The American Grain - Essay Example

1) According to William Carlos Williams, what trait(s) does Daniel Boone share with Red Eric that makes them both part of the American Grain? According to William Carlos Williams, the common traits that Daniel Boone and Red Eric share are the instinct to find new worlds, to create new things, and the ‘El Dorado’ mindset which makes a person wildly adventurous. This is what makes both of them part of the American Grain, according to him. To be more precise, this is a mindset of never feeling a sense of belonging to a geographical space, to a culture enrooted in a specific place. 2) According to Mara Ruiz de Burton, what direct impact did the Land Act of 1851 have on Mexican (aka Californio) landowners in the U.S. Southwest?

 According to Ruiz de Burton, the Land Act of 1851 was a means for squatters from the US to grab the lands of the Mexican landowners who had settled there decades back. The Mexican landowners were turned into aliens in the land where they were born and brought up. Both the Mexican landowners and the squatters faced a moral dilemma when the act came into being.3) In The Squatter and the Don, who or what does Don Mariano Alamar blame on his deathbed for his family’s misfortunes? On his deathbed, Don Mariano Alamar blamed the US government which allowed the squatters to stake claims on the land owned by Californios, like him.

He said that the squatters were victims of the wrong legislation as he was. He also blamed the government for subverting moral principles so that this could happen. 4) What does it mean to be a gentleman in the world of The Squatter and the Don? In the world of ‘The Squatter and the Don’, a gentleman is a Californio and not a squatter or a brigand. A gentleman also means a person who knows how to keep his beloved away from suffering and pain. 5) In the closing chapter of Death Comes for the Archbishop, Latour expresses satisfaction at having lived to see the end of two great injustices.

One of them is the end of slavery in the U.S. What is the other one? The second injustice alluded to by Latour was the injustice suffered by the Navajos, the Indian tribes living in Northern America. Their land was invaded by the generals from the United States and they were made landless. But in 1868, by an agreement, they “resorted to their own country” and thus the injustice mentioned by Latour in this novel got corrected to some extent (Cather, 290). 6) Why does Wash Jones kill Thomas Sutpen?

Thomas Stupen had an affair with the granddaughter of Wash Jones but after she gave birth to a girl child, Stupen was unhappy that he did not have a male heir. Hence he abandoned the woman and the child after telling them that they were not even worthy of sleeping in his stables, which enraged Jones and he killed Stupen.7) Who is the Dew Breaker of Danticat’s story of the same name, and what does the term mean? Dew Breaker means a person who destroys the serenity of the grass that stands fresh in the morning dew.

In this novel, a Dew Breaker is a member of a group who tortured and killed thousands of people during the rule of François and Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti.