ENL 158B: "The Juxtaposition of History and Literature in Flight to Canada"

The Juxtaposition of History and Literature in Flight to Canada

The novel Flight to Canada by Ishmael Reed misrepresents history of the United States in such a way that the reader is left to wonder the purpose for such a distortion and though it seems comical at first, the purpose of the distortion is more than just for comic effect. The history of the slave trade in the United States is haunting to all the citizens of the country, especially to those of African origins. It has become the topic that no one likes to speak of, and yet no one wants to forget, and this awkward silence has cultivated generations of people who wonder how this sordid history has shaped the social identity of our country. Flight to Canada offers a new perspective on the history of the emancipation of slaves, one that allows us to laugh at our past, but also, through these gross historical errors, allows us to see how history and literature can be interchangeable: by rewriting the past in literature, the present and future history can be changed.

The novel opens with a poem, before the first chapter, titled “Flight to Canada.” It is a letter from a slave to his master giving an account of his escape, and the liberties the slave took with the master’s women, property, and money. However, the poem includes the description of an airplane trip that slaves, or anyone from 1865 for that matter, would have never experienced. The poem integrates what the reader knows as modern invention with the history of slavery with no subtlety, and in doing so, brings slavery into the modern age. Slavery is now made timeless and ageless by this novel, despite the modern ingenuity of aircraft flight and modern thought. The author of the poem still manages, however, to incite laughter at the “modern” slave owner, who we can imagine recoiling at the thought of his slave running away, then returning several times to cause mischief and steal his money while the master is out of town. The poem becomes the reader’s first introduction to this world that is a mixture of past and present realities, which at first seems absurd. The poem, as a letter, ends with a signature from its author: “Your boy Quickskill” (5) and the reader is left to assume that what is written in the poem is the truth of a slave’s narrative about his own escape from slavery. What we learn later, though, is that the poem is a fictional representation of history, exactly like the novel itself.

Literature plays an important role in documenting events as they happen, but literature also helps to shape the minds of the public as time puts distance between past and present. Fiction, though by definition a work of human imagination, can document history in ways that can be more suitable to future generations. “Fiction, you say? Where does fact begin and fiction leave off? Why does the perfectly rational, in its own time, often sound like mumbo-jumbo?” asks the narrator (10). This question is the central idea in Flight to Canada, because the novel puts no distinction between fact and fiction. History can only tell us the events of the past as they happened, but fiction can tell us, through abstractions, about the truths not documented by history. By leaving out the truth of the past in his novel, Reed is telling us something more substantial about our current interpretations of our history, how our ideas of right and wrong have changed, and how even history, with all its facts, can be turn out different from its original interpretation.

Literature is powerful in changing the interpretation of current events, and when those events pass into history. Quickskill tells 40’s at the end of chapter 12 that “words build the world and words can destroy the world” (81) and this is especially true for Quickskill. He was the “first one of Swille’s slaves to read, the first to write, and the first to run away” (14), so, it one can argue that it was words that gave Quickskill his freedom. However, it is those very same words that threaten his freedom, since it is his poem that ultimately leads Swille to his runaway slaves’ whereabouts. Quickskill, like his creator Reed, was “so much against slavery that he had begun to include prose and poetry in the same book, so that there would be no arbitrary boundaries between them” (88). The blending of the literary forms mirrors the blending of history with fiction, and both of these fusions take place with the use of words on paper. The ideas contained within the words give freedom to the author, whether the author is using a poem to earn the money to go to Canada, or the author is rewriting history itself to give a new interpretation to the history of slavery.

One example of a different interpretation of history is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It is mentioned in several places over the course of the novel, and at the very beginning the narrator alleges:

She [Stowe] popularized the American novel and introduced it to Europe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Writing is strange, though. That story caught up with her. The story she “borrowed” from Josiah Henson. (8)

Stowe gained notoriety with her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but the novel also paved the way for the emancipation of the slaves in the United States, as people who did not at first support the movement were inspired by its story. Her story narrates the life of a black slave, yet Stowe was white—the story she was telling was not hers to tell. She may not have plagiarized the story, but it was “borrowed,” not from one man, but from an entire race of people who lived the very story she was telling. History records her novel as being the key to swaying the masses to believe in emancipation and reserves for her an exalted place for influencing a generation to embrace this movement, but literature has the flexibility to see her as a villain: as a white woman who stole the story of one man who symbolized all black slaves.

