During America’s formative years, the literature produced by its inhabitants was not perceived as that which would initiate a unique literary tradition. Europeans not only dismissed the story-telling of Native Americans and African-Americans as unworthy of the title ‘literature,’ but also deemed the writing by European immigrants and descendants a mere continuation of literary trends from their native continent. When Americans did write stories about their new homeland, they were difficult to print, considering the rare amount of publishers west of the Atlantic and their lack of marketability; audiences wanted to read familiar European-type stories.
Therefore, the defining characteristics of American literature, have become more apparent with a hindsight bias. Following centuries of authorship to establish a distinct American genre, readers can now identify its common themes by studying previously unpublished or obscure novels, poems, stories and letters. These authors recorded how their religion and spirituality aided their survival while they were afflicted by death, injustice and uncertainty. Throughout the years, American literature has reflected the resilient character of its people who appreciated the natural beauty of the land, despite facing adverse situations involving unfamiliar people and places.
When the new Americans had to cope with difficult living conditions, they often relied on their faith in a higher power to find the strength to stay alive. Massachusetts Puritan Anne Bradstreet’s poetry was her catharsis as she emphasized her Christian faith, especially in those poems regarding the deaths of her grandchildren. Writes Bradstreet in “In Memory of My dear Grandchild Anne Bradstreet, Who Deceased June 20, 1669, Being Three Years and Seven Months Old”:
Farewell dear child, thou ne’er shall come to me,
But yet a while, and I shall go to thee;
Meantime my throbbing heart’s cheered up with this:
Thou with thy Savior art in endless bliss.
The passage reflects an overall philosophy about maintaining hope in spite of the disease and harsh situations that led to the deaths of so many people within colonial families.
Mary Rowlandson also looked to Christianity when her family members and fellow colonists were abused or killed in the confinement of the Wampanoag Native Americans. Rowlandson’s story, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, helped create the genre of captivity narratives, which tended to prominently feature religion.
Loosely related to captivity narratives were spiritual autobiographies and works that reflected a conversion to respect a higher power. Benjamin Franklin’s eighteenth- century autobiography, which describes his early years trying to survive in the strange city of Philadelphia to his work as a diplomat later in life. After making mistakes, or errata, Franklin finally found a faith in God that allowed him to be humble and grateful for his experiences.
Slave Phillis Wheatley’s poetry keeps with the theme of conversion, but in a different way from Franklin. Wheatley did not have a say about her place in America, but while appreciating her native Africa, she embraced the Christianity of her owners and looked to it as a means of coping with the deaths of those close to her and as a positive aspect of slavery.
In the mid-1800s, the essays and poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman expressed a spirituality that strayed from Christianity and focused on the untainted, natural landscapes of America for inspiration and escape in an increasingly industrializing country. The Transcendentalists used their spirituality to better understand their existence as humans in an ever-cycling world. “Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is,” writes Thoreau in Walden, relating nature to the beauty and potential simplicity of life.
The Transcendentalists are part of another important genre of American literature, that of nature writing. Emerson’s essay “Nature” stresses that the universe is composed of nature and the soul, and art is a mixture of nature and will. He, along with Thoreau, encouraged people to explore nature to find reason in our existence. Whitman’s poetry echoed Emerson’s philosophy, reemphasizing the need for Americans to go beyond the domestic, crowded spaces of urban life to experience a clearing of the mind in the free spaces of nature.
Before the Transcendentalist movement, earlier Americans also wrote about their struggles with and appreciation for nature. William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts, describes in Of Plymouth Plantation the difficulty of living on an unsettled land as the colonists toiled in growing crops and hunting. At this point, Americans had to rely on nature much more than they ever had in the more urbanized Europe. While the purity of the American landscape was usually viewed as good for the soul, some writing showed how it could also be a source of frustration for the colonists.
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur wrote Letters from an American Farmer to show how the agrarian lifestyle of the 1700s was central to the American identity. Crèvecoeur condoned some methods of making the country accessible to commerce and communication, but he mostly favored employing a tenacious attitude to live plainly off the land and declared the Native American lifestyle as best.
A common theme of American literature to 1865 that has perhaps remained most relevant today is the interaction of different kinds of people. The theme originated with works like Of Plymouth Plantation and A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson in which those of European descent encountered the completely foreign ways of the Native Americans. The Pilgrims eventually had positive experiences with the Native Americans because of their help with farming and hunting, but Rowlandson’s group incurred brutality. Nevertheless, both works described receiving an education in a completely different lifestyle.
In his autobiography, Franklin deals with an extension of the theme that becomes more frequent with the urbanization of America. Franklin lived mostly in city-settings, but his migration from Boston to Philadelphia as a youngster resulted in encounters with the ways of unscrupulous characters versus those of people he could trust before. In his travels within and outside of the country, Franklin interacted with people of different nationalities and social classes, which helped broaden his perception of those unlike him, a situation still pertinent in the country today.
Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, who were both taken from Africa and made slaves at young ages, had to cooperate with Caucasians out of force. They did not come to the country by choice, but Wheatley’s poetry and Equiano’s autobiography are integral to American history and literature. Slavery transformed the lives of both blacks and whites. Another work about slavery, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written By Himself, takes place in the South during the nineteenth century and follows Douglass’ experiences with different masters while he was still in bondage, then with different people who helped him become a freeman, and eventually, the abolitionists who supported his activism for the end of slavery.
Whitman recognizes the interaction of all the different types of Americans in his poem “Song of Myself.” The lengthy poem describes the marriage of a trapper to a Native American woman, the escape of a slave, the daily activities of blacksmiths and butchers, musicians, children, government officials, and people from every area of the country. Song of Myself” is a comprehensive summary of how people of different races, classes, abilities and interests were making the United States the most diverse and thriving country. He implies that not all the interactions were virtuous, but ulimately, all different types of people would identify themselves as American. The power of the poem becomes obvious when compared to earlier works regarding encounters between differing cultures in America. Whitman lived at a point in time when he could discuss situations beyond the first European settlers interacting with Native Americans, improved transportation on the eastern seaboard was making the country more accessible, and slaves were no longer being actively brought to the United States. Whitman writes from an omniscient point of view, incorporating the stories of the entire population in a way that stimulates awe of the unique American people’s unique situation.
The interactions of different people in the United States is important to the American literary tradition because the situation remains current. People who immigrate to this country struggle with assimilating to the culture, but usually appreciate what the United States has to offer in regards to quality of life. Even for people whose families have spent centuries in the country, experiencing different types of people still occurs daily; it is the essence of American life. While ideas of spirituality and religion are current, as is the pull between the urban and rural areas of America, the heterogeneous nature of the population best reflects the complete essence of the country, which are the opportunities and experiences available to all people from one border to another. Writings that focus on the interactions of dissimilar peoples in the United States emphasize a theme that is impossible to ignore in the American literary tradition, because of its significance in every American’s life, past and present.
American literature is unique because it so often deals with encountering new territory, literally and figuratively. Spirituality helped the new Americans survive in day-to-day life in their home that could sometimes seem so foreign. During the centuries of westward expansion, Americans were constantly experiencing a different aspects of the natural world that some believed had to be tamed, and others viewed as a sanctuary. No matter how they arrived and what were their opinions about the country, Americans’ most intense experiences involved living and working with people who had backgrounds unlike themselves. These elements are all found in some form in most early American writing, and their reflection of the American experience is what makes them outstanding in the country’s literary tradition.
