to
take place at the same time. As Gordon and Kuehner point out coincidence is “the chance
occurrence of two things at the same time or place to denote the working of Fate in a person’s
life.” (Gordon & Kuehner, 1999, p. 6)


-

Indirect characterization is a technique utilized to develop a character. The writer does not
present the personalities of the character in a direct way but readers can learn what kind of
personalities the character is through the words or actions of the character himself or herself,
or through what the narrator or the other characters say about him or her.

Foil is a character used to contrast with a second character in order to highlight the qualities
of the second character. (Chin, et al., 2002, p. 872) This is an effective technique as it helps

readers identify the main character more easily.

Sarcasm, known as satire or irony is a kind of humor in storytelling that uses bitter or
“caustic” language for the portrayal of a negative character.
All the techniques employed are to generate the curiosity -the desire to know what is happening and
what is going to happen next or, moreover, the suspense of readers - a type of involvement of the
readers in doubting and speculating the coming events of the story.
II.1.3.

Short literary works and the portrayal of life

In the lifetime of a writer, he or she witnesses and engages in many activities or events. Each activity
or event causes certain effects on the writer. However, there are some activities or events that have
prevailing or overwhelming impressions on the writer and, therefore, provoke deep thoughts in the
writer. The writer, with his or her natural gift in language, will look for a way to record the event as
well as his or her feelings and point of view for it. Literature is created as the result. Among various
genres of literature, literary works consisting of short stories, memoirs and essays, unlike other longer
pieces of work such as novels or dramas, can be an instant record of real-life events since they do not
require too much time and energy. Since memoirs and essays are of non-fiction genre, I suggest
spending most of this section discussing the realistic reflection of short stories, which belong to
fiction genre.

In her note for the short story “Nobody’s business” about the life and love of the young American
students, Jhumpa Lahiri states that ‘7 spent most of my twenties in Boston. In my eight years there,
I moved a total of eight times. For the majority of those years, I shared apartments with people
whom, initially, I didn’t know at all. I usually found them through newspapers or words of
mouth...Everything in those households was communal. I felt normal then, but it’s hard to imagine


now, living in such proximity with perfect strangers. This story was inspired by the unexpected

glimpses one sometimes has the intimate lives of others.” (as cited in Kenison, 2002, p. 349-350) Yet,
what Lahiri had experienced is described vividly in her story, which begins with the moving in of the
new comer, Sang from Bengali, to share the rented house with the other two perfect strangers from
different comers of the States. Then, the whole story is devoted to describing the love affairs, the life
of the three students under the same roof and how they cope with their personal problems as well as
the shared-problems of the house. Without her experience, her sharpened mind and deep thoughts
about the student life she had experienced, Lahiri could never create such a recognized work which
does not only do the descriptive job but also provokes thoughts in readers as they may have their own
judgements about the modem lifestyle of the young American and, then, have the solutions for their
own problems which resemble those in the story.
For another instance, in her note for the short story “Accomplice”, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum writes “

’’Accomplice” grew out of my efforts to understand how a well-conceived assignment managed
to go awry. How could such involved, wordly, educated parents accept as real a teacher’s report
that was so obviously false? It was only by imagining Ms. Hempel’s relationship with her father
that I began to grasp what it might feel like, as a parent, to be the only one who recognizes your
child’s talent and greatness, and how hungrily you might welcome the news that you are not
alone... ’’ (Bynum, as cited in Morre, 2004, p. 435) This note is to show that a literary work is the
fruit of the pondération of the writer for the understanding of different aspects of life. For Ms.
Bynum, it was the pondération of a teacher herself finding a way to make a true school-report to the
prideful parents as well as activate the students in their study and their self-responsibilities by doing
self-assessment. The story reflects serious innermost conflicts of an individual school teacher, which
many teachers of the time might experience.
In whichever genre of literature either fiction or non-fiction, with whichever technique employed, the
sole aim of the writer is to portray real life, to express his or her own viewpoints of real life and to
suggest a solution for problems in society. In each literary work, the writer uses a particular technique
which helps to achieve his or her ultimate purposes. For example, as flash-back technique is
employed in fictional A Rose for Emily with constant shifts of past and present events, William

