Author: Debra Chan

Gangs of NY Journal

In the theater scene, about halfway into the movie, the protagonist Amsterdam Vallon sits with William Cutting to enjoy a play, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The scene begins with a man playing the role of President Abraham Lincoln raised in the air. Around him are clouds and angels which imply that the Five Points Mission want to portray the president as Godlike. As he speaks he opens out his arms so that it looks like he is on a cross like Jesus. In the audience Amsterdam appears amicable with Bill as they share a few smiles and a drink and a cigar.

As the play gets disrupted by the audience throwing tomatoes and vegetables of all sorts at the stage after a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, both Bill and Amsterdam take part in throwing whatever food they had in their basket and exclaim, “Down with the Union,” to show their mutual distaste for Lincoln and his decree. In the chaos Amsterdam spots a man with a gun and aims it at Bill crying, “For the blood of the Irish.” The scene jumps from shots of the gun unveiling, Amsterdam jumping in front of Bill, and Bill getting shot straight in the chest. The cuts make it seem like Amsterdam purposefully jumped too early to avoid getting shot, but still wanted the appearance of attempting to save Bill. Although later in the film we realize that Amsterdam did come back to Five Points to avenge his father’s death, this seemingly heroic act shows that he himself wants to kill Bill. This also helps his plan to get close to Bill by enhancing his image, credibility, and loyalty.

After the wrestle for possession of the gun and a second shot got off, Amsterdam stared at the gun in disbelief, as if he could not comprehend what he had just done to a fellow Irishman.

When Bill tips his hat to Vallon to think him, Amsterdam hesitates before reciprocating the gesture and looks nervous and antsy. He pushes off the friendly hugs from those around him and storms off. He finds himself alone and proceeds to cry. He feels a strong guilt and sense of disloyalty to his Irish roots for getting one of his own killed.

This scene overall shows the internal struggle that Amsterdam undergoes while being so close to the man who killed his father. Amsterdam played up the perfect con by gaining Bill’s trust and moving up in the ranks.

First Alien Wave Summary

Race has always been a key determinant of aspects such as citizenship, beauty, and virtue in American history, but religious hatred is even more deadly than racism in Western culture. A combination of these two things is exemplified by the Irish Catholics in America during the 1800s. Because of their paleness in skin tone, Irish Catholics were regarded only slightly above blacks, Native Americans, and the Chinese on the social ladder, but were still seen as people to oppress and ridicule.

Irish Protestants did everything in their power to distinguish themselves from their Catholic brothers. Some American colonies forbid the practice of Roman Catholicism, denied citizenship, or even taxed citizens to endorse the established Protestant churches. People in power projected their anti-Catholic views through sermons, newspaper articles, journals, essays, and novels. Publications like Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk lead to the false belief that all Catholics were sacrilegious, sex-crazed alcoholics.

Anthropological studies and popular wisdom of the nineteenth century deemed the Irish as Celts, a subordinate race isolated from the Anglo-Saxon English. Many intellectuals of this era, like Thomas Carlyle, viewed the Irish as animalistic people whose purpose in the world was to be oppressed. Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that the Irish were not even a part of the Caucasian race and he expelled them. He considered them to be permanently at the bottom of the social pyramid with the African Americans and Chinese. Emerson along with cartoons and books bolstered the “Paddy” stereotype by reiterating their apelike ugliness and poor and violent drunkenness.

The Garrisonians and other abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Daniel O’Connell saw the parallels of hardships between the Catholic Irish and African Americans. They understood that these two groups’ injustices resulted not because of a flaw or disadvantage in race, but the oppression by other races. This perspective that blacks and the Irish were analogous was not mutual. The Irish detested the comparison and played the race card to up themselves above the blacks. They actively supported the proslavery Democratic Party with their right to vote and swinging fists.

The attacks on the Catholic Irish were not solely spread through the word of mouth. Henry Ward Beecher gave blatantly anti-Catholic homilies that led to the burning down of the Convent of the Ursuline nuns in Charlestown, which then in turn ignited other church burnings throughout New England and the Midwest. The strikes against the Irish grew bloody and violent with many deaths and other cruel punishments. The rise of the Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, more commonly known as the Know-Nothings, helped augment the nativist movement. Many members of the Know-Nothing Party were voted into office and enacted several unconstitutional legislatures that deterred immigrants from voting and displaced families from their homes.

After the election of Grover Cleveland in 1884, the violence towards Catholics diminished, but the Irish were still regarded as Celts, an inferior race.

Banished Children Journal

The first line of the essay says that memories come in various forms. They can be unique to a single person or shared with kin, a tribe, or a community. Memories are also like roads in some sort of way. One memory can lead to another one like a network of paths. Quinn suggests that memories are physical objects like genes passed down from a person’s parents. Each person’s memory bank is their own and unique to them because it is comprised of not only their own memories but the experiences of their ancestors. Quinn mentions that memories are either an “elixir, narcotic, stimulant, poison, [or] antidote.” This implies that a memory can affect the person in beneficial or harmful way. Memories of how a certain family or race was treated or what experiences it had in the past can either drive and motivate a person of that family or race or it can hinder and cripple them. Each person holds the victories and triumphs along with the pain and burdens of a family or race within themselves and must carry them each day.

This opening sentence informs the reader exactly how the various types of memories can affect a person and that it foreshadows what will be discussed throughout the piece. It shows that this essay will be about a person’s own story with influences of memories from their relatives, their friends, or other members of the same race or ethnic group.