On Tuesday’s class, we talked about the dichotomy of American culture. How everything has to put into a lens of good or evil, religious or secular, north or south. The idea that to be an American citizen you have to fully commit yourself to freedom or you’ll risk falling back into slavery. What strikes me the most about this conversation is not only that this dichotomy is integrated into society, but has become this foundation of the culture. It shapes every citizen, forces them to think through this limiting perspective. You can see it in Zeitoun’s actions during Katrina. He chooses to stay in New Orleans despite the devastation that he could encounter. But, I think in his mind he didn’t have a choice. Zeitoun built himself up for nothing, married a white southern girl, has a large house, he is an exemplar of the American dream and wants to inhibit all the values and ideals of an American citizen. That comes with this mindset of good vs. evil. A mindset that thinks it is cowardly to leave, the evil thing, and that it is heroic to stay, the good thing. Wright says and demonstrates the same thing in his autobiography. He is in Chicago where the racism and discrimination against black people is directed in a way that Wright isn’t attuned to yet. Right now, it feels something like inclusion. But, Wright has grown up in a culture that does not see the inclusion of black people as right, so he feels as if he is in the wrong place, around the wrong people. He wants to return the certainty of knowing that the perspective that has been instilled in him will continue to keep him out of trouble. Both men show the long-lasting effects of the dichotomous world view characteristic of American culture that has, and probably will continue to, define generations.

A part of our discussion on Thursday was surrounding the keyword essays (immigration, family, freedom, and slavery) and how they relate to the narratives of Franklin, Douglass, Jacobs, and Antin. What was most striking during our discussion was the difficulty of only assigning one keyword to each narrative. I think this has to do with the different content and goals of each author as well as the how different connotations of the word were used in each work. For example, the word freedom, as Yaz touched on, is not a static idea. For Douglass and Jacobs, it is becoming separate from ownership, for Franklin it is independence, for Antin it could be freedom to express identity.  It changes based on the author, the environment, and the time period.  The intricacies of the words, as well as the setting of each narrative, make it difficult to pinpoint one obvious theme.

I also think that separating the keywords was difficult because each author integrates every keyword. As Jeremy mentioned, the idea of immigration appears in every narrative we read. And as our discussion proved, a case could be made for the appearance of every keyword in each narrative. I think this happens because their stories mirror the ones of “American” stories. Franklin is popularly considered the “first American.” Douglass and Jacobs tell stories of attainment or the goal of freedom in the United States, an idea tightly linked with US development.  Antin shows the voluntary adoption of the American identity. They all portray a sense of becoming an “American” beyond the state of citizenship. Similarly, the keywords are often linked with citizens’ personal stories of becoming an American. Their background often involves immigration, family, freedom, and slavery. The keywords are instrumental in how people define themselves in the US. The task of trying to isolate the themes of the American identity from inherently “American” stories cannot be done easily.