Faulkner brings to readers the suspense in their attempt to interpret the plot and, therefore, creates
more curiosity and interest of the readers when discovering changes in the attitude of the town people
toward the protagonist, Miss Emily as well as the changes in the South of the U.S where the story
sets. Along with flashback, Faulkner also utilizes other techniques such as irony in his description of
the women, Miss Emily’s people and the other people in town, and, indirect characterization
technique, which employs the third limited narrator to present an objective voice for the story and
stimulate the analysis and interpretation of the readers. All of the techniques used in the story are to
contribute to the success of the writer in achieving his ultimate goal, that is, as a common
interpretation says, to portray the extreme racial discrimination in the Southern white society of the
time which causes a prideful white, Miss Emily to kill her colored lover in order to keep him for
herself forever.
From the discussion above, we see that literature in general and short stories in particular do not come
solely from the imagination of the writers. Such works are deeply rooted in real life and are written to
reflect real life.
II. 1.4. An overview of American society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
The twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century have been marked by the most
important and eventful periods in American history which have made up substantial changes in
American society. The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed an excessive economic growth
with dramatic industrial expansion, which brought about the so-called the roaring 1920s or the Jazz
age symbolized by the rebellious and modem American flappers. This roaring age was soon followed
by the worst economic downfall in American history, the Great Depression from 1929 to 1939 which
caused one - third of all American farmers to lose their land and a recognizable decline of 60% of
farm income between 1929 to 1932 (Brinkley,
2000,
faced

p.739), along with a reduce by 40% in the average income of American family. The American
the

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time

ever

before,

(retrieved

on

December

12,

2008

from

From 1932 to 1935, the American, especially those living
in the Great Plain region - the Dust Bowl, had to suffer one of the most devastating disasters of the
nature, the dust storm. After these difficult phases, the American joined the World War II, which, with


its aftermath, led the American to the golden age of booming national prosperity with the highest
standard of living in the history of the world economy, as indicated in the increase of the Gross
National Product by 250% from 200 billion dollars to over 500 billion dollars between 1945 and
1960. The baby boom after World War II prepared a vast number of 70 million coming of age
generation in the 1960s. Another aftermath of the Second World War is the struggle of American
women for liberation and equality during the chaosticl950s and 1960s, which ended with the success

of Women's Strike for Equality on August 26, 1970. The period between the mid-1950s and the mid1960s was also the time of Civil Right movement which ended with the equal rights for the AfricanAmerican in the whole country. The late 1960s and the first half of 1970s saw millions of people
march to protest the American wars in Vietnam in which 57,939 American soldiers were killed or
missed

(as

inscribed

on

Vietnam

Veterants

Memorial)

(from

retrieved on Dec 12, 2008). The 1980s was the t ime of “I”
generation who craved for their own status in the society marked by sex revolution. Entertainment
was booming with new genres of music such as rap or hip-hop, cable televisions, MTV and so on.
The following 1990s, though witnessing the U.S involvement in the Gulf War, escalating terrorism,
school shooting and sex scandals, the American enjoyed a booming economy which led to low
unemployment and flowering consumption. However the beginning of the twenty-first century was
welcomed by the American great anxiety and fear after the suicide attack by the Islamic extremist’s
organization named Al-Qaeda on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which
caused 2,974 fatalities excluding the 19 hijackers and billions of dollar for economic recovery
(retrieved Mar 10, 2009 from 200 lattacks). Along with the
tense of terrorism, the American, at the beginning of the twenty-first century once again have been
suffering another global economic recession with the unemployment rate reached to 8.1% in February

2009, equivalent to 12.5 million people out of work, (retrieved on March 11, 2009 from
/>Such mosaics of American culture and society provides a background for our understandings of
the more specific cultural and social aspects of the American in the twentieth and twenty- first
centuries later discussed in this research.


