T R I F L E S

'TRIFLES' is always in the curriculum of DRAMA ANALYSIS CLASS that I handle in the even semester.


PLOT


This one-act drama written by Susan Glaspell tells us about a murder of a husband, John Wright. His wife, Mrs. Wright -- her maiden name was Minnie Foster -- was the suspect since she was the last person seen when a neighbor -- Mr. Hale -- found Mr. Wright dead in his house. The following day after the finding, Mr. Hale came back to the house together with the Sheriff and County Attorney to gather evidence -- either to make themselves convinced that Mrs. Wright was the murderer or on the way around: they might find fingerprints of the 'real murderer'. These three men were accompanied by Mrs. Hale -- the wife of the neighbor -- and Mrs. Peter -- the wife of the Sheriff. The two women were about to collect some personal belongings of Mrs. Wright who apparently was already in custody; these personal belongings were, among other things. clothes, some stuff to quilt, etc.


Glaspell intentionally showed the contradictory traits between men and women: the three men paid more attention to anything 'big' or 'serious' to collect evidence, because the crime done was also a serious one: murder. On the contrary, the two women took a very close look at some 'trivial things (alias 'trifles') such as, preserves, bread set, a large sewing basket and a piece cloth Mrs. Wright was quilting. In the end, it turned out that the women even found the evidence that strongly showed Mrs. Wright was the murderer from those trifles, while the men did not find any. However, to show 'loyalty to the same gender' -- as accused by the County Attorney when Mrs. Hale defended Mrs. Wright when the County Attorney said bad things about how messy the kitchen of Mr. Wright's house was -- the two women kept the evidence for themselves.


DESPERATE HOUSEWIFE -- an analysis


From the conversation between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, one can conclude that John Wright had a contradictory trait from his wife, Minnie Foster. Before marrying John, Minnie was a very cheerful girl, singing in a choir, wearing pretty dresses as well as colorful ribbons on her hair. Meanwhile, John belonged to a very quiet man. He refused the offer of Mr. Hale to 'go on a party telephone' by saying that 'folks talked too much'. Apparently he didn't like noise at all.


Because of that, it can be concluded that during their marriage -- for about thirty years -- Minnie was forced to be someone else who was not herself in the past. She could not sing, she could not enjoy having a company -- let us say when a neighbor dropped by at her house. Mrs. Hale herself as a neighbor said that she did not really like visiting the Wrights' house since John did not like it.


When the two women found a dead canary hidden inside a box in the sewing basket, they directly drew a conclusion what made Minnie killed her husband. John killed Minnie's only entertainment. (Mrs. Hale said that only a year ago Minnie bought the canary, 29 years after the wedding, after 29 years living in a quietness and being repressive.) It can be interpreted that John killed Minnie's soul. No longer could Minnie control her emotion, she killed her husband.


HISTORICAL BACKGROUND


The choice of 'kitchen' as the main setting by Glaspell refers to the setting considered as the only women's sphere in that era. 'Trifles' was written in 1916, the decade considered to be important before American women got their right to vote in 1920 after struggling to get it since the first summit in 1848. Despite the fact that women had spent some decades for that demand, the government did not really pay attention to it.


Through this play, Glaspell wanted to criticize the government that it was high time for them to give right to women to be involved in 'men's spheres'. Although 'only' gathering evidence through trivial things -- homemaking stuff -- in the so-called unimportant setting, the two women found evidence as well as the motif why Minnie Foster killed the husband.


A woman indeed will be able to do anything that people might think impossible when she is cornered, when she is forced.


PT56 21.24 220411

Sadie and Maud

Sadie and Maud
Gwendolyn Brooks
(1917- 2000)

Maud went to college.
Sadie stayed at home.
Sadie scraped life
With a fine-tooth comb

She didn’t leave a tangle in.
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chits
In all the land.

Sadie bore two babies
Under her maiden name.
Maud and Ma and Papa
Nearly died of shame.

When Sadie said her last so-long
Her girls struck out from home.
(Sadie had left as heritage
Her fine-tooth comb.)

Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.


Belonging to Genetic Structuralism school of Lucien Goldmann, I cannot separate the work from the background of the poet and the society when a certain work was produced. Brooks was born in 1917 in Kansas, and grew up in chicago. She herself divided her writing career into two phases, “pre-1967” and “post-1967”. In 1967 when she attended the Second Black Writers’ Conference at Fisk University, Brooks met a number of young black poets who persuaded her that “black poets should write as blacks, about blacks, and address themselves to blacks.” It means, after that conference, Brooks’ awareness of her being African American poet made her dedicate more time and work for Black society in America.

Gilbert and Gubar stated that although Brooks did not claim herself as a feminist, believing that racial issues must take priority over gender questions, she has always written with extraordinary sympathy about the dilemmas of female characters. This can be clearly seen in the poem I posted above “Sadie and Maud”.

Maud went to college.
Sadie stayed at home.

The first two lines in stanza one illustrated two sisters who choose different kind of life, Maud goes to college, to study for a betterment in her own future life while Sadie her sister chooses to stay at home. Living in an era where education is very important for someone’s success in life, one can directly conclude that Maud will have a better future than her sister Sadie.
However, if one jumps into the last stanza

Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.

He/she will be surprised because things do not turn like what he/she expects. Maud is even lonely, all alone at home, feeling desperate about her life.
What happens in the process of those two sisters’ lives?

Sadie scraped life
With a fine-tooth comb

She didn’t leave a tangle in.
Her comb found every strand.

The lines three and four of stanza one illustrates that life is not easy for Sadie, for she does not go to college, she has to struggle to survive. “with a fine-tooth comb” can be interpreted as she chooses to use her physical beauty to survive. The first and second lines of stanza two depicts the continuation of the previous lines. Her struggle indeed makes her survive, she can handle every problem coming to her, with her own way of life that she chooses (by not going to college).

Sadie was one of the livingest chits
In all the land.

Lines three and four of stanza two illustrates that Sadie is the happiest girl in her community despite the fact that she has to undergo many severe problems in her struggle. Her struggle to survive by choosing “the best” life that suits her personality does make her happy.

Sadie bore two babies
Under her maiden name.
Maud and Ma and Papa
Nearly died of shame.

Stanza three describes one episode in Sadie’s life as “one of the livingest chits in all the land”. She has two babies outside the wedlock. Therefore, she makes her sister, Maud, and her parents very ashamed. Maud and her two parents obviously follow the consensus of “good girl” as required by The Cult of True Womanhood spread since the nineteenth century America that a girl must keep her virginity before getting married. Therefore what Sadie has done really makes them almost die because of feeling humiliated by society.

Does Sadie ever regret of her own choice—not to go to college, to use her physical beauty to survive, to have babies outside the wedlock? The following four lines in stanza four shows that.

When Sadie said her last so-long
Her girls struck out from home.
(Sadie had left as heritage
Her fine-tooth comb.)

Before Sadie dies, she “teaches” her two daughters to follow her step in their life, “Be yourself. Do what you think will make you happy. And be responsible with your own choice. Don’t just follow the consensus of “good norm” of society if you don’t feel happy with that.”
Since 1960s after the abolishment of Jim Crow Law in America, many African American people want to forget their “heritage” as Black people and start to follow the habit of the white (read => the European American). Many feel ashamed to do the “habit” of their parents or grandparents or older generations.

Brooks depicts Maud who follows the bulk of white women who go to college in that era, without realizing what it is for, without trying to like doing it, only as an “obligation” to be considered as “the educated” person. Doing something because it is an obligation without knowing the significance why doing it, without enjoying it will just make Maud—or anybody else—unhappy.
PT56 09.05 220407

"Young Goodman Brown" versus "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?"

 COMPARISON BETWEEN “YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN”

AND “WHERE ARE YOU GOING? WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”

By Nana Podungge

This paper will compare Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where are you going? Where have you been?” Hawthorne’s story belongs to the Romantic Period while Oates’ belongs to the Postmodern Period. First, I will analyze the story one by one. After that, I will elaborate the similarities and the differences I found in the two stories.