This contrast between the interpretations of history and literature is an example of how history and literature influence each other to evolve the thoughts of society. Considering the following quote from chapter 13 of Flight to Canada:

Book titles tell the story. The original subtitle for Uncle Tom’s Cabin was “The Man Who Was a Thing”…Over one hundred years after the appearance of the Stowe book, The Man Who Cried I Am…was published. Quickskill thought of all the changes that would happen to make a “Thing” into an “I am.” Tons of paper. An Atlantic of blood. (82)

It is clear that history and literature are directly compared in Quickskill’s timeline of the book titles. A slave, in the novel, begins as nothing more than a “thing” but, over time, is finally given the liberty to use a pronoun, “I.” It took, not just history filled with blood, to supply this liberty, but paper in the form of books, novels, writing consisting of nothing more than words.

One of the best examples of fact and fiction fused together in the novel is the novel’s explanation of the assassination of Lincoln. According to the novel, the assassination is captured on television, with news reporters commenting on every gory detail of the death. Included with these details is a literary view of how history will see the event: “Booth, America’s first Romantic Assassin…leaping from the balcony, gracefully, beautifully, in slow motion” (103). This portrayal is more than just a recitation of facts of the death of a president—it is a prophecy of how history, at least in terms of his novel, will view this assassin. History will see both victim and perpetrator how literature portrays them in the role they are assigned: Booth as the “Romantic Assassin” (103) of “Lincoln, the American Christ” (11).

History and literature play an important role in shaping the how people view events, no matter how significant or insignificant they may seem at the time. Slavery, which was accepted and considered rational in the United States for a substantial amount of time, has evolved through the use of literature written by whites and blacks alike to form a new opinion. It started before Stowe, with her “borrowing” the story of the black man, but it continues today with many authors employing slavery to not only give depth to their own story, but to help build on the stories inspired by slavery. The juxtaposition of literature and history allows future generations to see events of the past more clearly, and to form opinions based on both the detailed account of the event and the literary interpretations of past and present. “Strange, history. Complicated, too. It will always be a mystery, history. New disclosures are as bizarre as the most bizarre fantasy” (8). Perhaps history, alone, is strange, and mysterious, too, but when we use literature to shed light on history we are given a more complete picture of where we have come from.

ENL 142: "Defining America: the Ideal and the Actual"

Defining America: the Ideal and the Actual

In comparing the works “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine and Letters from an American Farmer by J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur the reader is shown two sides of what is to become the United States: the ideal, and the actual. The contrast between these two is what helps to define early Americanism as shaped by what is was meant to be and what it actually was during the founding of this new country. It is Paine who set out to encourage what he felt was an inevitable independence from England to form a country founded on the natural rights of man, but is Crevecoeur who puts Paine’s idea of natural law into a practical application in society, through his narration of a ‘typical’ American farmer. Through both these works we see that that underlying theme is the desire for natural rights, but the interpretation of how these natural rights will maintain the virtuousness of America is what ultimately divides these two authors.

The idea of natural rights and natural law were not new ideas to the time. In fact, Paine’s conception of a government upon a “principle in nature” and “the simple voice of nature and of reason” echoed ideas that were put forth by John Locke (Paine 9). Locke’s political theories were quite popular during the American revolutionary period even with Thomas Jefferson, who later included these same ideas to form the basis of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Natural law is distinct from divine law in that it relies on man’s reason alone to determine laws, not divine command, and this distinction was important to recognize, especially since the King of English derived his power through the divine law of the Anglican Church. It is the king that resides at the heart of the complaints of the colonists, and the call for independence relies on this desire for guidance not based on divine law, but that is based on the laws natural world, and what man can reason.

