Some aspects of American culture and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through a number of selected short literary works

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Part I: Introduction
I.1. Rationale
I was born to a family whose members are all business people except me. My father used to be a
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 fast-food 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
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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.
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.
I.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
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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.
I.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, modern 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, Tom
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 helpful to support my discussion.
I.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
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the bases for chapter 2, which discusses the main issues concerning aspects of American culture

and society in the 20
th
and 21
st
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 aim 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.
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Part II: development
Chapter 1 : 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 hard-
working 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 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 “all 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 20
th
century” identifies culture as
“the way of life of particular people living together in one place. That culture is made visible in
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their arts, in their social system, in their habits and customs, in their religion…” (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 and wrote
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
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motionist of Vietnamese literature, gained great success in variety of literary forms, one of
which is essays (tuú bót) 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.
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II.1.2.2. Short stories, memoirs, essays and other genres of literature
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 sub-genre 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 “a short
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prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to 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:
- 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, 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
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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)
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
“I” watched the
snow and found
each snowflake
irreplaceable
and beautiful,

like a person,.
Resolution
“I” – an
immigrant, spent
her first year in
New York
studying at a
Catholic school
“I” learnt
the first
new words
including
snow
“I” had air-
raid drills
and learnt
about
nuclear
bomb,
radioactive
fallout and
bomb shelter
Her
teacher
drew a
picture
dotted a
flurry of
chark
marks to

illustrate
the dusty
fallout that
would kill
them
“I” shrieked
“Bomb!
Bomb!” seeing
the sky dotted
with snow
The
teacher
told “I”
that it is
snow, not
bomb
Exposition Rising actions Falling action
Climax
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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 time 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
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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, “Flash-
back 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)
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- 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 “I 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
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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 corners 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 modern
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 ponderation of the writer for the understanding
of different aspects of life. For Ms. Bynum, it was the ponderation 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
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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 flash-back, 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 modern 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,
p.739), along with a reduce by 40% in the average income of American family. The American
faced the hardest 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
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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
chaostic1950s 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 mid-1960s was also the time of
Civil Right movement which ended with the equal rights for the African-American 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 time 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
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
/>17
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.
18
Chapter 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 “I 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 “”I 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
19
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