In “Young Goodman Brown”, the main character—Brown—left his wife whom he married just for three months, to do an “errand” to the forest. There, he met a so-called fifty-year-old man who took him to a certain place in the forest where there would be an ‘ordination’ and Brown would be ordained to be one of the members of the man’s congregation. Brown—the descendant of “a race of honest men and good Christians” (Baym, 1989: 1112)—in fact felt insecure to follow that old man, because he thought that the congregation in the forest were the followers of the devil. He regarded the old man whom he first met in the forest as the devil. Nevertheless, he did not go back to his village. Instead, he continued following the old man. His curiosity about what he would find in the forest is bigger than his feeling insecure to follow the devil.

Besides feeling insecure, Brown also felt sinful because following the devil in a dangerous place. it is understandable because he considered forests a place where devils and satans meet each other. Therefore, Brown was shocked when he found Goody Cloyse, a very pious woman in his village who taught him his catechism. Feeling worried that Goody Cloyse would see him following the devil in the forest (he was worried that the pious woman would consider him as a devil follower, and not a pious man any longer), Brown tried to hide. He felt more shocked when he also found other pious people from his village in the same forest where he was; such as the minister and Deacon Gookin. Those people were going into the same direction with him. Brown’s feelings—insecure, guilty, sinful, and also curious—were mixed together, and he asked himself what those pious people were doing in the place full of devils.

Going farther into the forest, Brown met more people—one of them was Faith, his wife whom he left at home and who objected to his going to the forest. Not only pious and honorable people did Brown see there, he also saw “men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches, given over to all mean and filthy vice, suspected even of horrid crimes” (Baym, 1989: 1117). Those good and bad people were in the same place to attend the ordination. The congregation would ordain Brown and Faith to be the members. However, before they were ordained—Brown tried not to follow the order of the leader of the ordination ceremony, and tried to oppose it, suddenly everything was gone. “Hardly had he spoken, when he found himself amid calm night and solitude” (Baym, 1989: 1119).

Even though the story was written in the Romantic period, Hawthorne chose the setting in the Puritan era. He wanted to criticize Puritan people’s way of thinking that in this world there are only two kinds of people, good people who are perfectly pious, and bad people who are perfectly sinners. People must fall into one of the two categories. Through the main character, Brown, Hawthorne showed the confusion inside a young man about the two categories of people. How could pious people socialize with bad ones and they gathered in one place which was considered devilish—the forest. In the Puritan era, people considered the forest a dangerous place because it was full of devils and satans.

I conclude that Hawthorne wanted to convey a message that the Puritan philosophy about the two categories of people is wrong. No one is perfectly pious, nor is a perfect sinner. People have both good and bad sides in them. It is just natural for someone who is considered pious to do something bad. A wicked criminal can also have good side in him/her. Therefore, Hawthorne ended the story by describing Brown—an example of a puritan man who thought that someone must be either perfectly pious or perfect sinner—underwent unhappy life and lived restlessly until the end of his life because he could not understand what he found in one episode of his life.

In “Where are you going? Where have you been?” which was written in 1966, Oates tells a story of a fifteen-year-old girl named Connie. Though Connie did not really seem to feel happy at home—she always had problems with her mother who always compared her with her older sister, June, Connie seemed to enjoy her life outside home. Her parents let her go with her girl friends to a shopping plaza which was located three miles away from her house. There, Connie and her friends walked through the stores and went to a movie. Some other time, they went to a drive-in restaurant. Some other time again, Connie was riding in a car with a boy.

So did Connie’s life go on. At home, she had to confront her mother whom she thought had a jealous feeling toward her because of her good look—her mother used to be good-looking too but now it has gone. Besides, being always compared with her elder sister, Connie might suffer from “second child syndrome”. June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn’t do a thing (p. 226). Outside home, Connie enjoyed her life with her friends.

Connie’s life changed when one Sunday, she was left alone at home—her parents and sister went to a barbeque at an aunt’s house. Two boys—strangers—went to her house and asked her to go for a ride with them. For Connie, they were strangers. For the two boys—especially one of them named Arnold Friend—Connie was not a stranger. Actually Connie has met Arnold one night in town when she was in Eddie’s car. “… and just at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold. He stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin.” (p. 228) However, Connie did not remember that. While Arnold always remembered that event, and tried to find out about anything related to Connie since then. No wonder, Arnold came at the “right time” when Connie was left alone at home.

Arnold at first persuaded Connie somewhat politely. He assured her that he was a friend who just wanted to take her for a ride. I believe that Arnold regarded Connie as a girl who liked going for a ride in a boy’s car when he saw her in Eddie’s, a kind of “cheap” girl who easily got flattered by a boy’s smooth talk. However, Arnold was wrong. In fact, Connie was “a hard girl to handle”. She even asked him and Ellie—Arnold’s friend to go away. It made Arnold angry.

Arnold kept forcing Connie to go with him. He showed Connie his “supra natural” ability to see something which happens in another place. “Right now they’re—uh—they’re drinking. Sitting around,” he said vaguely, squinting as if he were staring all the way to town and over to Aunt Tillie’s backyard. Then the vision seemed to get clear and he nodded energetically. “Yeah. Sitting around. There’s your sister in a blue dress, huh? And high heels, the poor sad bitch—nothing like you, sweetheart! And your mother’s helping some fat woman with the corn, they’re cleaning the corn—husking the corn—“ (p. 234) After that, he started to harass her sexually. “I’ll tell you how it is, I’m always nice at first, the first time. I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away or pretend anything because you’ll know you can’t. And I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret and you’ll give in to me and you’ll love me—“ (p. 234)

With his “supra natural” ability and sexual harassment, Arnold even made Connie more scared of him. Moreover, feeling frustrated because his “victim” did not give in easily, then he threatened to burn Connie’s house. “If the place got lit up with fire honey, you’d come runnin’ out into my arms, right into my arms…” (p. 235). After that, he threatened to kill Connie’s family; “You don’t want your people in any trouble, do you?” (p. 237)

Feeling very scared, Connie tried to call the police. I think something wrong with the telephone made Connie sort of subconscious. “… she ran into the back room and picked up the telephone. Something roared in her ear, a tiny roaring, and she was so sick with fear that she could nothing but listen to it—“ (p. 237) To some extent, Connie was “split” into two. Her conscience told her not to follow Arnold, but her “sound” mind feeling scared forced her to follow him. Her spirit was expelled out of her body. This body without soul then followed Arnold. “She watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were safe back somewhere in the other doorway. Watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited.” (p. 239)

When I come to the end of the two stories—“Young Goodman Brown” and “Where are you going? Where have you been?”—they have the same unhappy ending. In the first, when the main character died, “his tombstone was not carved with hopeful verse, for his dying was gloom.” While in the latter, Connie’s spirit saw her body following her seducer. Besides, I conclude that the two stories are mysterious. In “Young Goodman Brown”, Brown went to the forest and then saw many people there but suddenly they disappeared. Some critics said that it was just the “dream vision” of Brown. In “Where are you going? Where have you been?” Connie underwent separation of her soul and body. In addition, the two main characters underwent the initiation into evil.

Now I want to elaborate the differences between the two stories. The most striking contrast is that Hawthorne’s story is religious—portraying the Puritan era where people mostly viewed life from religious point of view; while Oates’ story is secular—“none of them bothered with church” (p. 229). Hawthorne mentioned terms related to religion; such as ordination, catechism, minister, etc. Oates describes mundane things; such as going to a shopping plaza, listening to music from the radio, watching movies, etc. This is related to the background of the writers. Hawthorne was born as one descendant of Puritan immigrants, but he himself did not like the teachings of Puritanism which he considered hypocrite. Therefore, he criticized that in “Young Goodman Brown”. Oates was born in 1938. The twentieth century, so that she portrayed the life of adolescent girls that she saw in the early 1960s in her story. Besides, the decade of 1960s marked as music worship by youngsters, a kind of worship somewhat like a spiritual one.