England and her king are vilified with the claim that the laws of England were encroaching on American’s right to self-governance and open-market commerce. These rights, Paine argues, are natural because they are universal rights, of every man the world over:

The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind…The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring war against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling. (6)

Paine considers freedom of religion, property, and personal liberty to be staples of natural rights (43) and he believes that all men are naturally entitled to these things that are being stripped away by the aristocracy of England. He blames England for depriving America of the ability to give her people what they need, namely the freedom to set up a government, to practice religion freely, to trade in an open market, to have representation in a government they are being taxed by, and to have due course of the law to petition for those shortcomings of the English government. Each of these needs contribute to America’s dissatisfaction with belonging to the English nation, and Paine attempts to build a case for revolution based on these needs, and other sources of perceived injustice.

Paine then gives the reader an explanation of how a self-governing American republic would operate, putting special emphasis on the independence of the American nation. This independence is as natural as the laws, he claims, that will make her successful:

…there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as to England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself. (28)

Robert A. Ferguson looks at the popular reaction to this new scope of government in his essay “The Commonalities of Common Sense” when he discusses the implications of this new, independent identity that Americans were considering for the first time:

The implications for Americans choosing between their king and their independence were mesmerizing. You could be fallen and naturally depraved and, thereby, subject to the crown under previous historical conceptions of identity, or you could find yourself to be socially integrated in your natural goodness and therefore, deserving of ever greater dimensions of freedom. (479)

Independence is more than just the absurd notions of a displaced Englishman trying to stir trouble in the American colonies. It is the statement of people who are rational enough to realize that they have rights beyond those given by the crown, and are willing to seize those rights through the unity of their stance as a country. “In short, Independence is the only BOND that can tye and keep us together. We shall then see our object, and our ears will be legally shut against the intriguing, as well, as a cruel enemy” (Paine 53).

Crevecoeur recognized America as the testing ground for several new theories of social order that were rising up from the people must like the farmer’s crops were raising from the soil. Elayne Rapping writes in her article “Theory and Experience in Crevecoeur’s America” that:

…agrarian democracy was an ideal social structure, for it allowed man to live in a middle state between primitive savagery and overly complex civilization…The American continent…was an ideal setting in which to bring the model to life; and so the establishment of a perfect society became an actual possibility for the first time in history. (708)

In the spirit of this seemingly perfect model of natural law, Crevecoeur’s third letter “What is an American?” presents this ideal nation built upon the very idealistic foundations that Paine proposes in his pamphlet. He brags of a nation that is “…the most perfect society now existing the world. Here man is free as he ought to be, nor is this pleasing equality so transitory as many others are” (67). As evidence, he describes a society “not composed…of great lords who possess everything and of a herd of people who have nothing,” which also lacks titles, having “no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion,” and where “the rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other” (67).

Like Paine’s emphasis of natural law over divine law, Crevecoeur downplays the role of religion as a major force in the colonies. He describes a generational gap, where religious zeal is lost as the younger generations learn instead to embrace the “imperfect education” of a mixed-religious family (75). This is important to note from the text, because it is religious zeal that keeps most English tied to the crown, as the symbol of the Anglican religion. “James” is a perfect model for Paine’s new America, and he embodies all of the assumptions that one would have to make about a perfect American citizen. James is a working freeholder, who relies on his reason and industry to be a success. He has faith in human reason, and belief in simple and just laws based on the natural order of the world without zealous ties to a crushing religious influence (Rapping 709).

Despite the high hopes for these new ways of governance, there are subtle doubts expressed through the letters of James’ travels through the American landscape, especially in his letter “On Charles Town and Slavery.” This letter shows a perversion of the natural laws to the fullest extent:

…the poison of slavery, the fury of despotism, and the rage of the superstition are all combined against man! There only the few live and rule, whilst the many starve and utter ineffectual complaints; there human nature appears more debased, perhaps, than in the less favoured climates. (176)

Elayne Rapping extends this observation by pointing out that “Farmer James becomes confused and dismayed as he tries to interpret behavior in Charles Town in terms of his model…here reason, self-interest, and natural law lead to gross inequity and cruelty rather than peace, because human instinct is vicious instead of virtuous” (711). Instead of an ideal society built on natural laws, and reason, Crevecoeur shifts into a vision of humanity twisted into selfish, heartless individuals who are using a subservient race to keep their own in power.

