Author: Anthony Viola

A Smolinsky’s American Dream

When did it all go down the drain? Life for the Smolinsky’s wasn’t bad before the young couple moved to New York from Russia. In fact, they were pretty well-off. But business went bad, and forced the two to make their way to the land of opportunity. What was waiting for them past Ellis Island can only be depicted as the saddest poverty story told, one that can cause any reader to become frustrated beyond words.

For Reb, the patriarch of the family, nothing was more important than the studying of the Torah. He titled himself the light between his people and God, and disregarded any shame that was cast among him. His own family muttered some nights in disgust about how hard they worked as women and how lazy and conceited he was on his hollow quest to be with God. Although he’s said so many times that riches meant nothing on Earth if it meant they were not awaiting in Heaven, he still carried on about finding his daughters rich entrepreneurs to marry. This was Reb’s American dream, coming to a land where he didn’t have to work, and marry off his daughters so he didn’t have to worry – the money they’d provide would give him his new business. The only sad part of his dream is it ruined the dream of his own children.

Through the eyes of Sara, we witness her three sisters all fall eagerly in love with men they couldn’t have. A poet, a businessman, and a pianist – all ready to take his girls for brides and all shunned by the bitterness of a stubborn, nonsensical father. They each dreamed of running away and chasing opportunity for all it’s worth. They dreamed of hard work for not only their husbands, but for their own independence.

As for Sara, her dream was similar to that of her sisters. The only thing that separated her from them was she had the will to escape. While all three of her sisters stuck true to their loyalty to their father, she cracked. It was no longer her priority to slave for him. It was her turn to make her dream into reality.

Gangs of New York: A Mournful, Foggy Night

Amsterdam (DiCaprio) is a character who lost his father early in the film. Skip forward 16 years, this same character is faced with several opportunities to seek revenge. He narrows in on one that empowers him to gain the trust of Bill (Day-Lewis), his father’s murderer. After given explicitly instructions to rob a ship, the scene that follows opens with a boat trailing through fog, carrying Amsterdam, his friend Jimmy, and several other members of the gang that works under Bill. This small clip solemnly fades into a shot of the dock, panning over several caskets and following a sobbing woman being consoled by a reverend. Amsterdam voices over the morbid clip, informing us that these are the bodies of soldiers while reminding us he has another job to complete. As Amsterdam and his friends board the larger ship, he comes across pools of blood which stuns him as he accidentally touched one.

So far, we are presented with a sad night of death, religious figures, and blood – three symbols that have already made a prominent presence in the movie thus far. As the scene continues with a man shooting a rifle, dying from a stab wound, and scaring the gang members back into the tiny boat, we are left with a recurring picture; one of a man on the brink of death attempting to send a final message. All of these factors are well-incorporated into the tale, however, we come across an external conflict that the gang is facing. Amsterdam and his comrades discover there is nothing on the ship to take.

While the rest of his crew wait in the smaller boat, Amsterdam decides he needs something to bring back to Bill to earn his trust. A close-up is shown of Amsterdam, thinking about what his next move should be. He places the knife of his dead father in his mouth and hoists the body up on his shoulders. At the last second, he throws the corpse into the boat and sells it to medical science. Upbeat folk music is heard as he receives payment by the scientists. He shows the coins to Bill, who complements the group for their efforts.  They are shown in the newspaper the next day and coined the “Ghoul Gang,” throwing Bill off-guard since he didn’t know what the word “ghoul” was. With the slow trust Amsterdam begins to build, he becomes one step closer to achieving the revenge he is seeking.

The Plight Against Irish and their Religion

Summary of “The First Alien Wave”

Throughout the last century, racial injustices were pressured on humans based on their skin color. However, the bigotry our history has succumbed itself to goes far past just skin color and hair texture. A key example of this was demonstrated by the racism Irish immigrants faced in the United States, based on characteristics ranging from their religion to the shape of their faces.