Related to the background of the writers, therefore, the stories used very different language. In the Romantic period, the literary work was produced only for people from middle-high social status who were educated and had money to buy it, so that the use of language in “Young Goodman Brown” was especially for the educated middle-high society. It is difficult to understand because it is full of symbols, metaphors. Starting the end of the nineteenth century with the emergence f many people who had a lot of money who would buy literary works such as novels, but they were in fact not from high society—not really educated either—writers started to write pop fiction only to earn money. Since the target market was less educated people, the use of language was simplified.

Another difference is the main character in “Young Goodman Brown” a man; while Connie, a girl, is the main character of “Where are you going? Where have you been?” It is again closely related to the writers. Hawthorne—as a man—would know conflicts faced by men better than conflicts faced by women. Oates—as a woman—would understand better how a girl feels toward her mother, girl friends, and also how o feel against a seducer and face a threat of rape.

The setting of “Young Goodman Brown” is night and in the forest—something mysterious; while in “Where are you going? Where have you been?” the setting is various, sometimes evening in a shopping plaza where Connie hung around with her friends, and Arnold seduced Connie in the afternoon at her house. To undergo his ‘journey’, Brown left his wife at home and went out of the home to go to the forest; while Connie experience scary event when she was left alone at home.

To sum up, the two stories which were written in two different eras have two similarities in the unhappy ending and they are mysterious stories. They have some differences; in the theme—religious versus secular; the use of language; the main character of the stories—man versus girl; and the setting—night versus afternoon-evening; forest versus shopping plaza and home.

A final project for America’s Cultural Eras Class in 2003

Teaching Literature

In my workplace, besides being assigned to teach English and Bahasa Indonesia, I am also responsible to watch students during ‘library’ sessions. Every student is assigned to read one book—minimally 100 pages for grade 7, 150 pages for grades 8 and 9—every one term. After finishing reading one book, they are to write ‘book review’. In writing the book review, I must check whether they write good English sentences or not. If not, I will return it and have them revise it.

The main reason why students have library sessions (two slots per week) is to help them improve their vocabulary and also skill in reading English books. As a language as well as literature teacher, I am of opinion that this reading assignment is also important to balance students’ left and right brain. Literature—a part of art—is essential to smoothen people’s soul, to be more humane.

I have read some articles related to some criticism addressed to schoolteachers—especially who teach Bahasa Indonesia subject—in some sites. Some complained because many teachers themselves do not like reading. Even in one article I read several months ago—sorry, I forgot to cite the site address—the writer stated that many Bahasa Indonesia teachers he interviewed had not read LASKAR PELANGI novel yet, one very famous novel by Andrea Hirata recently, moreover this novel portrayed the life of schoolchildren studying in a remote and poor school, but still they had very high spirit and enthusiasm to study. Isn’t it a very good example to boost students’ enthusiasm to go to school. Why did those teachers not read LASKAR PELANGI yet? Several reasons gathered were: they did not like reading; they were busy teaching (at school as well as had part time job outside to get more income) so that they could not spare their time to read; the price of books was expensive and teachers who got low salary could not afford to buy them.

For the first reason, it is indeed very shameful if teachers do not like reading. I have loved reading since I was a kid. Feeling unhappy with the fact cited by the writer in that article, I commented that not all teachers did not enjoy reading. Some did, including me.

For the second and the third reasons, I think they come from the same background: lack of sufficient income. When teachers get enough income, they do not need to have part time jobs, in order that they get enough spare time to read, to improve their knowledge and skill as well. For the third reason, schools can be of any help by providing books to be lent to teachers.

I think my educational background has made me a bit different from those teachers interviewed by the writer of the article. I did not graduate from Teachers’ College. Instead, I graduated from Faculty of Letters, especially English Department, and American Studies, with literature interest. When teaching Bahasa Indonesia in my workplace, I just need to adjust the material: from American literary works (or any other work written in English), to any literary works written by Indonesian, in Bahasa Indonesia.

Talking about educational background, this is also a very crucial issue. Many schools prefer having teachers graduating from Teachers’ College. They are assumed to be supplied with teaching techniques and methods. On the other hand, people graduating from other than Teachers’ College only get science and knowledge, minus teaching techniques/methods. As a result, they are not considered to be capable to teach, or to transfer their knowledge to students.

When it comes to teaching literature at high schools, it is understandable when teachers teaching literature (who graduated from Teachers’ College) do not really master anything related to literature, they even do not enjoy reading any piece of literature. When they themselves do not enjoy reading it, they do not know how to make their students enjoy it either. How can they make their students enjoy studying literature and make them realize that studying literature is as fun and important as studying any other exact subjects, such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology?

Going back to my job—assigning students to read and ask them to write reviews—I can conclude that many students from grades 7 and 8 enjoy this assignment. However, only a few grade 9 students who enjoy it. It seems to me that their concentration is more absorbed by the National Examination they will face a few months again.

PT56 21.21 250109

The Zoo Story

the pic was taken from here

Several weeks ago I assigned my class to read THE ZOO STORY, one-act play written by Edward Albee. This was written in 1958 in New York but its premiere performance was occurred at the Theater Werkstatt in Berlin on September28, 1959. It was performed on Broadway on January 14, 1960. The story is about two characters, Peter and Jerry, who meet accidentally in one bench in The Central Park. The main conflict is built while the two are talking to each other. What happens at the end of the play oftentimes startles the audience.

To dissect the play together in my class, I gave four questions to lead the discussion.

1. What is the main conflict of the story?
2. What kind of personality traits do the two characters have?
3. How do their family backgrounds differ from each other?
4. What is your reaction when coming to the end of the play?

At first one student complained to me, “If you categorize this play into comedy, I don’t think I find funny aspects in it. Or is it due to my low capability in English?”

When I asked her how she perceived the story of the play, she simply said, “The story is very weird.”
The play is indeed weird; that’s why literary critics categorized it into ‘absurd play’. The word ‘absurd’ itself means “plainly not true, logical, or sensible; so contrary to reason that it is laughable; foolish; ridiculous.” The story to some extent is also pathetic.

Another student then said that probably this kind of story was very much impossible to happen in Indonesia but it was absolutely possible to happen in America.

“Why is that? Which part of the story do you think is impossible to happen here?” I asked her.
I suspected that she didn’t finish reading the whole story so that she answered my question just by mentioning the fact that Peter’s family had two cats and two parakeets. “It is indeed a common thing for Indonesian people to have pets. But you know, pets in Indonesia are just pets. Animals. They don’t really mean a lot. In America, as far as I know there is always a very strong emotional relationship between people and their pets.” Meanwhile I expected that she would answer my question by appointing the weird conversation between Jerry and Peter.

Let’s take one example. After a little bit ‘small talk’ about going north, Jerry asked Peter, “Do you mind if we talk?”

In Indonesia, especially in small towns, when two people meet accidentally in a park, or anywhere else, they will just talk, without asking, “Do you mind if we talk?” They will just talk casual things though, to show hospitality. However, as some critics have said, at the very beginning of the time when Albee had this play published, they did not understand what Albee actually wanted to convey to public.

pic was taken from here

In the following discussion, we talked about different family backgrounds Peter and Jerry had. Peter was married, had two daughters, and had an established job in a publishing company. On the contrary, Jerry was single, no steady job, living in an indecent tenement with an abusive landlady who had a crazy dog that liked attacking Jerry playfully. Jerry also came from a broken unhappy family.

This contradictory family background absolutely made them have different personality traits. Peter was an established man, educated, able to control his emotion quite well. Jerry seemed somewhat insane with his almost unbelievable story about his landlady and the crazy dog. Therefore I understood when my students said that Jerry seemed to envy Peter’s seemingly happy life.

No one expected to find someone dying at the end of the story because from the very beginning, the play just showed two men talking about unimportant things in their life. My students said that Jerry was too much to provoke Peter so that Peter lost his common sense in facing him although he seemed careful.