@haplt#   2: SOME ASPECTS OF AMERICAN CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN THE
TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES THROUGH SHORT LITERARY
WORKS
II.2.1.

American informality

The American are very well-known for their informality. I remember seeing an American man in the
U.S embassy when I was reading a book, I looked up and caught his eyes. He smiled and said “Hi” to
me to my surprise since we had never met before. The other day, when I was climbing the staircase up
to my friend’s room in the dormitory of the University of Technology in Hanoi, some American guys
went past me and greeted “Hi” to me in a very casual way. This informality is not a common practice
among the Vietnamese when we meet strangers as for Vietnamese people, we only greet those who
are well-known to us or those who are older.
American informality is expressed in various forms. In Cosmopolitan, a short story by Akhil Sharma
in The Best American short stories 1998, Gopal, the main character when treating his female neighbor
for the first time at his house, presents an open, hospitable and very informal manner. “ Gopal walked

to the refrigerator and asked her if she wanted anything to drink. ” In a traditional Vietnamese
way, we normally bring tea or sometimes drinking water to serve our guests without asking them if
they want to have a drink or not. On a contrary, the American often ask their guests and give the
options to them. Like Gopal, he listed any things he had in his refrigerator: “ Orange juice, apple

juice, or grape, pineapple, guava. I also have some tropical punch, he continued, opening the

refrigerator door wide, as if to show he was not lying. ” (1998, p. 50) Later in the story, when
Gopal visited the female neighbor, Mrs. Shaw at her home, she asked him if he would like anything to
drink and offered ‘7 have juice if you want." (1998, p. 55) and then, very frankly when Gopal had
not made up his mind for what to drink, she added as a suggestion “’7 was going to have gin and

tonic. ” She said opening the refrigerator and standing before it... ” (1998, p. 55) When I asked
two of my American teachers, one from California and the other from Pennsylvania about this
informal practice, they said that this is typical of the American to serve their guests at home in such
an informal way. In addition, in the book American Ways, an example of an American woman
welcoming


guests is given to illustrate the informality of the American. The evidence is that “ When the

guests arrived, she welcomed them by saying “Make yourself at home. ” She showed them
where to find the food and drinks in the kitchen and introduced them to some of the other
guests. ” (Althen. G, Doran R. A., & Szmania. J. S, 2003, p. 16) The woman treated her guests as
her family members. Hence, these casual behaviors provide the guests with comfort for the feeling
that they are at home and, therefore, improve the closeness of the host and the guests. Another
variation of American informality is seen in the short story “The Magic Barrel” by Bernard
Malamud. The story, which takes place in the 1950s in New York, provides us with an evidence of
casuality in the way Salzman, a marriage broker, behaved as a guest at the home of Leo Finkle, his
customer and a rabbinical student when he came to Leo to persuade him to consider some of the
women he had introduced to him. While Leo behaved very formally, asking Salzman to call him
“Mr. Finkle.” (as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p. 877), Salzman, on the contrary, is very casual. He
brought with him something to eat because he was so hungry after “all day in a rush ” (As cited
in Chin, et al, 2002, p. 880) and ate in front of Leo without offering him. “...first must come back

my strength”, he said and “took out of the leather case an oily paper bag, from which he
extracted a hard, seeded roll and a small, smoked fish. With a quick motion of his hand

stripped the fish out of its skin and began ravenously to chew.” (as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p.
879-880). Salzman felt like home and he made himself at home. Host and guest are friends so there
is no need to conceal one’s hunger. In Vietnamese situation, it is not common to bring food to other
people’s house and enjoy the food there. The Vietnamese often try not to tell the host that he or she
is hungry for the question of saving face. Only among those who are very close to each other such
as among close friends or relatives do people do so. However, for the American, it is quite normal
for the guest to say how he feels or what he wants to eat or drink. For example, when Salzman felt
for some tomato, or some tea, he asked Leo right away, though a bit hesitantly and humbly due to
the serious attitude Leo created “A sliced tomato you have maybe?” and “A glass tea you got,

