Major Characters in American Fiction is the perfect companion for everyone who loves literature--students, book-group members, and serious readers at every level.
Developed at Columbia University's Center for American Culture Studies, Major Characters in American Fiction offers in-depth essays on the "lives" of more than 1,500 characters, figures as varied in ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, and experience as we are. Inhabiting fictional works written from 1790 to 1991, the characters are presented in biographical essays that tell each one's life story. They are drawn from novels and short stories that represent ever era, genre, and style of American fiction writing--Natty Bumppo of The Leatherstocking Tales, Celie of The Color Purple, and everyone in between.
Major Characters in American Fiction is the perfect companion for everyone who loves literature--students, book-group members, and serious readers at every level.
Developed at Columbia University's Center for American Culture Studies, Major Characters in American Fiction offers in-depth essays on the "lives" of more than 1,500 characters, figures as varied in ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, and experience as we are. Inhabiting fictional works written from 1790 to 1991, the characters are presented in biographical essays that tell each one's life story. They are drawn from novels and short stories that represent ever era, genre, and style of American fiction writing--Natty Bumppo of The Leatherstocking Tales, Celie of The Color Purple, and everyone in between.
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Overview
Major Characters in American Fiction is the perfect companion for everyone who loves literature--students, book-group members, and serious readers at every level.
Developed at Columbia University's Center for American Culture Studies, Major Characters in American Fiction offers in-depth essays on the "lives" of more than 1,500 characters, figures as varied in ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, and experience as we are. Inhabiting fictional works written from 1790 to 1991, the characters are presented in biographical essays that tell each one's life story. They are drawn from novels and short stories that represent ever era, genre, and style of American fiction writing--Natty Bumppo of The Leatherstocking Tales, Celie of The Color Purple, and everyone in between.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466881938 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 09/23/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 3213 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Jack Salzman is the founder and editor of the journal Prospects: The Annual of American Cultural Studies and the author of The Cambridge Handbook of American Literature.
Pamela Wilkinson is a graduate student in English at Columbia University.
Read an Excerpt
Major Characters in American Fiction
By Jack Salzman, Pamela Wilkinson
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 1994 The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New YorkAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-8193-8
CHAPTER 1
A
Abel.House Made of Dawn. N. Scott Momaday. 1966.
Abel, a Navajo-Tanoan, is a product of the Native American diaspora. In his effort to forge an identity, he must grapple with the conflicting pressures of his heritage and his modern needs and desires.
The novel opens with a short prologue in which the quiet yet resilient Abel, smeared with ceremonial ashes, participates in a traditional race to promote better hunting and a more fruitful harvest, a race that his grandfather, Francisco, competed in and won many years ago. The narrative then moves back seven years to the Tanoan reservation, Walatowa Cañon de San Diego, where a drunk Abel returns after World War II.
At the behest of the local Christian clergyman, Father Olguin, Abel gets employment chopping wood for Angela Grace Saint John, an attractive, affluent blonde who is renting a local house while her husband remains in Los Angeles. Although Abel remains dispassionate toward her, Angela is attracted by his vitality and identifies him with the mythic images of the bear and badger. Abel is plagued by his inarticulateness and cannot reconcile himself to the traditions of his people. He is unable to compose his own creation story, an exercise that would signify his ability to fully embrace his Navajo-Tanoan heritage.
Several days before Abel and Angela consummate their relationship, the reservation celebrates the annual Feast of Santiago, a christianized native holiday. The celebration includes a competition in which the winner is given license to flay someone of his own choosing. This year the victor, an albino Tanoan named Juan Reyes Fragua, selects Abel. Four days later, Abel, feeling defeated and ostracized after the flogging, stabs the albino to death when the two meet in a bar. He shows little remorse over the incident.
After Abel serves a seven-year prison sentence for murder, a relocation officer places him in Los Angeles where he works in a factory with his Navajo roommate, Ben Benally. Accompanied by Benally, Abel attends the Holiness Pan-Indian Rescue Mission where the Pastor and Priest of the Sun, John "Big Bluff" Tosamah, presides. Basing his sermon on the Book of John, Tosamah wishes to resurrect the sanctity of language that he believes contemporary Anglo culture has undermined, and in his sermon he encourages his Native American congregation to take pride in their heritage. Soon after, however, Tosamah derides Abel for his failure to adjust to present-day conditions.