It is realized with these later letters that the natural laws have the same flaws of those divine laws of Europe that Paine turns away from in “Common Sense.” The same individuality that is so revered in “Common Sense” is shown to be inadequate against the passions of man, which “must forever oppose his happiness” (Crevecoeur 174). In contrast to this call for independence is how Crevecoeur identifies that man “cannot live in solitude; he must belong to some community bound by some ties, however imperfect” (201). This skepticism of independence that Crevecoeur expresses does not necessarily mean that he intended America to throw down its weapon and succumb to British rule. Instead he is simple giving these new “Americans” a clearer portrait of the nation that they will have once they are independent, and he is proposing that independence from England should not mean independence among brethren: the very survival of America will rely on its own unity as a nation.

Both authors, as foreigners, show America from a perspective that would not otherwise be captured by an American-born citizen. They both are trying to create a better America, Paine through the use of propaganda to support his cause of independence, and Crevecoeur by pointing out the flaws in what was then a budding American culture. Natural rights as men are the focus of their writing because that is what they feel is lacking in the European strategies of government. Robert Ferguson explains Paine’s insight into American reasoning when he writes:

Paine, the disenchanted Englishman, knew what American colonials could never quite admit to themselves as imperial subjects in need of a useable past. He saw that a belief in monarchy was the mortal enemy of common sense in representative government and that it had to be answered directly. (480)

Even the name “Common Sense” implies that reliance on reason alone would lead the reader to the same conclusions that Paine is drawing from his rhetoric, and common sense would dictate that the rationality of man is more than adequate to maintain a healthy nation independent of the unnatural leadership of monarchy.

It is also of great significance that the authors of these works that help to shape the definition of an American, are themselves outsiders to the culture. As James says,

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, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds…Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.” (Crevecoeur 70)

The act of someone born on foreign soil, of foreign citizenship writing these words gives truth to the very meaning of them. It is the same with Paine: a European creating an acceptable definition of what it is to be an American only confirms that there is an acceptance of those who do not belong in Europe, and in not belonging they are themselves defining America.

This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe…In this extensive quarter of the globe, we forget the narrow limits…and claim our friendship on a larger scale; we claim brotherhood with every European Christian, and triumph in the generosity of the sentiment. (Paine 23)

Through the contrast of these two works a definition is generated of what it is to be an American in early America, and the definition comes not from what is said, but from what is not said. Paine wants to inspire Americans to take pride in the rare opportunity they have to found a country based on the natural rights of all men, and not on the divine right of one man as it is in a monarchy. In contrast, Crevecoeur shows the reality of such laws in action, and we realize that this natural law is not the ideal that it seems to be. What we are left with is what is in between the ideal and actual: man’s natural rights, with a government that has power enough to enforce the law, but also the reason and foresight to realize that founding a new nation is not easy and will not always be ideal, but the virtue that will come from the foundation will serve to create a great nation if it can become unified in its cause.

Works Cited

Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John. Letters from an American Farmer. New York: Penguin Group (USA), 1986.
Ferguson, Robert A. “The Commonalities of Common Sense.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Jul., 2000): 465-504. Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2674263.

Jefferson, Thomas. “The Declaration of Independence.” The U.S. National Archives & Records Administration. www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html.

Paine, Thomas. “Common Sense.” In Collected Writings, ed. Eric Foner. New York: Library of America, 1995.
Rapping, Elayne Antler. “ Theory and Experience in Crevecoeur’s America.” American Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Winter, 1967): 707-718. Published by: The John Hopkins University Press, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2710897.

ENL 158B: "Defining Community: Inclusion and Exclusion in Under the Feet of Jesus"

Jolene Brown

Dr. M. Stratton

ENL 158B

October 17, 2008

Defining Community:

Inclusion and Exclusion in Under the Feet of Jesus

The novel Under the Feet of Jesus, by Helena María Viramontes suggests that the English-speaking American is part of the same community as the characters by presenting the reader with several interconnected interpretations of the phrase “under the feet of Jesus” and by proposing three circumstances of belonging: divine, legal, and literary. The novel is written in such a way to contrast the lives of the characters with that of the average American English-speaker, and the lives of the characters are foreign, in more ways than one, to this type of reader, which leads to the assumption that the characters are illegal immigrants. The occasional switch to the use of Spanish only adds to the isolation, prompting a further feeling of exclusion from the community of the novel, but Viramontes is balancing that exclusion with information that notifies the reader of their inclusion. Examples of these types of inclusion are found in several passages of the novel, and this essay will focus on two of them.