rabbi? ” (2002, p. 880). These evidences, though indicate rather extreme casualty for the purpose
of the author to draw a picture of a real awkward salesman, more or less reveal the informality of
the American as the guests. For an American, it is not uncommon to bring food


to other people’s house, especially to their friends’ for a party. And the thing they often bring along is
often a drink, such as beer, a bottle of champagne or wine or any of their favorite drinks so that
everyone can enjoy together. Like Kevin, a character in the short story Nobody’s Business by Jhumpa
Lahiri in The Best America Short Story 2002, when he came to his girlfriend’s house shared with
other students, he often brought along beers and helped with the washing up.
Beside the evidences of American informality discussed above in their greeting, in welcoming guests
or in behaving as a guest, we have seen many informal practices in their dressing such as the Casual
Friday in many American company or school when the staff can put on anything they feel
comfortable with, in the way they address each other, for example, the way a student addresses his
teacher or a child addresses his parents with their first name. My teacher of American culture Manvel
Victor Bringas often allows us to call him by his first name Manvel and in his free time, he sometimes
goes on a picnic with us in T-shirt and shorts. There are no gaps between teacher and students. His
informality creates a very friendly atmosphere which we usually have with our American teachers in
particular and with our American friends in general.
II.2.2.

Racial discrimination

Racial discrimination is as old as American history since the first black African slaves came to
America over three centuries ago. For centuries, the colored people in the United States have suffered
unjust segregation due to the dark complexion that they are bom to possess. As learners of English,
we have heard about racial discrimination in America, about Rosa Parks, a black woman who was
arrested for her refusal of the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to a white rider in Mongomery,
Alabama and about Martin Luther King, the leader of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s that
resulted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act which transformed the American society in the late twentieth
century and the century to come. Nevertheless, we have not leamt many of the illustrative evidences
for racial discrimination itself.
In his wonderful short story Big Boy leaves home first published in 1936, Richard N. Wright
provides us with a vivid illustration for racial discrimination set in Southern America in the early
twentieth century. The story begins with a lively scene of the four black boys Bobo,


Lester, Buck and Big Boy, the main character, who are as naughty and lovely as any boys in the
world walking “lollingly in bare feet, beating tangled vines and bushes with long sticks ” (Schorer,
p.885), twitting each other in a swimming hole in the woods after playing truant from school. From
the bottom of their heart, they always dreamt of the train that could bring them to the North which
was said to have equal rights for the colored folks. “They counted each train passed by and began

to sing the song about “a train bound for glory””. While singing the song, they felt a bright future
ahead. Wright draws a lively picture with “A black winged butterfly hovered at the water’s edge. A

bee droned. From somewhere came the sweet scent of honey suckles. Dimly they could hear
sparrows twittering in the woods. They rolled from side to side, letting sunshine dry their skin ”
(Schorer, p. 893). Unfortunately, the black boys’ happy time did not last long until they were found
naked by a white woman. In a normal situation, the woman is supposed to be shy and run away. But

the woman in Wright’s story screamed panickly as if she was seeing four monsters. “ You go away!

You go away! I tell you go away!” (Schorer, p. 894), she shouted even when Big Boy said very
politely: “Lady, we wanna git our closes. ” (Schorer, p. 894) The climax of the whole story arises
when the woman’s fiance appeared and immediately shot the four boys. Lester and Buck died. Bobo
was extremely terrified but Big Boy got the riffle and shot him to death. What the woman and her
fiance did to the four innocent boys represents what the white did to the colored. The black were
treated like animals. They would be killed at any time, for any reasons. The more extreme
segregation is depicted in the barbarous punishment the white gave to Bobo, one of the escaped. As
Big Boy could see while he was running away from his hometown, the white men burnt Bobo and