The first question—about the main conflict of the story—was not answered in the discussion. I opined that in fact Jerry was already desperate about his unhappy life. He needed someone to “help” him commit suicide. Peter was just the right person on the wrong place. Jerry succeeded in provoking Peter so that he did what Jerry ‘planned’: to hold the knife on his hand, enabling Jerry to impale on it.
Why did Jerry need someone else’s help to commit suicide? He wanted to share his unhappiness to someone else he assumed to have a happy life—in that decade, to be married, have kids and a good job were ‘requirements’ to be lead a happy life.

Peter’s life would never be the same again as before he encountered a crazy, desperate man who involved him in his death.

What did Albee want to convey to the audience? I assume that he wanted to criticize American values that started to worship wealth and did not care of the neighborhood.

PT56 13.33 190608

William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

pic was taken from here

The story’s setting is after the civil war and it takes place in the Southern part of America. At that time many aristocratic families started to disappear. People did not respect other people only because of their nobility any longer, but people respected others because of their achievement. Therefore, people from aristocratic families who still held old dtradition—that they must be respected because of their nobility—became the center of attention of townspeople because of their awkwardness.

We can see the example in Emily Grierson’s family. Everything Emily does gets full attention of the townspeople because it is considered awkward. For example, her reluctance to pay tax because she says that Colonel Sartoris has remitted her taxes. It is awkward because everybody else pays tax. The tale that her father has lent some amount of money to the town is unbelievable for younger generations.

Another example of Emily’s awkwardness is her behavior toward the ladies who call at her house to offer condolence and aid after her father passes away. She says that her father is not dead and se refuses to dispose the body. It must be hard for her to be left alone. She does not have anybody else to talk to after her father passes away because she does not socialize with other people whom she considers common people—not noble like her.

Her interest in Homer Barron—the foreman of the construction company—is also considered awkward by the townspeople. Homer Barron who is only a day laborer must have a lower status than Emily who keeps her dignity as a noble person highly. Therefore, their relationship attracts the townspeople’s attention. They want to know whether the relationship will lead to a marriage because “Homer himself had remarked that he was not marrying man”. With Homer Barron disappearing, the townspeople become disappointed. They do not know what has happened, only after that, Emily is very rarely seen.

That’s why Emily’s death makes the townspeople pour into her house. Some want to show respect for the last noble person in the town. Some others just want to fulfil their curiosity to see the inside of her house. Their finding a man’s body lying in the bed in a room upstairs revealed long-time hidden secrets. The first secret is about the awful smell spreading that makes people disgusted years before. The second is about Homer Barron’s disappearance. I believed that Emily has poisoned him using arsenic she buys in a drugstore. After Homer dies, Emily treats his body like she treats a husband—the body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace. From the iron-gray hair found in the pillow beside the man, it can be concluded that for years Emily sleeps there as is she slept with her husband.

What a sad life of a woman who keeps her dignity and nobility highly. People in the town always pay attention to her from a distance. However, no one dares to get close to her because of her perverseness and imperviousness. Besides that, nobody loves her so that she lives in loneliness because she herself avoids other people’s presence around her.

Jogja, April 2003

--------------------
What a sad and lonely life Emily had. It must be resulted from the un-readiness and reluctance of people to adapt themselves with the new social life; in this case ‘noble’ people who unwillingly faced the fall of the aristocratic society.

To add my writing above (which I wrote five years ago), I want to focus on Emily’s weird attitude related to Homer Barron. As the only daughter of the only left aristocratic family in the town, Emily must have got a very big burden to live her love life. She was expected to have a love relationship with a man from her kind. However it must have been very difficult since her family was the only aristocratic family. Besides, the townspeople considered her family ’antique’. None of the guys in the town had courage to get close to Emily, I assume. Nevertheless, the townspeople loved Emily so that they poured all attention to her, to anything she did, without realizing that in a way it doubled Emily’s burden.

Feeling lonely as well as disturbed by the continuous attention given by the townspeople, Emily became very introvert and she hid herself inside her big house. Therefore, when Homer Barron came to the town (as an ‘outsider’, it is understood if Homer didn’t share the same reluctance shown by the other guys in the town), got courage to get close to her, Emily did not want to lose him. However, it didn’t take a long time since Homer soon found out the ‘awkwardness’ of Emily as well as the high expectancy of the townspeople for Emily’s husband-to-be. He was considered not equal to Emily. Therefore, he wanted to leave Emily, to come back to where he was from.

Not wanting to lose the only guy who had courage to get close to her, Emily did the weirdest action—killing him. She did it not to get rid of him, but to ‘keep’ him always instead. Afterwards, she treated him as if he were her husband. In order not to make the townspeople curious, she mostly hid herself inside her big house, laid off most of the servants but one most loyal servant to take care of her.
PT56 22.54 190508

NH Dini

Several weeks ago I attended a sort-of promotion book of ARGENTEUIL by one senior writer in Indonesia, NH Dini at RUMAH SENI Semarang located at Kampung Jambe number 280. NH Dini herself as the main speaker, with Adhyanggono from Unika Soegijapranata as the moderator. NH Dini called ARGENTEUIL her autobiography which she wrote in the form of novel.

The first thing attracted my attention was when Dini said she has made herself accustomed to writing anything daily since she was very young in one special book she labeled ‘a red book’—because the cover of the book is red. The way she wrote in the red book was not like writing in diary—at least my way in writing diary --because she often used kinds of symbols recognized by herself only. From this ‘red book’ she improved her notes into many novels.

I asked whether she continued writing in her ‘red book’ after getting married. The background of my question was in the patriarchal culture—at least what I learned when I was a teenager from articles I read in magazines/books/newspapers—people believed that after getting married man and woman became one, each was the soul mate for the other. Therefore, women were not supposed to ‘confide in’ anybody else—including in their dead diary, the reflection of their own self—but to their husbands (I call ‘living diary’) that could be considered as the substitute of the dead diary. Husband and wife were supposed to be open to each other, no secrets between them. Dini said she continued writing in her diary—still using her secret symbols. Her husband let her do that and she was not ‘beaten’ by the so-called culture that I illustrated previously so that she didn’t teach her husband how to read the symbols. In other words it can be said that Dini kept doing her hobby and her husband let her have secrets. One moral lesson I was supposed to learn when I was in teenager—it was not sinful to keep something secretly from your husband—so that I wouldn’t have been beaten by the culture. Consequently, I would have had one most loyal friend, my ‘dead’ diary, when I was ‘buried’ under my sorrow because I couldn’t tell a human being. As a result, I wouldn’t have needed to be so depressed.

This is one thing I admire from NH Dini: as a Javanese woman who was born in the patriarchal Javanese culture, she already had a very progressive way of thinking. I believe this had happened before she moved to western countries to follow her husband where of course she was somewhat westernized.

The second thing I noted down from the discussion was when Dini said her two novels—PADA SEBUAH KAPAL and LA BARKA—were forbidden to be in the library of some schools in Jakarta in 1970s. The reason was because the two novels illustrated many inappropriate scenes. Surprisingly when she went to Indonesia to visit her mother in that decade, she was invited by Pondok Pabelan to give a talk about her writing career, and she found the two novels in the library there. She was questioning if some public schools in Jakarta—usually considered more receptive to anything since it was the metropolis city—forbade the students to read the novels, why Pabelan, the Islamic school, provided the novels in the library. It means Pabelan let the students read them.

When Dini asked one teacher there, the teacher explained, “We tell the students that these ‘inappropriate scenes’ are a part of western culture. We as eastern people are not to imitate what they are doing.”

This reminded me of what Ayu Utami said about her novel SAMAN. Ayu wanted to offer a new way of thinking to view women’s bodies. Women must listen to their own bodies, and not just listen to what patriarchal society demands from women. I also remember what Dewi Lestari said when she promoted FILOSOFI KOPI in Semarang around two years ago. When someone asked her converting to Buddhist, Dee explained “For someone who is going to sink in a wide sea, she/he will consider islands she/he sees the same. In Indonesia, the government (un)fortunately only gives six choices: Islam, Christian, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Luckily, the ‘island’ closest to where Dee was about to sink was Buddhism.” In her SUPERNOVA series, Dee illustrated her spiritual experience, to share with her readers. I could draw one similar conclusion between Ayu and Dee; that was to give a new paradigm.

