American Realism Background - Research Paper Example

American realism Realism in literature is an artistic technique, employed by artists exploring the day-to-day middle life. American realism was the idea that carried the art, music, and literature of the indigenous society (Kaplan, 2004). It emerged as the faithful representation of reality among the American life’s, through different types of works, and reflections of reality. In the attempt to identify what was happening, American realism, as an art came into dissimilar forms and genres. Be it an undertaking to show cultural portrayal or the a charming analysis of a city like New York City, the images and the up-and-coming works of literature designed at depicting the modern-day view of what was happening in America in that age (Bell, 2006). The architects were the new age band of painters, writers, and journalists. The question as to whether the short stories, Hills like white elephants, and The things they carried, fits well in the context of American realism of the 19th century emerges well in this explanation (Bell, 2006). In the understanding of Realism in American literature, this art encompasses the period of civil war to the turn of era where such writers like William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and other literates came up with fiction that accurately reflected and implored into the depths of the American lives in a mixture of contexts. Hemingway and Brien’s stories, Hills like white elephants, and The things they carried, try to reminisce that culture (Bloomfield, 2007). This is American realism. One should understand that the American state grew rapidly after the civil war eon. For example, the tentative rise of the middle-class, the unprecedented growth of industrial sector, the raising demography due to immigration, and the escalating tempo of egalitarianism and literacy. All these came as fertile grounds for readers craving to comprehend these rapid changes in their midst (Bell, 2006). There was a rapid shift of culture. How else could it come exultingly except through art and that art was the new American realism? As Amy Kaplan tags it, American realism came as the strategy for imagining and managing the threats of social shifts. This is because it encompassed the entire country. Just like what Hemingway and Brien’s try to depict, the ideal of American form of art, Realism, aimed at responding to the sweeping political, social, and economic changes that took place in the American culture soon after the civil war (Kaplan, 2004). The art also encompasses the end of slavery, the advent of mass production, and the increased poverty. Just like Brien’s and Hemingway as realists’ writers, those of the same era sought to depict the everyday life of the ordinary Americans. Realism also explored the relationship that coexisted between the individual and the society. As an attempt to capture the local color or the local tests of the community, these artists did it following their regions. The immigration rendered the country as a place of multi-races. As a result, each race came with its own genre of art. The distinct local color and life also differed hence prompting artists too capture what the society he lived believed. This was to tame the emerging technology and preserve what they saw as noble in art form for prosperity. Through art and artistic expression, American Realism rose to arrest the exhaustion and the cultural liveliness of the figurative American landscape, both indigenous and the new imposed by the forces of immigration, as well as the life of the ordinary Americans (natives and immigrants) at home (Bell, 2006). For example, artists would make use of feelings, texture, and the sounds of the city to manipulate the color, texture, and the overall look of their creative projects. A good sample is the changing genres of music, where the artists dealt quickly with the quick and fast-paced nature 20th century in which new and fresh tempo came into invention. This was part of the ‘realism art’ that responded to the readers’ anxiety in the 19th and early 20th century in American life (Kaplan, 2004). Just like the story of Hills like white elephants , the writer seems to embrace the same realists’ philosophy, where the ancient writers would tell new stories that American boys and girls would grow up with in their culture. ‘The things they carried’ also serves better to explain the writers’ interests in telling the Americans life during the civil strife. As a proof to this form of literature, the writers rely on ‘the now’ way of living in the American lifestyle of the 19th and 20th century (Bell, 2006). The fact that they pull away from fantasy and embrace the real issues in the contemporary America makes the genre of American Realism become a tangible supreme. Some would argue that American realism had to come by at whatever era, for without it, the first step, and the burst through to the era of modernism literature could not have come to pass (Kaplan, 2004). Some schools such as Ashcan school and the Ten American Painters sourced their creativity from the realism era. This is because where the immigrants and Native Americans saw nothing worth of notice, Realism literature, and artistry gave it another perspective. It