“A black body flashed in the light. Bobo was struggling, twisting, they were binding his arms
and ligs.” Bobo’s arms and ligs were bound symbolizes the fate of the black was bound. No matter
they struggled, they would be killed. The injustice and barbarian of the society of the t ime is shown
in the death of the three black innocent boys and the exhausting flee of Big Boy paid for the
nonsensical fear of a white woman.
The severe segregation is also revealed in the memoir Prime Time by Henry Louis Gates Jr. when he
recalled the murder of the fourteen-year-old Emmette Till in August 1955 in Mississippi after his
friends dared him to ask out a white woman. “He whistled at some white girl...that’s all he did. He


was beat so bad that they didn’t want to open the casket.” (Gates, as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p.
1092). For the American and the world, the murder of Emmett Till was an international issue. It is
well-known that three days after Emmett Till whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a store clerk, he was
weighted down by a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire by
Carolyn’s husband and her half-brother. They mutilated his face so terribly that his uncle Wright
could only identify the body basing on the ring worn on a finger of the dead body. If it had been a
white man to whistle at Carolyn, the situation wouldn’t have been so bad. This degrading
discrimination was not the first of its kind but it was an alarming point that put the black people in
America on fire for justice and peace. Throughout the memoir, Gates provides us with variety of

evidences of the segregation of the time. “ For most of my childhood, we couldn’t eat in restaurants

or sleep in hotels, we couldn’t use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores ...Even after
basketball games, the colored players had to stand around and drink out of paper cups while the
white players and cheerleaders sat down in the red Naugahyde booths and drank out of glasses ”
(as cited in Chin et. al, 2002, 1087) Gates gives an example of his family being avoided from sitting
down at the Cut-Rate, a restaurant in town, which had a permanent TAKE AWAY ONLY sign for the
colored people. Only Gates’s father was not stopped from sitting down. As Gates explained, it was in
part because his father had lighter complexion. At this stand we can see that the reason was only the
matter of black or white. The lighter one’s complexion was, the more chances for him or her to use
public service. Another example of Carl Dadisman, who had vowed not to integrate, was given to
support Gates’ irony of discrimination. Carl Dadisman was a proprietor who ran the taxi service,
therefore, he tried to behave nicely, even to the colored. However, he did not want the colored to sit
in his booths, eat off his plates and silverware or put their “thick greasy lips” over his glasses.
Gates’s satire arouse in the way he described the death of Carl. Carl died because of a heart attack in
a tiny toilet of his own place of business. “ Daddy and some other men tried to lift him up, while he

was screaming and gasping and clutching his chest, but he was stuck in that cramped space.” (as
cited in Chin et. al, 2002, 1088). Why Carl had such heart attack in such a “relaxing” place is not
given but we can understand that he was “attacked” by his own prejudice for his “cramped” mind.
Lowell, a black brilliant soccer player came to saw the toilet to help him but it seemed hopeless. Carl


cried, moaned and died. Then Gates says that “By then it made little difference to Carl that Lowell

was black.” Yet, it is so ironic that not until a “white” dies that his prejudice of black or white might
be blurred. Like in Big Boy Leaves Home, the colored people in Gates’s memoir also show their
thirst for equality. This thirst is embedded in their excitement to see the shows on television such as

“the all-colored world of Amos and Andy” which is full of black lawyers, black doctors and nurses.