This inspired me to ask Dini about her motivation to write her novels, especially the two novels I mentioned above. To my surprise (or disappointment), she said, “I didn’t have such a motivation when writing the two novels. I just wrote my experience.”

“What kind of moral lesson did you expect to convey to your readers?” I continued asking.

“Well, I just wanted people to know that this kind of experience happened, especially in an intermarriage involving one Indonesian and a westerner.”

Furthermore, when someone asked her why she wrote, Dini gave four reasons:

First, she realized that she had a talent in writing, so she improved that gift.

Second, her mother knowing that she had a talent in writing asked her to write books. It means Dini wanted to make her mother happy.

Third, she could earn her own money by doing her hobby.

Fourth, she got satisfaction when knowing that other people enjoyed reading her books.

And I was not supposed to expect ‘deeper’ and more critical reasons just like the contemporary writers.

PT56 12.40 060408

The Death of the Author 2

I am not sure whether I would come to the same conclusion when writing my thesis if I had not used some theories I chose: Goldmann’s Genetic Structuralism, Feminist Literary Theory (referring to Susan Schibanoff’s READING AS A WOMAN), and psychoanalytical criticism proposed by Sigmund Freud. I used THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as the mental evidence to do my research. I needed to know Gilman’s background—her familial as well as her intellectual ‘journey’; the social values adhered by the majority of Americans when the short story was written. This was the reason why Goldmann’s Genetic Structuralism was chosen. Schibanoff’s idea—reading as a woman—was picked up to emphasize that when reading THE YELLOW WALLPAPER using men’s point of view, although someone has used Genetic Structuralism, he/she could still come up with patriarchal result. For example, instead of blaming the husband for leading the unnamed narrator to the edge of insanity, he/she could share the same opinion with the husband that the narrator really needed to be “saved” from the nervous breakdown by staying away from writing. Freud’s psychoanalytical criticism was necessary to use to see the work as the manifestation of Gilman’s suppressed wish—to openly criticize Dr. S. Weir Mitchell for his wrong treatment toward nervous breakdown patients.

I don’t belong to the brilliant type of student so that maybe I wouldn’t be able to come to such a conclusion if I “killed” Gilman, let’s say by adopting Barthes’ theory “The Death of the Author”; moreover with the very strong religious indoctrination I got in my younger years believing in men’s superiority on women.

*****

There was somewhat relief feeling in me when finding out that Ayu Utami did not really agree with Barthes’ theory “The Death of the Author”. Her main reason was she was often invited abroad to “explain” what she wanted to convey in her novel SAMAN, especially after it was translated to one foreign language. Besides she was considered ALIVE, so that it was important to listen to her explanation what her book was all about, Ayu also admitted that she did partly to promote her book, either to help the publishing company or for her own profit. 

Since I do not support Barthes’ theory, I myself also do expect that the readers of my writings (both in my blogs and in many personal emails I have sent to my loved ones or friends, as well as many comments I have written in some mailing lists I join) do not “kill” me; I hope that they read my writings exactly like what I want to convey.

However, I must realize that in fact this expectation of mine is sometimes somewhat “high” to reach by some people. I found out some people misread my writings and asked me something that made me dumbfounded, “How could they come to this conclusion?” I asked myself, feeling (a bit) unhappy.

I have been trying to find out why this happened. I asked myself some questions:

1. Have I written it thoroughly so that people will easily understand it?
2. Or on the way around, have I written it so little, expecting people can “guess” by themselves what is in fact I am talking about, without giving complete data? It sometimes happens, especially when I take for granted that the topic is widely known.
3. Or have I written it so “loudly” that people are just enchanted by the choice of words and the flow of my ideas but they do not really catch what I convey?
4. Do the readers read my writings thoroughly to understand them?
5. The last, and the most annoying question (YOU CAN JUST IGNORE IT! LOL.) is whether the readers have enough intellect to understand my writings. This probably happens as the result of the four questions above (I don’t write it thoroughly, I don’t give enough data, I write by giving too much redundancy or complicated choice of words and the sentence flow, plus the readers don’t have enough time to read my writings comprehensively).

Above all, I must GIVE IN that Barthes’ theory does exist so that the readers of my writings can “kill” me. Nevertheless, I assume if the two-way communication happens between the readers and me, this violent “killing” would not happen to me. 

PT56 22.11 231207

Epitaph ...

Several months ago while discussing “epitaph” in Poetry Analysis Class, a student said, “Wah ... it must be very expensive Ma’am. My neighbor has an undertaking business. He told me the longer the name of a person is, the more expensive the tomb is because the cost is counted per letter. Moreover if the family wants to engrave poem on the tomb. I assume this thing is especially only for rich people. Luckily here in Java, people don’t have a habit to engrave epitaph.”
As far as I know, in Indonesia, people can find tombs with epitaph mostly in Manado, North Sulawesi where people know there are many people with mixed blood (Indonesian and Dutch) so that it is concluded that the habit of engraving epitaph comes from Dutch people that used to live in Manado and marry women there. If it is related to the beginning history of America, the Puritans left England to look for a new place to live in where they could embrace any religion and practice the rituals they believed, some moved to Holland. They must have brought this engraving tomb from England to Holland, (and then from Holland, they brought it to Indonesia, especially in Manado) while those migrating to the New World brought it there too.
Around a year ago, someone from one mailing list I joined asked other members to write epitaph he would engrave on his tombstone after he died. I wrote one, and sent it to the mailing list. This in fact attracted one good friend of mine, a member of that mailing list too. He said, “People don’t need to engrave anything on my tombstone later because I will ask my body burned.”
As a Muslim, of course I never have an idea for such a thing. However, his comment made me think more deeply. One habit of Javanese people before Ramadhan month—a sacred month where people fast—is to visit their family members’ graveyard. People do it again after Idul Fitri comes. To do this habit, someone sometimes has to go to a quite far distance, let’s say from Jakarta to Semarang (around 500 km away). To me, it sounds impractical.
What is the point to visit a graveyard? If only to send pray to the deceased, people can do it from anywhere, no need to visit the graveyard, as if the deceased really dwelled there, so that he/she would directly see who come to visit. I suppose we believe that what is buried is only flesh and bones that will quickly rot while the ‘soul’ of the deceased will not dwell there.
I remember when I was in elementary school, my teacher said that it was necessary to visit graveyard so that people would always remember that they would die one day, so that they would behave in the world because later after they die, they’ve got to be responsible with everything they do. I also learn that sending pray to the deceased is more important than just visiting the graveyard bringing bouquet or offerings. And again, to send pray can be done from anywhere, right? no need to go to the graveyard?
Is it right those corruptors (or other criminals) don’t remember that one day they will die and they have to be responsible their crimes in the world in front of God? Is it right that those who regularly go to visit graveyards behave better because it means they always remember one day they will die?
My friend who said that he wanted his body to be burned must belong to the practical type so that he will not bother his offspring to engrave his tombstone that will cost much money, or to visit his graveyard (imagine if his graveyard is in Indonesia while his offspring live in another part of the globe).
Anyway, in studying literature, it is always interesting to learn about epitaph. By the way, around a year ago, a blog friend of mine from England said that people there no longer think of writing an epitaph to be engraved in tombstone (it has been a tradition there anyway), but they start to select what kind of song/music played in their burial.
PT56 17.07 161007

'Salad Bowl' versus 'Melting Pot'

salad bowl

 

‘SALAD BOWL’ AND ‘ANTI-SEMITISM’
IN ELMER RICE’S STREET SCENE

ABSTRACT

America is known as a country that consists of many kinds of ethnic groups. People have used the term ‘melting pot’ to illustrate the various kinds of ethnic groups in America for quite a long time. However, recently some new terms come up to substitute that term, such as ‘salad bowl’ and ‘mosaic’.
Street Scene—a drama written by Elmer Rice during the Depression Era shows that the term ‘melting pot’ is no longer suitable to illustrate the various kinds of ethnic groups in America.
Street Scene—a drama written by Elmer Rice during the Depression Era shows that the term ‘melting pot’ is no longer suitable to illustrate the various kinds of ethnic groups in America.
This paper entitled “Salad Bowl and Anti-Semitism in Elmer Rice’s Street Scene” will analyze how a group of people living in a tenement show their prejudice toward other dwellers; how they still praise their native countries where they come from; and how they do not really like American culture, the country where they live at present time.