Indeed, Abel has fallen into a pattern of binge drinking that causes him to lose his job. He is also harassed by Martinez, a Chicano policeman who one day beats him until he requires hospitalization. While in the hospital, Abel is visited by Angela who tells him about her young son Peter. With an intuitive understanding of native lore, Angela says she has frequently told Peter the story of a young Indian brave, born of a bear and a maiden, who became a great leader and saved his people. She always thought of Abel when she told this story, and her revelation infuses Abel with a restored sense of cultural identity.
Following his hospital stay, Abel returns to the reservation in time to carry on the tradition of his dying grandfather. The novel concludes with the same scene with which it began: Abel, running in a ceremonial race against the powers of evil and death, chants the opening words of the Navajo creation story, "House made of dawn."
Ackerman, Noah.The Young Lions. Irwin Shaw. 1948.
Noah Ackerman had never paid much attention to his Jewish heritage because of his father's hypocrisy. Until his dying day, Noah's father fervently espoused all the Hebraic beliefs while at the same time consistently breaking all their laws in his deeds. An alcoholic, he beat his wife and left Noah, his only son, destitute.
After moving to New York City, Noah meets Roger, the first friend he has ever had. Roger finds him a job at the public library and even offers to share his apartment with him. For the first time in his life, Noah feels he has found happiness, but then he confesses to Roger that he wishes he had a girlfriend. Roger immediately throws a party at their apartment, where Noah meets a young Brooklyn woman named Hope Plowman. The two fall in love, and Noah spends many long nights on the subway commuting between Hope's apartment in Brooklyn and his own on the Upper West Side.
Noah and Hope marry after a long-drawn-out battle with Hope's parents, who disapprove of Noah's religion. Soon afterward, America enters World War II. After initially failing his physical because of scars on his lung tissue, Noah, swept up in the national enthusiasm and eager to join, passes a second physical and enlists in the infantry.
In basic training in Florida, Noah is brutally victimized by the other soldiers, and a sadistic drill sergeant harasses him to the point of physical and mental breakdown. When ten dollars is stolen from his footlocker, he posts a sign demanding to know the culprit so that he may exact satisfaction. The ten largest men in the division not only confess but taunt him to do something about it, and Noah arranges to fight them one at a time over a period of five weeks.
After almost constant hospitalization and dozens of near permanent injuries, Noah is able to win his last fight. When the other soldiers still fail to show him the respect he has earned, he goes AWOL. He is captured, and while no charges are pressed because of the extenuating circumstances of his desertion, he is forced to return to his old platoon. Much to Noah's surprise, the men who once bullied him now show admiration for his strength and courage.
Noah becomes a leader of his company after they arrive in Europe for combat. When they are cut off and surrounded by Nazis in an abandoned farmhouse, he guides them to safety. His company is also the first to discover a deserted Nazi concentration camp. Overwhelmed by the horrors he sees, Noah gets permission from his commanding officer to hold Jewish services in remembrance of the victims of the camp, despite numerous protests from his own company. He is shot by Christian Diestl, a lingering German sniper, and dies attempting to reconcile his religious beliefs.
Adams, Alice.Alice Adams. Booth Tarkington. 1921.
Alice Adams, twenty-two years old and a "right pretty girl," is outwardly confident and composed. Nevertheless, she continually struggles against the rising fear that life has already passed her by and that, thwarted in her attempts to make a happy and successful marriage, she will be forced to become a working girl. Throughout the novel, the specter of Frincke's Business College haunts Alice, symbolizing for her the potential failure of all her aspirations.
Alice first appears, characteristically, in front of a mirror where she is practicing the repertory of gestures and expressions that she believes give her a memorable vivacity. This affectation is Alice's response to her greatest regret of all — that her parents are not wealthy and respected members of local society. Although Alice genuinely loves her father and chastises her mother for criticizing Mr. Adams's ability to provide for his family, she believes that it is her father's disregard for money and status that has made her life so different from how she had imagined it would be. For although Alice had an early success with the young men of the town, she has recently been condemned as "pushy" by the local matrons and their daughters, who now respond to her with polite lack of interest. Following the example of their women, the local men, too, have condemned Alice to a life that she sees as crippled by the misfortune of her birth. Yet Alice is nothing if not resourceful, and, repeatedly spurned at the few dances to which she is invited, she falls back on the courageous and pitiful act she has often rehearsed to prevent others from seeing her rejection and her disappointment.