“We were starvedfor images of ourselves and searched TV to find them. ” (p. 1089) But for other
fields, the colored people were well-known for their sport ability. This is the reason why the people in
Piedmont, where Gates spent his childhood, kept track of every sport programs which the colored
played in. “We’d watch the games day and night, and listen on radio to what we couldn’t see.” (p.
1089) and “Colored, colored, on Channel Two.” (p. 1091)All these thirst and excitement to see
their own images and success reveal the desire of the colored people to be recognized in the society.
They wanted to have the same stand and to enjoy the same lives as the white. “With a show like

Topper, I felt as if I was getting a glimpse, at last, of the life that Mrs. Hudson, and Mrs.
Thomas...must be leading in their big mansions... Smoking jackets and cravats, spats and canes,
elegant garden parties and martinis... This was a world of so elegantly distant from ours, it was
like a voyage to another galaxy. ” (p. 1090) By then, all the advantages seen on television that the
white came in for seemed “just out of reach ” of the colored in Piedmont in West Virginia. In the
third part of the memoir, Gates gives us lively facts of the Civil Rights movement, of the black
children integrated into Little Rock high school in Arkansas, of the soldiers from the National Guard
and the state police who surrounded these black children and how the people in Piedmont reacted to
the news. Nonetheless, all these facts were seen only on television. The people in Piedmont still had
to face with segregations.
While in Gates’s nonfiction, we learn about the cheerleaders, in the Civil Rights era, from all- white
high school with a big red C for “central” on their chest waved and cheered “Two, four, six, eight -

We don’t want to integrate.” (as cited in Chin, 2002, 1094), we know more evidences of this
offensive attitude in many other fictional works including Everything That
Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor. From the beginning to the end of the story, the writer
reveals her light irony when describing Julian’s mother and other passengers and their hostile attitudes


toward the Negro people in general and the Negro passengers on the bus. Julian’s mother was so
afraid to ride the buses alone at night because the buses at the time had been integrated. Therefore,
after looking up and down the bus and acknowledging that there were all white on the bus on the first

route, she was so happy. “I see we have the bus to ourselves,” said her. She did not expect any others
of colored complexion to join her world. Her negative attitude was shared by other passengers on the
bus as the Negroes got on the next route. A woman stood up immediately and found another seat far
away when a Negro sat down next to her while the other protruding woman looked at the Negro
avidly as if he were a type of monster. These resentful reactions, unlike those in the early twentieth
century revealed in Big Boy Leaves Home, were not open and vigorous but in a silent way. Her
attitude was typical of many white people toward the colored in the early 1950s and even after the
Civil Rights Act took effect in 1964.


Throughout American history, the attitudes of the white people toward the colored have changed
considerably as it can be inferred from the analysis above. In addition, we can witness these changes
in the language used to address the colored people. In the early twentieth century, the colored was
called nigger by many white people. This hostile word appeared repeatedly in A Rose for Emily by
William Faulkner to speak to and about the colored. By then came the term Negro, Afro-American,
the black and nowadays, African American is used to convey a neutral and more respectful attitude.
The late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century have witnessed great innovation in the
thinking of American society on the whole. While Miss Emily in the early part of the previous century
had to hide her beloved dark man Homer Barron in her house until he died to avoid rumors, African
American people nowadays are much more confident than ever before in showing themselves in front
of the public. The evidences are since the African American Vanessa William was the first to be
crowned Miss America in 1984, there have been a large number of colored women to win this honor
including the 2008 Miss America Crystle Stewart. Besides, African American have widely appeared
on the cover of mass consumer magazines such as Seventeenand Cosmopolitan, made up 20 % of the
models to appear on 471 covers of 31 magazines published in 2002 (Garcia. G, 2004, p. 43). Many
African American have come into power in the society of which nearly three-forth of the population is
white. (Garcia. G, 2004, x) Typical examples are the first black woman Condoleeza Rice who served
as the 66th Secretary of States of America and most recently, the current 44 th president of the United
States Barack Obama who has made a history in American presidency to be the first black to hold the
office. African American have gained recognizable stand in American society that they deserve.

II.2.3.