Throughout the novel there is fear of the immigration police, la migra. The reader suspects that, because of this fear, that Estrella and her family are immigrants. Petra, however, tells her daughter:

“Don’t run scared. You stay there and look them in the eye…If they stop you…you tell them the birth certificates are under the feet of Jesus…Tell them que tienes una madre aquí. You are not an orphan, and she pointed a red finger to the earth, Aquí” (Viramontes 63).

This advice to her daughter not only seems contrary to what illegal parents would want for their children, but also has significance in that it implies that Petra believes they are more than just American citizens. The final line she points her finger to the ground and states “Aquí” with a capital A. This is the Spanish word for “here” and the capital letter implies a higher meaning, more than just the land beneath her feet. In fact, just moments before she tells Estrella that the birth certificates located “under the feet of Jesus,” and when you take that line in a metaphorical context, and look at the capitalization of the word aquí, the meaning is more than just Petra teaching her daughter to defend herself. The author is giving a meaning to the community they are a part of, not just a community of the American world, but a divine, earthly community that is located “under the feet of Jesus.”

One hundred pages later the reader discovers that Estrella’s family is, in fact, American citizens when Viramontes tells us:

“Under the doily lay the documents in the manila envelope. She slipped the envelope out gingerly and poured out the contents onto her palm. Black ink feet on the birth certificates…Certificado de Bautismos—five of them; a torn and mended Social Security card; Identification card…her picture looked flat and dull and pale as concrete, but the ID was a great relief” (166)

This is the legal definition of community, a status reserved for those who have papers, licenses, and proof, which Estrella’s mother keeps under the feet of a small Jesus statue. The metaphor that we believe Petra to be referencing earlier is, in fact, truth, there is proof “under the feet of Jesus.” This information can be shocking twist to the skeptical reader, who might, until this point, believe that Petra is teaching the children to lie about their documentation. Any doubts about their citizenship are dispelled and the reader suddenly realizes that these people are American citizens, too, with hardships, trials and problems that the average American does not always have to face.

The last definition of community that should be mentioned is the literary definition. It is important to remember that this book, Under the Feet of Jesus, is also paper, much like the papers that symbolize citizenship. The papers that make up this book are under the feet of Jesus, both metaphorically, in the way same way that Estrella and her family is, but also physically, as the title graces the cover of the novel itself. The community that the author creates within this book is as real as any community that suffers through these same circumstances, and the reader belongs to this community by being included in reading it. In this abstract sense, the reader becomes as much a part of the literary world, as Estrella becomes part of our material world. In our world her status lacks much that others take for granted: “It was always a question of work, and work depended on the harvest, the car running, their health, the conditions of the road, how long the money held out, and the weather, which meant they could depend on nothing” (4).

Viramontes subtly suggests several definitions of the word community and uses those definitions to include the reader in the community of the novel. The first definition is one of divine community, where all the beings of earth belong to one earthly community, American or not. The second definition is one of legality, and the English-speaking American reader can relate to this community, but also realizes the characters in the novel—assumed not to be citizens—are a part of their same American community. The third category is one of literature, whereby the novel itself is a community of characters and the reader is included into the community by reading. All of these definitions help to the reader to understand the interconnectedness of all communities, American or not, and the importance of communities relying upon each other for support. It is Estrella’s community that feed other families through their labor in the fields. Yet Estrella’s family lives on the edge of poverty and hunger and despite all their hard work are put on the outskirts of American society instead of embraced for the work they do. The English-speaking American realizes that this is a family with the same citizenship status as their own, and the reader is not the outsider they believed themselves to be. After all, we are all part of one big community located, as the novel suggests, under the feet of Jesus.