Key words: drama, melting pot, salad bowl, anti-Semitism, ethnic group

INTRODUCTION

Drama is one of the three genres of literature that is given to students of Faculty of Language and Literature to sharpen their capability to analyze literary works. The material is taken from various sources, starting from classical works, such as The Odyssey by Homer, Hamlet written by William Shakespeare, until more modern works, such as A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. This paper, especially will talk about Modern American Drama.
In Chapter 8: American Drama—An Introduction Reuben divided Modern American Drama into three literary styles—realism, naturalism, and expressionism. Stage realism is the use of ordinary people, in ordinary settings, using commonplace dialect. Realistic plays show aspects of real people playing out conflicts and intrigues which reflect the ordinary experiences of American middle-lower class life. Recognizable heroes and villains were replaced with ordinary character showing ordinary thoughts and weakness. 

Naturalism—a commonplace interchangeable with realism—assumes that humans are controlled by their environment, fate, psychology, chance or coincidence. Naturalistic situations are generally pessimistic and deterministic. Trapped and controlled, human behavior is instinctual and animalistic, there is heroism in a human’s desire to survive against insurmountable odds. 

While in expressionistic plays, the playwright’s subjective sense of reality finds expression. The characters and the milieu may be realistic, but their presentation on stage is controlled by the writer’s personal biases and inclination (http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/8intro.html).
Street Scene—a play written by Elmer Rice in 1929—obviously falls into realistic play because it tells about ordinary life of people which happens in a cheap tenement in New York where many immigrants from low class society live. The play has more than twenty six characters. None of them has more important role than the others. Street Scene “spoke in the voice of the people, complete with vicious racial and ethnic slurs and raw hatreds on display” (http://www.blockbuster.com/bb/person/details/ 0,7621,BIO-P164197,00.html).

Street Scene—from which Elmer Rice got Pulitzer Prize (Gassner, 1949:566)—vividly portrays life in the early twentieth century New York teeming with people of all backgrounds living in a tenement. It portrays racial prejudices and hatred against other ethnics—problems that are always up-to-date until now. 

Written in the Depression Era, Street Scene contains some problems faced by ordinary people at that time, such as racial and groups problems caused by a bulk of immigrants coming to New York by the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, domestic conflicts that happened to many families and which were triggered b common problems from outside, etc. However, this paper only focuses on the melting pot—a metaphor used to describe who is an American—and anti Semitisms elements.

Street Scene depicts the life that happened in New York at the beginning of the Depression Era. Besides a bulk of immigrants came to New York from other continents—Europe and Asia—many black people from the Southern part of America also moved there since they considered New York as “the Mecca of opportunity” (http://www.columbia.edu/~bjp5/erica/history.html). No wonder, New York became very crowded and the dwellers of New York had to struggle to live decently.

In line with the real life portrayal in the play, historical criticism is used to explore Street Scene. Holman in his book A Handbook to Literature stated that historical criticism is criticism “that examines a work and describes and evaluates it in terms of the social, cultural, and historical context in which it was produced (1981:214). Due to the limited time, this paper will deal with the social and historical context only.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND THE BACKGROUND OF THE PLAY-WRIGHT AND THE PLAY

This chapter deals with the theoretical background of the analysis of the paper. “Melting pot” and “Anti-Semitism” are chosen here because when reading the play Street Scene, one will see clearly the description of those two elements. “Melting pot” is closely related to the many characters in the play who have various background, while “Anti-Semitism” is portrayed very clearly by Elmer Rice here with the presence of a Jewish family in the play.

This chapter also gives the background of the playwright—Elmer Rice—and the play itself—Street Scene. This chapter is provided here to give clear and complete information of the whole paper.

Melting Pot

The idea of melting pot is as old as the history of the United States itself. In 1782 Hector de Crevecoeur stated in his Letter III What is an American “…a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced … Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men …” (Baym, 1989:561).

From the quotation above, one can conclude that the United States is a country where people from different nationalities come and meet together, leave all their traditions behind and become new people with new manners, behavior, personality, and make up new traditions in their new country. The United States is the refuge for people who suffer from poverty and religious persecution because it offers its vast fertile land and freedom of religion for the new comers. 

In 1908, a Jew from England, Israel Zangwill produced a play entitled “The Melting Pot”. One of the characters—David Quixano, a Russian Jewish immigrant—said that, “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming!” (Glazer, 1970:289).

In the play, Zangwill portrays an intermarriage life between Quixano—a Jew—and his wife who comes from another ethnic. It conveys a message that still holds a tremendous power on the American imagination—the promise that all immigrants can be transformed into Americans, “a new alloy forged in a crucible of democracy, freedom and civic responsibility” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/meltingpot/ melt0222.htm). 

In 1908, when the play “The Melting Pot” opened in Washington, the United States was in the middle of absorbing the largest influx of immigrants in its history—Irish and Germans, followed by Italians and East Europeans. Catholics and Jews—some of 18 million new citizens between 1890 and 1920 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/meltingpot/ melt0222. htm). The immigrants envisioned America as a vast land affording unlimited economic and social opportunities in an atmosphere free from harassment and interference. “By the mid-nineteenth century many came to this country with clear intentions of maintaining their separated cultural identities” (Rose, 1997:81).

Anti-Semitism

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://www.wikipedia. org/wiki/Anti-Semitism) Anti-Semitism—opposite Philo-Semitism—is hatred directed against Jews. It typically takes the form of
Hostility toward Jews in a degree that greatly exceeds any legitimate grievances or resulting from no legitimate cause whatsoever, or Disdain for supposed physical or moral features of Jews.

In the twentieth century, the most visible forms of anti-Semitism were Racist anti-Semitism. Some people perceive Jews as people of racially distinct origin from other peoples, and claim that discrimination on the basis of such distinctness is valid Religious anti-Semitism. Like almost every other religion in history, Judaism has faced discrimination and violence from people of competing faiths and in countries that practice state atheism.

In Economic anti-Semitism, many people believed that Jewish people—from medieval era to today—unfairly took away jobs and money from Christians. More commonly, there is prejudice against Jews on account of the fact that Jews are often, in spite of what ethnic and religious differences they have with the population at large, in positions of power and prestige. Hence, anti-Jewish prejudice is very often, by the defenders of Jews and Jewishness, ascribed to envy more than to any sort of religious concern. While racial anti-Semitism, the most modern form of anti-Semitism, is type of racism mixed with religious persecution. Racial anti-Semites believe erroneously that the Jewish people are at a distinct race. They also believe that Jews are inherently inferior to people of other races.

Besides provided by Wikipedia free encyclopedia, explanation about Anti-Semitism is also found in Grolier Academic Encyclopedia, which states that Anti-Semitism is “a form of prejudice towards Jews that may range from mild antipathy to violent hatred (1983:68)

The Background of the Playwright and the Play

Born Elmer Reizenstein in New York in 1892, he was a high school dropout who developed an interest in the legal profession and graduated cum laude from New York Law School at age 20. in 1913, he decided to try his hand at writing plays. The result was On Trial, a courtroom drama that he presented unsolicited to a producer and which proved good enough to get produced on Broadway, where it was a hit (http://www.movies.yahoo.com/shop?d= hc&id=1800077155cf=biog&intl=us).