showed everything from strife as of paramount importance. Hills like white elephants and and ‘the things they carried’ thus features as the art that tries to depict nature as experienced by Americans, which the American people lived and breathed. That is how interesting American Realism was. The short stories Hills like white elephants and The things they carried can be seen as part of the extended American Realism literature (Bell, 2006). The two novels compare in many aspects. Hemingway and Brien come out as somehow similar in their writing. This is because each seemed to guide his instincts into capturing the actual and real events of American landscape during the 19th and the 20th century. In many areas, both are quick to the point when telling out the story. For example, Ernest Hemingway starts by overtly describing the vivid nature of the hills across the valley of Ebro (Hemingway, 2007). He defines them as along and white. This is a non-ambiguous language and it makes the point of the story well known and clear to the reader. The way he employs dramatic description in telling of the sides of the shade and trees, and the station as well as the American and the girl highlights the simplicity in this writer’s story telling technique. This makes the plot easy to follow and more of a reality than fiction. On the side of Brien’s, the exactness of his artistry matches Hemingway’s wit. The way Tim portrays how the young men sent to war and how they learnt the reality in a very harsh and brutal way captures the reader’s interest as this is far from fiction. His documentation is an epic of the American era in war times as young men fought in battlefields. The story is more specific and straight telling on the experiences of a soldier during the times of war (OBrien, 2005). Tim O’Brien’s, being a war veteran takes advantage of the reality he knows of to emphasize more on the war scenes. The writers have qualified in using short sentences, which say very little, which enhance their chances in saying the exact of what happened in their story. In the look of their topics for example, one would not take long to read the statement, Hills like white elephants and The things they carried (Bloomfield, 2007). These are simple sentences, which are not overly descriptive, but they qualify in the job of explaining what the hills looked like as well as how the young American soldier faced and returned from war. In both these realms, the writers directly say what they ought to say to their readers. Like other fictional writers of modernism and romanticism, Hemingway and O’Brien avoid the use of evasive tactics to deceive the readers into comprehending something else. They are to the point. On another point of comparison, the two writers use the first person narration. In the short story The things they carried, the author Tim O’Brien employs a unique style in which he reaches the readers (OBrien, 2005). Ernest Hemingway uses the same tactic of first person narration. Even though his story has much dialogue between the American and the girl, the initial description of the positioning of the White Mountains, the Ebro valley, the building and its curtain, the railway line helps to capture the actual picture of this fascinating literary epoch. Just like O’Brien’s, Hemingway qualifies in the use of images to create meanings (Organ, 2009). For example, the white elephants represent the baby, something that is precious, the image of railroad crossing is symbolic of being at a cross roads of life during decisions, and when Jig suggests that they could have all what she was seeing across the valley, the interpretation was that hills represented challenge, new life, and possibility (Hemingway, 2007). This is practical due to the use of first person narration for as Brien does, it helps to capture the actual duels within the story, and this makes the reader create a connection with the play. The stories Hills like white elephants and The things they carried however contrast in some aspects. First, even though both are pieces of American Realism, they serve to capture different context. For example, Hills like white elephants’, Hemingway endeavors to tell of a realistic story of an American man and his girlfriend, Jig who are sitting in a railway station. In real sense, the Hills like white elephants is a story about crisis. However, this case a different one from that exposed in military avenues by O’Brien (OBrien, 2005). The American man and the girl have a decision to make at the end of the day even though this is not an easy way out for them. The writer seems to tell the reader that even making no decision sometimes may be a decision. Through this, the author left the readers to relate himself or herself from such kind of a situation. Looking at Tim O’Brien’s play, this book transcends the genre of war fiction (OBrien, 2005). In its combination of the aspect of memoir, novel, and short story collection, the play, sourcing deeply on war realms, has enough to proof its course. For example, the war graphics everyone sees in real battlefield and the violent scenes are all explaining the flow of O’Brien’s genre. This contrary to the trouble highlighted in Hemingway’s story line. The recurring of soldiers like Cross and Azar