Unit 3: Realism

1. Unit 3: Realism Warm-Up Summative Task Breakdown Realism – a closer look “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” Homework

2. Warm-Up: • EQ: • How is cultural experience reflected in literature? • Objective: • To gain an overview of the historical context and literary concerns of Realism Think about the last novel you read for pleasure. What elements of the text kept you hooked? Be specific!

3. American Literature Contemporary and Post-Modern Period The Puritan Era Age of Reason Realism Romanticism Modernism Transcendentalism 1600 - 1750 1750-1800 1800-1840 1840-1855 1865-1915 1916-1946 1946 – Present

4. Historical Context • Population of the United States is growing rapidly. • Science, industry and transportation are expanding. • Literature also was growing, but most new writers were not Romantics or Transcendentalists. They are Realists. • The “Frontier” did not exist as before; its legacy changed and impacted Realists in its new form. • The aftermath of the Civil War meant that Americans were less certain and optimistic about the future. • The idealism of the Romantics and philosophy of Transcendentalists seemed out of date and irrelevant to many readers.

5. Realism in American Literature • The purpose of the writing is “to instruct and entertain” • Character is more important than plot. • Subject matter is drawn from real life experience. • The realists reject symbolism and romanticizing of subjects. • Settings are usually those familiar to the author. • Plots emphasized “the norm of daily experience” • Ordinary characters

6. Literary Style and Concerns • Uniformity and diversity • “The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads…and a story written by a measuring worm.” ~ Ambrose Bierce • Capturing the commonplace • For Twain and other authors, narrative voice is one of division – before and after war; conventions versus personal conviction • Writing in vernacular and local dialect • Local stories • Nature again • Yes, its beauty, but also its hardship and how it wears the human spirit down

7. Other Ideologies • God • Government • Education • Man’s Purpose in Life • American Dream • Evidence of Influence

8. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890) Ambrose Bierce

9. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) • 1870s-80s: journalist and writer in San Francisco (later with Hearst publications) • 1872-75: magazine writer in London • Wrote stories about the War and about California: unsentimental & disillusioned; he read Stoic philosophy • Married wealthy miner’s daughter in 1871; divorced in 1905 • The Devil’s Dictionary (1911) is his often-quoted book of cynical definitions: Happiness: “an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”

10. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) • 1900-1913: mainly in Washington as political lobbyist for Hearst and journalist • Sept. 10, 1913, age 71: "I am going away to South America, and have not the faintest notion when I shall return.” • He posted a letter from Mexico, then vanished; possibly killed in Mexican Civil War

11. “Occurrence” setting: northern Alabama

12. Civil War (1861-65): Union (North) vs. Confederacy (South)

13. Structure • Section I: Present; Realism: Military Ritual of Hanging; hint of subjectivity/fantasy • Section II: Flashback; Realism/Satire: Framing of Peyton Farquhar by Union spy • Section III: Present  Future; Fantasy; ends realistically in present

14. Realism: Military Ritual • Section 1; ¶1-2: Bierce establishes texture of reality through close description of execution scene: bodily positions, military rank, physical equipment, etc. • ¶2, end: the formality of the scene associated with Death • ¶3: description of protagonist appeals to historical reality and reader’s sympathy: “kindly expression”

15. Realism/Satire: Framing of Peyton Farquhar • Section II; ¶8-17: Southern gentry portrayed through Bierce’s Northern satiric perspective: • “Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause” (¶8) • “the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war” (¶8) • “Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands” (¶9) • Ultimate irony: Soldier was a Union spy

16. Subjectivity/Fantasy (1) • Section 1; ¶4, end: subjectivity enters narrative: • Narrator’s detached intellect: • “simple and effective” • “‘unsteadfast footing’”: quote from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I • Time appears to slow down: • “stream racing madly” “sluggish stream” • Slowing of his watch, increase in volume

17. Homework • Finish reading the text. • Questions 1 – 10 • Create a graphic organizer from the Realism notes and locate 3 quotes from the text to support each Realism element present in the text. • 3 quotes for each element • Be sure to list the page number and paragraph number for each quote

18. Subjectivity/Fantasy (2) • Section I; ¶6: “Flash” of thought expressed as words: “If I could free my hands. . . .” • Section III; ¶18: loss of consciousness; reawakening “ages later, it seemed”; pain of hanging, “unaccompanied by thought” • Thought restored: impression that rope has broken and he is in stream • ¶19: Detached from himself: “watched” his hands free themselves and remove noose; he surfaces

19. Subjectivity/Fantasy (3) • ¶20: Senses “preternaturally keen and alert”; observes natural world • Ripples of stream • Leaves of trees, insects • Dewdrops on blades of grass • Gnats, dragon flies, water spiders, fish

20. Subjectivity/Fantasy (4) • ¶21: Sees his executioners: “their forms gigantic” • ¶22: One of sentinels fires rifle; Farquhar sees his “gray eye” looking into the rifle sights: an impossible perception • Note: Farquhar’s own eye is gray (¶3) • ¶25: Bullets fired; one lodges in his neck and “he snatched it out” (unrealistic detail) • ¶30: cannon fired

21. Subjectivity/Fantasy (5) • ¶31: whirling: “Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color”; similar to painterly expressionism, • The Scream (1893; same decade as Bierce’s story) by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944); see next slide

23. Subjectivity/Fantasy (6) • Details suggest artificial, dreamlike setting: • ¶31: Sand like “diamonds, rubies, emeralds; trees “giant garden plants; he noted a definite order to their arrangement” • ¶33: “forest seemed interminable”; “He had not known that he lived in so wild a region”: uncanny • ¶34: Nightfall: road “wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwellings anywhere.”

24. Subjectivity/Fantasy (7) • Some details hint at menace, threat: • ¶34: “black bodies of trees formed a straight wall on both sides” • “strange constellations”: “secret and malign significance” • “whispers in an unknown tongue”

25. Re-emergence of Reality • ¶35: Hints that Farquhar is still in the noose: • Neck pain • Eyes congested, unable to close • Tongue swollen, thrust out • Feet suspended above ground

26. Final Fantasy, Then Reality • ¶36: Morning: approaches home • Wife standing to meet him: “fresh and cool and sweet,” “smile of ineffable joy” • Farquhar “springs forwards with extended arms”; “stunning blow to back of neck”; “blinding white light”; “darkness and silence” • ¶37: “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.”