From the 1914 until the mid 1940s, rice—he changed his last name into Rice in order not to be misunderstood over the telephone—was one of the most prominent playwrights and theatrical directors in America, and made important contribution to motion pictures, both as an author and screenwriter. His most-widely-studies drama The Adding Machine was written in 1923, a strange, expressionist play about a lifelong office worker, Mr. Zero, who loses his job to the device of the title, murders, his boss, is tried and executed, and ends up in heaven operating the very device that cost him his job, until he is returned to earth. (http://www.blockbuster.com/bb/person/details/0,7621,BIO-P164197,00. html) 

Street Scene—Rice’s most famous play—was written in 1928, and produced on Broadway in 1929. in 1931, the King Vidor movie version, based on Rice’s own screen adaptation, utilized a huge set the size of a city block that gave the screen drama a subtly enveloping quality (http://www.blockbuster.com/bb/ person/details/0,7621,BIO-P164197,00.html) Street Scene became an opera in 1947 with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Langston Hughes. In 2002, The Department of Arts of California State University played it March 6-10 directed by Randy Wonzong (http://www. newsreview.com/issues/chico/2002-03-07/finearts.asp)

melting pot

THE MELTING POT AND ANTI-SEMITISM IN ELMER RICE’S STREET SCENE

THE MELTING POT

It has been mentioned before that “the melting pot” is the idea of the melting of all kinds of races to be one new race. This term is used to describe the race “American”. Recently, however, the demographies of the United States are changing in profound and unprecedented ways but so to are the very notions of assimilation and the melting pot that have been articles of faith in the American self-image for generations. There is a sense that, especially as immigrant populations reach a critical mass in many communities, it is no longer the melting pot that is transforming them. In fact, the concept of assimilation is being called into question as never before. Some sociologists argue that the melting pot often means little more than “Anglo conformity” and that assimilation is not always a positive experience—for either society or the immigrants themselves. And with today’s emphasis on diversity and ethnicity, it has become easier than ever for immigrants to avoid the melting pot entirely. Even the metaphor itself is changing, having fallen out of fashion completely with many immigration advocacy and ethnic groups. They prefer such terms as the “salad bowl” and the “mosaic”, metaphors that convey more of a sense of separateness in describing this nation of immigrants. In a salad, a tomato slice does not marry a radish to produce hybrid offspring (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp/ srv/national/longterm/meltingpot/melt0521.htm#TOP). 

To describe Street Scene, Randy Wonzong used the term the melting pot, “If you want to see the Walt Disney version of the American melting pot, you’d better forget it. This is the melting pot the way it was (http://www.newsreview.com/issues/chico/2002-03-07/finearts.asp)

However, the idea of ‘melting’—people from various nationalities come to America to seek for a better life and leave their heritage of the country behind, and in the new country they blend with people from other races and make up a new race—can be used only after the second, third, etc generation of the immigrants were born. They are more ‘American’ than their parents, grandparents, because of the American culture they face and undergo since born. “The process of assimilating or melting will be much easier when there is intermarriage among ethnic groups” (http://www.ascd.org/readingroom/ edlead/9405/janzen.html). For example, if an Irish man is married to a German woman, there is a big possibility that the Irish man will not stick to his Irish heritage, and his wife will not stick to her German heritage either. It is very possible that they will create “new heritage” in their own family to be adhered by their children.

Furthermore, Peter Rose stated in his book entitled They and We that the melting pot philosophy, while far more democratic in intent, came to be seen by many keen observers as “unrealistic”. People were not about to simply mix together in the great crucible to form one new American type, the result of a blend of the cultural ingredients of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Recognition of this fact encourages the emergence of the “idea of cultural pluralism” (1997:86).

Street Scene tells a story of six immigrant families, the Kaplans, the Russian Jews; the Fiorentinos, the Italians; the Olsens, the Swede, the Maurrants, the Irish; and the other two families whose native countries are unknown—the Buchanans and the Heldebrands. In the tenement also lived the Jones, the New Yorker. The Irish man is married to an Irish woman, the Italian man is married to an Italian woman, etc. No inter-marriage life is portrayed here. 

The time when the play was written belongs to the Depression Era. People face many kinds of problems—e.g. economic, social, and political, etc. The New Yorkers blamed the new immigrants for causing the difficult time. “Many Americans of native stock saw the new immigrants as a threat …” (Tindall, 1984:792). This kind of racial prejudice towards the new comers can be seen clearly in the play.

MRS. JONES. What them foreigners don’t know about bringing up babies would fill a book. (Gassner, 1949:57)

In commenting about the Olsens’ way to keep their baby, Mrs. Jones, the New Yorker, used the word ‘foreigners’. It shows that she still saw them not as American. It shows her prejudice toward people coming from other country. That comment of Mrs. Jones was cut by Mrs. Fiorentino, the Italian, “Foreigners know joost as much as other people, Mrs. Jones” (Gassner, 1949:570). As a new comer in that city, Mrs. Fiorentino showed dislike when she was still considered a foreigner and in Mrs. Jones’ statement one can conclude that coming from out of America, the Olsens are considered to have a lower status than those born there, because Mrs. Jones’ comment underestimated her. Mrs. Jones’ comment was for the Olsens, but Mrs. Fiorentino—realizing that she was not native there—felt that the comment was conveyed to her too.

In another part of the play, Maurrant said, “We don’t want foreigners comin’ in, tellin’ us how to run things” (Gassner, 1949:577). Maurrant is an Irish, but he also used the term ‘foreigners’ to talk about other people to show his dislike. And like Mrs. Jones, he was also cut by Mrs. Fiorentino, “It’s nothing wrong to be a foreigner. Many good people are foreigners” (Gassner, 1949:577).
The abovementioned quotations show that those people do not melt together. Mrs. Jones has prejudice towards new comers in New York, and Maurrant also has prejudice towards people coming from other countries. Living in a crammed building like that did not automatically make those people feel like one big family. They still cannot trust their neighbors, even gossiping another dweller in the tenement becomes one favorite pastime. 

LIPPO I betcha ‘e’s got ‘nudder woman. He find a nice blonda chicken, ‘e runaway.
MRS. JONES There ought to be a law against women goin’ around, stealin’ other women’s husbands. (Gassner, 1949:576)
Here is another quotation.
MISS CUSHING. (breathlessly, as she comes up the left of the stoop) Say, what do you think! I just saw them together—the two of them!
MRS. JONES. (rising excitedly) What did I tell you?
MRS. FIORENTINO. Where did you see them, Miss Cushing?
MISS CUSHING. Why, right next door, in the entrance to the warehouse. They were standing right close together. And he had his hands up on her shoulders. It’s awful, isn’t it?
JONES. Looks to me like this thing is gettin’ pretty serious.
MRS. JONES. You didn’t notice if they was kissin’ or anythin’, did you?
(Gassner, 1949:573)

Gossiping, talking bad things about other dwellers becomes daily activity. Besides, some of the families still stick to their native country and the traditions. Filippo’s description of the beauty of his native country also strengthens the fact that he does not melt with his new country yet. He still does not feel that he is an American, though he lives in the United States.

LIPPO. Ah, ees bew-tiful!! Ees most bew-tiful place in whole worl’. You hear about Sorrent’, ha?
ROSE. No, I don’t think I ever did.
LIPPO (incredulously). You never hear about Sorrent’?
ROSE. No, I don’t know much about geography. Is it a big place?
LIPPO. Ees not vera beeg—but ever’body know Sorrent’. Sorrento gentile! La bella Sorrento! You hear about Napoli—Baia di Napoli?
ROSE. Oh yes, the Bayof Naples! Is it near there?
LIPPO. Sure, ees on Bay of Napoli. Ees bew-tiful! Ees all blue. Sky blue, water blue, sun ees shine all time.
(Gassner, 1949:591)

While Lippo shows his admiration of his native country’s beauty, Maurrant shows dislike of the tradition in the United States.