Alice is potentially rescued from a bitter and disappointed middle age by the arrival in town of Arthur Russell, a charming and eligible veteran. She suddenly finds everything she has longed for within her grasp and sets out to make herself as attractive as possible to this innocent spectator. As their relationship progresses, Alice falls in love with Russell and for the first time begins to question her need to deceive and impress by hiding her real self beneath a veil of artifice and affectation. The more intimate she and Russell become, the more she becomes helplessly caught up in the lies she has told. She feels incapable of establishing the truth and terrified that someone will reveal her dishonesty.
Yet Alice is finally forced to confront her lies and acknowledge the family she has desperately tried to conceal. Russell learns that Alice's brother Walter has absconded with money stolen from his employer and that Alice's father is not the tycoon she has described. Faced with Russell's sudden detachment, Alice determines to stand by her family, finally realizing that this bond is more important than the social status she has been seeking. As the novel ends, Alice stands in front of Frincke's Business College, but this time, far from being shaken by the life it symbolizes, she resolutely accepts that this is the way she must take.
Adams, Nick.In Our Time. Ernest Hemingway. 1925.
Nick Adams is the quiet man whose life experiences are fragmentarily traced in this collection of short stories. The stories, interspersed with short, raw portrayals of battle and destruction, describe the traumatic, often violent episodes that shape Nick from his boyhood in the Michigan woods to his return from World War I. Nick is wounded in the war, but it is his psychological wounds from the war and from violent events throughout his life that seem to need the most healing.
"Indian Camp," in which Nick is a boy, relates one such scarring incident. His father, a country doctor, takes Nick with him when he goes to the neighboring Indian camp to deliver a breech baby. The labor has been long and painful, and the mother screams in agony when Nick and his father enter her shanty. On the bunk above lies her husband, who has injured his foot. Nick's father operates on the woman without using anesthetic, all the while explaining to Nick what he is doing so that his son will learn from the experience. But when they complete the procedure, they see that the father, perhaps unable to bear the sound of his wife's cries, has cut his own throat.
In "The Battler," Nick, now a young man, meets a prizefighter-turned-hobo whose mangled face and missing ear at first seem shocking. The hobo and his traveling companion, a black man named Bugs, befriend Nick and offer him a share of their makeshift meal. But while they are eating the fighter suddenly becomes antagonistic toward the young man and dares him to fight. As the man approaches Nick menacingly, Bugs knocks his friend unconscious. Afterward, he explains to a bewildered Nick that he must do this whenever his friend, made crazy by too many beatings, becomes violent.
In "The End of Something," Nick, feeling "as though everything was gone to hell inside," sullenly ends his relationship with his fiancée while they are on a fishing trip together. A companion story, "The Three-Day Blow," describes Nick's feelings of sorrow and loneliness as he is getting drunk with a friend shortly thereafter. His friend assures him that ending the affair was all for the best, but Nick can't help feeling that "it was all gone now." "Cross-Country Snow" finds Nick in happier times, skiing with a friend in Switzerland and then drinking wine in an alpine inn. But even as he cherishes this time in his life, he also realizes that it is passing, that no matter how they might wish to relive this experience, "there isn't any good in promising."
Finally, in "Big Two-Hearted River," Nick goes on a solitary fishing trip that seems intended to help him begin to heal his inner wounds. After a ride in the baggage car of a passing train, Nick finds himself at the remains of a burned-out and deserted town where even the grasshoppers have grown black with soot. He hikes away from the town along the river, feeling satisfied as he crosses the fire line and begins to wade through ankle-high ferns.
When he stops to make camp, Nick takes quiet pleasure in pitching his tent, building a fire, and opening cans to make a meal. Making coffee the way his friend Hopkins insisted it must be made, Nick momentarily fears the memories that begin to return. But he knows he is tired and can "choke it."
The next morning Nick methodically catches grasshoppers and packs a lunch to take fishing. He catches two large trout, sometimes becoming weak with the excitement of the chase, and cleans them by the river. He considers wading into the swamp where he knows he can hook big trout, but he feels fishing there in the shadows would somehow be "tragic." Instead, he heads back to his camp, satisfied and at peace with himself, knowing that "there were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp."
Adare, Karl.The Beet Queen. Louise Erdrich. 1987.