help to remind one the milieu of realities in war fronts (Bloomfield, 2007). The storyline is down to earth, straightforward, and vividly painted. The author vividly illustrates both the mental and physical sides of what men carry along during battle time. For example, what keeps them alive such as weapons and what keeps them going such as the remembrance of the people back home. The types of conditions these men are put through makes this story a much more to the reader. It also helps to approve the assertion that this story is inclining on American Realism art. The short stories Hills like white elephants and The things they carried’’ can as well feature as part of American Realism genre. Given the understanding that the American state was emerging from war, the story by O’Brien’s speaks of the truth that Tim O’Brien learned in Vietnam (OBrien, 2005). This book remains unforgettable for due to its ability to expose the line between truth and reality, fact and fictional. The American reality art dwelt on real issues that the country was facing. As to highlight this, Tim exposes the Vietnam’s experiences the American soldiers endured. For instance, the weapons and good luck charms that the U.S soldiers carried are picture in true world that represented survival, lost innocence, and the war’s interminable legacy (Bloomfield, 2007). The author’s takes the readers into an incisive meditation on war and memory, on darkness and the unending light through which the American soldiers trudged on in the quench to brace the battlefield (Hemingway, 2007). This is a record of real event, the things that the American society would wish to know as to what happened. Tim’s poetic form of writing carries with it the genius of making a highly original and fully realized novel. For anyone who wishes to look to know into the reality of the Vietnam experiences, O’Brien’s book makes a short and incisive list of these happenings. This is a record of a memoir, hence a true sample of American Realism. On another level, Hemingways style of writing in “Hills like White Elephants” is unique way of presenting the American realism. Realism is seen in personality on life, put on paper. The author shows his command of the technique of realism by making this fictional work correspond to the reality of the people, the American people, who share the same experiences of struggle, indecisiveness, and difficulties. Only those who have endured such a thing, difficulties of American life at that era, could only fathom the theme of the story. For example, the way the man and the girl are talking about something unmentionable, Hemingway was speaking about a very sensitive reality to a very selective audience (Hemingway, 2007). Hemingways Hills like White Elephants techniques of realism, as a fictional work, correspond to the reality of people of American, like the conflict of the American man and the girl friend Jig is very realistic. To sum it up, the two main characters specifically get the reference as the ‘Americans’ (Organ, 2009). This authenticates the story as a true record of reality of the nature of American culture. Realism also extended to other specialties. For example, it lined itself as a source of indispensable maxim. The focus was to treat what was in real society as the truthful representation of material. What these artists cut themselves away from was the fictional novels. Their genius as realists’ writers focused at defacing a paradox morality away from the fictional world (Kaplan, 2004). In the artists’ perception, the principled belief discarded the model of narrating from the imaginary world; they wanted a touch with reality in novel. Even in the incisive look of Hemingway’s story and Brien’s story, the ancient American realism genre guides their story line. For example, the stories base largely on the social life as lived in the world the Americans (Brien’s and Hemingway) knew, and that was valuable to them, and the objective portrayal of human life in artistry (Hemingway, 2007). This would certainly illustrate the superior value of social reason away from the fictional creations of fantasy societies by many artists of the time. Realism writing was the game changer. Realism intended to connect the household, the bizarre, and the ‘seen’ of the human nature. By doing so, American Realism qualified in many ways to trace the, for example the shifts in the society’s growth. In simpler terms, Realism reveals and the American Realism perfected in revealing the exactness of any given society, like in the case study, the American Realism background. References Bell, M. D. (2006). The problem of American realism: Studies in the cultural history of a literary idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bloomfield, Jill M. (2007). The Things They Carried Litplan Teacher Pack. Teachers Pet Pubns Inc. Hemingway, E. (2007). Hills like white elephants. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, 211-14. Kaplan, A. (2004). The social construction of American realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. OBrien, T. (2005). The things they carried: A work of fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Organ, D. (2009). Hemingways Hills like White Elephants. The Explicator, 37(4), 11-12.   Read More