Most of the struggle Irish people were confronted with surrounded the years of the potato famine, where roughly 1 million people died of starvation and almost double that number crowded into North America. It led acclaimed writers to see the disaster for themselves, in which they in turn wrote about and published. Even Frederick Douglas saw Ireland at the time and compared it to his time as a slave on a plantation. The only differences he noted was their skin color and hair texture. But while many saw their pain and did not mind them migrating to the States, other people hated them because they followed the Pope and didn’t meet the Anglo-Saxton standards already set up.

Soon after the Irish began to move to America, larger publications were written about them as a form of propaganda, ensuring more people turned against them. One of the writers was Ralph Waldo Emerson who expelled the Irish as being White in his writings. He even coined the term “paddy,” which became a familiar way to discriminate against Irish natives.

Later, magazines were published to promote Anti-Catholicism and hatred towards Irish immigrants. They revealed harsh cartoons that compared them to Africans and portrayed them as Ape-like. These enhanced the “Paddy” stereotype that Emerson created. Others, like The Protestant, focused on tearing apart the Catholic religion as a whole.

A book following this pattern comes second only to Uncle Tom’s Cabin as America’s most popular book. Maria Monk: The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life told the supposed true story of author Maria Monk who claimed a priest was raping her and her colleagues. It acted as evidence to those who were Anti-Catholic to publically turn against the church more, although the story was dispelled soon after by further investigation. Following this, Catholic churches were burnt down all over the country by hate groups. One was known as the Know-Nothings.

A group named by the fact that they pretended to “know nothing” if asked if they are associated with the group, they specifically targeted their hatred upon Catholics, alcohol, and political corruption. At their peak, they managed to get their members office as governors of seven different states, roughly 75-100 congressmen, and many other state and local positions. They attempted to put in place several laws surrounding their prejudice ways, but rarely succeeded. The most notable accomplishment of a Know-Nothing in office was Massachusetts enacting a law to inspect Catholic convents and schools.

As time passed, the legacy of the Know-Nothings began to dissipate as their ideals became less followed. When the issue of slavery became the more prominent issue at the time, the politicians who were part of the Know-Nothing party each chose sides and those in the North joined the Democratic party, while Southerners became Republican. Although time passed, the racism against Irish continued to the end of the 19th century. Many African Americans remained enslaved during this time, but one thing was for certain, the picturesque figure embodied as a Saxon remained the ideal American, while Celts and Africans remained in the shadows, although Irish had one thing over their counterparts – and that was their whiteness.

 

Memory Versus History

Read the 1st  sentence carefully and analyze what bearing does it have on the essay.

Peter Quinn had very little recollection of his ancestors prior to penning this text. The first few words of this piece is, “memory is unique to each of us” which is accurate in many different contexts. What I have experienced in my life is much different than any one else. The story to follow had nothing to do with his firsthand remembrance of events, but rather the investigation into the lives of the people who preceded him. In the same sentence, he makes the argument that memory is inherit, in that it flows through us in our “bloodstream, elixir, narcotic, stimulant, poison, antidote.” This could be interpreted as an innate feeling formed within us before we even see the light of day. He finishes there and turned the text into a first person narrative of his discovery of his family rooting back to Ireland.

There are few sentences in this essay that resemble the poetic language used in the opening one. In fact, the only similar one discusses memory as well, where he states, “Memory is more than a recollection of discrete events … Memory is a reel of endless, haunted gossip, a montage of snippets, remnants, patches…” It captures the attention of his readers, but more importantly, leaves them questioning where he is going with calling memory “an intravenous inheritance.” Basically, he doesn’t see memory as strict as history, but rather the unnoticeable things that could be linked to a specific time. He mentioned when he did this research, he tried to let go of the history behind it. Instead, he wanted to encompass the ordinary of his ancestry. The opening sentence holds much of the story on its shoulders, because without it, it simply becomes another boring tale of how man took the time to learn about his ancestors and now wanted to share those tales with the world. And without it, we wouldn’t understand wholly what Quinn’s intentions were – they weren’t to simply learn about dates and facts, but rather the spirit of the people who down the line created him.