MAUTRANT. I’ll give him a god fannin’ when I get hold of him
MRS. MAURRANT. Ah, don’t whip him, Frank, please don’t. all boys are wild like that, when they’re that age.
JONES. Sure! My boy Vincent was the same way. An’ look at him today—drivin’ his own taxi an’ makin’ a good livin’.
LIPPO. (leaning on the balustrade). Ees jussa same t’ing wit’ me. w’en Ahm twelve year, I run away—I don’t never see my parent again.
MAURRANT. That’s all right about that. But it ain’t gonna be that way in my family.
(Gassner, 1949:576).
In another part of the play one can find
MRS. FIORENTINO. (soothingly). Things are different nowadays, Mr. Maurrant, from what they used to be.
MAURRANT. Not in my family, they’re not goin’ to be no different. Not so long as I got somethin’ to say.
(Gassner, 1949:571)

The quotations above clearly show Maurrant’s reluctance to blend with the American culture at that time. He considers the American culture that he faces every day bad so that he does not want his family to be influenced by it. Here is another quotation describing Maurrant’s dislike of the American culture.
MAURRANT. … Look at what’s happenin’ to people’s homes, with all this divorce an’ one thing an’ another. Young girls goin’ around smokin’ cigarettes an’ their skirts up around their necks. An’ a lot o’ long-haired guys talkin’ about free love an’ birth control an’ breakin’ up decent people’s homes. I tell you it’s time somethin’ was done to put the fear o’ God into people. (Gassner, 1949:578).

Rose, Maurrant’s daughter, says of Mrs. Jones’ children, the New Yorker, “She and those wonderful children of hers!” (Gassner, 1949:593). This sentence is ironical because Rose comments about Mrs. Jones’ son—Vincent—who tries to abuse her one night, and Mrs. Jones’ daughter—Mae—who sleeps with a boy in the boy’s friend’s house. It means that, like her father, Rose does not like the American culture that she faces in the place where she and her family live. 

From the discussion above, it can be concluded that the people living in that tenement do not make a new race. The characters of the play still show their nativity, they do not blend to make a new race. It is more appropriate to use the metaphor ‘salad bowl’ or ‘mosaic’ than ‘melting pot’ to depict the scenes in this play because one still can see clearly which is the Jew, the Italian, the Irish, and the New Yorkers.

ANTI-SEMITISM

 
Anti-Semitism—the hatred directly against Jews—can be seen clearly in the play. Some characters in the play show their dislike toward Jews. The following quotation shows mild antipathy toward Jews. Lippo, the Italian, comments on Sam Kaplan, the Jew.
LIPPO. … Look! ‘Eresa da boy. ‘Esa walk along da street an’ reada da book. Datsa da whola troub’; reada too much book (Gassner, 1949:578)
LIPPO (Rising to his feet and yelling after him). Wotsa matter you? … ‘Eesa reada too mucha book. Ees bad for you. (Gassner, 1949:581)
The Jew—due to their bitter background, e.g. pogrom in their native country, Russia, or extermination by Hitler—move to the United States to seek freedom, so that they work hard and study hard too. It is considered something awful by other races.
MRS. JONES. Yeah. Leave it to the Jews not to lose a workin’ day, without makin’ up for it. (Gassner, 1949:571)

That quotation shows Mrs. Jones’ not willing to understand why the Jews still think about working although there is a very crucial thing happens in the office—the owner has just died and will be buried. She thinks it will be understandable if the office is closed without obliging the employees to work overtime the day before when such a crucial thing happens. It shows that the Jews are hard workers, but other ethnic groups do not like that. 

LIPPO. No, ees no good-Jew. ‘E’s only t’ink about money, money—alla time money. (Gassner, 1949:592)
In another part of the play, Rice shows more violent hatred than afore-mentioned ones. Kaplan is involved in a serious discussion with some other tenement dwellers that it almost ends up in a violent attack by Maurrant to Kaplan.
KAPLAN. Who’s toking about electing presidents? Ve must put de tuls of industry in de hends of de working-klesses and dis ken be accomplished only by a sushal revolution.
MAURRANT. Yeah? Well, we don’t want no revolutions in this country, see?
(General chorus of assent)
MRS. JONES. I know all about that stuff—teachin’ kids there ain’t no Gawd an’ that their gran’fathers was monkeys.
JONES. (rising ,angrily). Free love, like they got in Russia, huh?
(KAPLAN makes a gesture of impatient disgust, and sinks back into his chair.)
MAURRANT. There’s goddam many o’ you Bolshevikis runnin’ aroun’ loose. If you don’t like the way things is run here, why in hell don’t you go back where you came from?
(Gassner, 1949:577)

The quotation above shows how the dwellers of the tenement do not like their Jewish neighbor. Maurrant, Jones, and his wife argue Kaplan, an elderly Jewish who still sticks to his native country’s tradition. Wonzong described Kaplan as “a political activist, an old Jewish guy who talks about capitalism and the need for some sort of reform against greedy corporations, crooked politicians and the influence of Big Money” (http://www.newsreview.com/issues/chico/2002-03-07/finearts.asp) 

JONES. Like I heard a feller sayin’: the Eye-talians built New York, the Irish run it an’ the Jews own it.
(Laughter)
MRS. FIORENTINO (convulsed). Oh! Dot’s funny!
JONES (pleased with his success). Yep; the Jews own it all right.
MAURRANT. Yeah, an’ they’re the ones that’s doin’ all the kickin’.
(Gassner, 1949:577)

From the quotation above, one can see that no one likes the Jews in the tenement. Shirley, Kaplan’s daughter who is there when that happens does not try to defend her ‘community’, she just said, “It’s no disgrace to be a Jew, Mr. Maurrant” (Gassner, 1949:577). She understands pretty well that many people do not like Jews so that she does not try to argue. Referring to what is stated previously under sub-heading Anti-Semitism, it is universally known that racial prejudice against Jews is understandable. It is alright to have that feeling and Shirley knows that. This play is written in the Depression Era, and Peter Rose says that “the search for scapegoats during the Great Depression often found the Jews … targets for the bitter frustrations felt by many Americans because some Jews were extremely successful financially” (1997:56).

Commenting on Rose’s close relationship with Sam, Kaplan’s son, Mrs. Jones says, “If you don’t mind sayin’ it in front of your daughter, either—I’d think twice before I’d let any child o’ mine bring a Jew into the family” (Gassner, 1949:593). For Mrs. Jones, to marry a Jew is something which is not tolerable for other ethnic groups. She does not support the idea of inter-marriage between a Jew and someone from other ethnic group.

Besides that, from Shirley’s side, it seems that she thinks that to be a Jew even makes her feel to be more than the other race. It can be seen from the following quotation. 

SHIRLEY. You’ve got your head so full of that Rose Maurrant upstairs that you don’t want to eat or sleep or anything anymore.
SAM. I don’t feel like eating, why should I eat? (Bursting out) You’re always telling me: “Eat!” “Don’t eat!” “Get up!” “Go to bed!” I know what I want to do, without being told.
SHIRLEY. I don’t see, just when you’re graduating from college, why you want to get mixed up with a little batzimer like that!
SAM. It’s always the same thing over again with you. you never can get over your race prejudice. I’ve told you a hundred times that the Jews are no better than anybody else.
(Gassner, 1949:590)
The quotation above shows that for Shirley other races are worse than the Jew, the Jew is the best. She does not agree when Sam has a special relationship with Rose who is not a Jew. The following quotation strengthens this argument.
ROSE. I haven’t tried to vamp Sam, honestly I haven’t. We just seemed sort of naturally to like each other.
SHIRLEY. Why must you pick out Sam? You could get other fellows. Anyhow, it’s much better to marry with your own kind. When you marry outside your own people, nothing good ever comes of it. You can’t mi oil and water.
(Gassner, 1949:597)

Here, one can conclude that people other than Jews do not like them, and Jews do not like people from other races either. They do not like one another. It this is the case, racial prejudice between Jews and other races will always exist.

CONCLUSION
From the discussion previously, one can conclude that this play—Street Scene—really shows anti-Semitism. Besides, it also contains another element—that is the metaphor “salad bowl”. Some new immigrants depicted in the play do not show that they blend themselves with the culture they find and face in America after migrating there. The Irish family show their dislike of the culture they are supposed to engage in. The New Yorker family show their dislike to the new comers by calling their immigrant neighbors as “foreigners”. The Italian still worship his native country’s beauty.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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