Modern American women

From all the literary works I have had chances to read, I have the same feelings for the American
women, who share many things in common as very modem, practical, strongheaded women who have
new concepts of love, thirst for love and try their best to achieve true love.
In the short story Watermelon Days selected in The Best American Short Story 2002, Tom McNeal
draws a picture of an American woman in the late 1920s. Doreen Sulivan, a beautiful woman from
Philadelphia, had an appearance which was a fashion of the day with “a thin, sleeveless dress over a


light camisole, her bobbed hair was marceled into deep horizontal waves, she wore a wide
ribbon in her felt cloche...
She also used a scarlet lipstick to form her lips into a fresh cupid bow..." (McNeal, as cited in
Kenison and Miller, 2002, p. 211). The way Doreen dressed up and wore make-up represents a
revolutionary trend of the rebellious American flappers in the so-called Jazz Age or the Roaring
Twenties. Traditionally, women wore long dress, long hair and very light makeup. On the contrary, the
rebellious flappers wore dresses which exposed their hands and legs down from the knee. Their long
hair was cut short and even bobbed. The year 1926, which the story dates back to1920s
wasflapper’s
a turning
point
cloche hat
in American fashion when camisoles, short dresses, bobbed hair under cloche hats and heavy make-up
were in their hey-day.
wanted was to show themselves to be very young, modem, strong

What the flappers
and different

from


traditional American women of the time. Doreen, with her modem appearance raised thecuriosity of
the people in Yankton, the town which she came to for a job. And also in Yankton, she got married to a
radio reporter who proposed to her only five weeks after their first meeting.
In the story, we also come across a young American flapper who was very practical minded about
love, Aggie, who endlessly looked for men for fun. “In men, Aggie looked for what she called the

three m’s - married, money, and merry...” Love is something quite vague to her. Her attitude toward
love and marriage was not uncommon among young American women, the flappers in the late 1920s
who treated love and sex in very casual ways.
A question arises at this point that “Do American women in the late twentieth and the early twentyfirst century share the same view of love and marriage with those in the early twentieth century?” The
answer is “Yes, they treat love and sex even more casually.” In the short story Nobody’s Business first
published in


2001, we vividly witness the casual practices of the young American in general and the young
American women in particular of living together before marriage. All of the characters in the story are
intellectual: Paul, the protagonist who had got his Ph.D on literature from Havard; Sang, another
female main character from Bengali, who graduated from New York university; Heather, a female law
school student at Boston college; Farouk, Sang’s boyfriend, who was an Egyptian who taught Middle
Eastern history. These characters came from different parts of the world but they had been used to the
casual way the young American treat love and sex before marriage. For example, Paul’s girlfriend,
who had lived with him in her department for three months and taken him home to her parents’ house
for Thanks Giving, said goodbye to him for the sole reason that she did not like the way he kissed her
when they were naked in bed. Another illustrations for their living together before marriage are
Heather and Sangs, Paul’s housemates. Heather, who had a boyfriend named Kevin, a physicist at
MIT, often took him to the house to sleep over night and she was going to celebrate their “ one-month

anniversary”. Regarding Sang, she was so sad when talking to her male friend Charles about
Farouk’srefusal to live together before marriage and they both agreed that “...he’s a little old-

fashioned. ’’ for they had been together for three years. As the three examples above suggest
cohabitation before marriage is a common practice, or even a fashion among young American and
among the American people on the whole. Statistics shows that 41% of American women ages 15-44
have cohabited (lived with an unmarried different-sex partner) at some points. (Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, 2002, retrieved on Feb 17, 2009 from http ://www.unmarried. org/
statistics.html)
As Mrs. Shaw, a protagonist in the short story Cosmopolitan by Akhil Sharma, first published ini
997, states that “only overtime and through living together could people get to know each other

properly. ” (Sharma, as cited in Keillor. G, 1998, p. 66). For her, living together before marriage was
a necessity to get to know each other before marriage. And she had done that. The evidence is she
brought a number of men home at night as Gopal, her neighbor and boyfriend, saw different cars in
front of her house every night. Like Aggie in Watermelon Days, Mrs. Shaw endlessly looked for true
love, for her right man. Disappointedly, she could not find one for herself after countless number of
affairs. The truth that she found out, as she shared with Gopal, was that there was a great difference