Karl Adare leads a relatively peaceful life until the age of fourteen. His mother, Adelaide, is the mistress of a wealthy Kansas farmer, Mr. Ober, who is Karl's father. Mr. Ober provides everything for them, but when he dies in a grain-loading accident, Adelaide and her two children must leave their home, which was in the father's name. Money runs out quickly, and when a third child is born, Adelaide becomes desperate. The day they are evicted from their apartment, Karl persuades Adelaide to take them to the town fair, called The Orphans' Picnic. There, "The Great Omar, Aeronaught Extraordinaire," is performing stunts and giving airplane rides. Adelaide gets into the plane and flies off with Omar, leaving her three children behind forever. A mysterious man takes the newborn boy, leaving Karl and his sister, Mary Adare, alone.
Karl and Mary take a train to Argus, North Dakota, where Adelaide's sister, Fritzie, runs a butcher shop. They leap from the train together and walk through the town, but Karl stops to smell a blossoming tree. A vicious dog leaps out at him, and both children panic and run. Mary runs toward Aunt Fritzie's, but Karl leaps back onto the boxcar. Starving and confused, Karl is comforted by a man named Giles. They lie sleeping in the boxcar; when Karl turns toward him, Giles responds sexually. Giles refuses to reciprocate, however, when Karl says, "I love you," and Karl leaps out into the night.
Injured by his fall from the boxcar, Karl lies helpless until a silent Indian woman named Fleur Pillager, an itinerant peddler, rescues him. After curing him of pneumonia and carrying him on her cart for some distance, Fleur leaves Karl with the nuns at a church. Eventually they send him to a seminary, where he studies sacred texts and also has encounters with "thin hard hoboes who had slept in the bushes."
After graduating from the seminary, Karl embarks on his hapless career as a traveling salesman while his varied sexual life flourishes. At a farmers' convention in Minneapolis, he seduces Wallace Pfef, a shy virgin. Afterward, a strange inspiration causes Karl to bounce on the bed, attempting a somersault. He falls off the bed, injuring his back, and spends a period in the hospital with Wallace as his only visitor. In his pain he admits to Wallace that his sister lives in Argus, which is also Wallace's town.
Once he recovers, Karl goes to Argus and spends two weeks living with Wallace. He goes to Fritzie's butcher shop looking for his sister but instead finds Celestine James, Mary's closest friend. Without a word to Wallace, Karl moves in with Celestine, and they have a passionate but short-lived affair. Celestine grows tired of Karl quickly and throws him out. After Celestine bears Karl's child, Wallacette Darlene "Dot" Adare, she agrees to marry Karl but makes him promise to leave them alone.
When Dot turns fourteen, Celestine agrees to a meeting of the three of them. Although Dot is openly hostile toward Karl and hits him on the head with a can of oysters, he remembers their meeting as a "moment of sweetness." Later in his life, during a period of despair and indecision, Karl thinks of this moment. He immediately drives to Argus to find Wallace and Dot; in his absence they have developed an awkward relationship, just like an average father and daughter.
Adare, Mary.The Beet Queen. Louise Erdrich. 1987.
Mary Adare is a stubborn, plain girl who becomes the manager of a butcher shop. Although Mary is neither charming nor attractive, her determination and practical nature give her a certain advantage over her seductive brother, Karl Adare, and her stylish cousin, Sita Kozka. After resolving never to seek romance, Mary settles down to running the butcher shop and, to a great extent, the private life of her friend, Celestine James.
Mary insists on her ordinariness, but her childhood is full of extraordinary events. Her mother Adelaide is the mistress of a wealthy Kansas farmer, Mr. Ober, who leaves them both destitute when he dies. Out of desperation, Adelaide flies off with "The Great Omar, Aeronaught Extraordinaire," at a town fair. Mary is eventually left holding Adelaide's newborn boy and unwillingly gives him up to a man who never brings him back. Mary and Karl take a train to Argus, North Dakota, where Adelaide's sister Fritzie runs a butcher shop. When they arrive in Argus, Karl pauses to smell a blossoming tree and is attacked by a dog. Karl leaps back onto the boxcar, and Mary finds her way to Fritzie's shop alone.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Major Characters in American Fiction by Jack Salzman, Pamela Wilkinson. Copyright © 1994 The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,Major Characters in American Fiction,
List of Authors,
List of Titles,
List of Characters' Alternate Names,