Author: Jeffrey Delfin

Defining The “American Dream”

For most immigrants, coming to America means sacrificing the comfort and civility of their homelands to venture out into the uncharted territory of the Western world. People give up friends, family, and even stability to move to a place for the promise of what is known as “the American Dream.” There is the ideal of achieving that grand opportunity; for the chance to live among the privileged and see one’s image of reaching fortune and success come to life. However, what the American Dream has in illusiveness, it lacks in execution. For most, the harsh reality of life in America dawns in an age of “survival of the fittest” mentality. In Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, the protagonist Sara, along with her father Reb and her sister Mashah, each have their own interpretations of what is means to live “the American Dream.” From self-invention to religious absolution to even unachievable beauty, each character’s interpretation of the maxim is influenced by what they value most and how they interact with the family around them.

Sara’s American Dream is molded by the deterioration of her family at the expense of her father’s iron reign. As she watches all three of her older sisters’ dreams for both love and the future fade away into the visions that their father has created for them, Sara realizes just how much she wants to be independent from the bounds of her family and her culture and create the person that she was meant to be. Sara is the most resistant to her father’s religiously-backed tenets, which is why it crushes her to see the potential in Bessie, Mashah, and Fania be devolved into something of her father’s creation. She strives to be a self-sufficient woman and to pursue her passions and goals, such as becoming a school teacher, at all costs, regardless of the consequences that she will face from her father.

On the other hand, Sara’s father Reb Smolinsky is dedicated to only one dream, and that is serving the teachings of his God and to live the most holy life on earth in order to prepare for what awaits him in heaven. For him, America is just a transient place; one that is meant to act as the intermediary between the religious nirvana he expects in the afterlife. While he does appreciate the money he receives once he wins the case against his landlady and the wages from his daughters, his primary concern is being the purist, most orthodox follower of Judaism. His religious background serves to juxtapose the Western secularism that Sara follows and also acts as a ironic motif throughout the plot, as all the troubles that the family faces are at the hands of Reb and his zealous religious reasonings.

Lastly, Mashah’s American Dream is laid out in her continual search for beauty. In the earlier passages of the novel, Sara describes her sister as caring more for her own image than the image of the family. Mashah is concerned only for her appearance and the upkeep of her lavish belongings. Because of her superficiality, Mashah dreams to marry a man who matches her in beauty and supplies her heavily in wealth. She wishes for a life greater than the one that her family can provide her, and one that is ornate and adorned with visual aesthetic and symbols. However, as with her other sisters, her dreams are crushed when her father chases the one man that she could ever love, and transforms into a being without care, faced with reality of the world that she lives in and the condition that she created for herself.

The Butcher’s Revenge and Amsterdam’s Mark: Scene Analysis

One of, if not, the most powerful scene in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York is the storyline’s climax at the Chinese theater during the 18-year anniversary of the fight at Paradise Square, and the sequence starting from Bill’s attempt to kill Jenny during the knife-throwing event and ending at the Butcher’s marking of Amsterdam. The tension comes to a rise as Johnny’s exposes Amsterdam to Bill, thus inciting the rage of the Butcher that manifests itself within the tense spectacle of his and Jenny’s knife-throwing act. The fast-paced jump cuts between Bill’s throwing of the knives and Jenny’s reaction to her near-death encounters escalate the gravity of the situation in a way that heightens the audience’s fear for Jenny’s life. The closely cropped shots of each character’s face and the dimly saturated hues that cover the setting further accentuate the darkness of the subject matter, highlighting the insidious nature of Bill. Furthermore, the rhythm of the strings in the background adds to the suspense of the entire sequence, testing the boundaries of Amsterdam and Jenny’s relationship as the latter’s life is held in the balance of the former’s greatest enemy.

The dialogue that comes from Bill serves as an ominous warning of what is to come later on in the sequence, as he taunts Jenny with death in front of an animalistic live audience. The knife-throwing act is clearly a routine that they both have performed before, but with the newfound knowledge that the Butcher has of Amsterdam’s true identity, the trick becomes one filled with lethal intent and venomous rage. In that moment, the audience as well as the characters are able to truly see how Bill earned the title of “the Butcher.” Witnessing the sadistic triumph from Bill, Amsterdam advances in his agenda to murder Bill in one of the most dramatic scenes in the movie. Scorsese uses the image of fire to both as the focal point of the shot as well as manipulate the lights and shadows cast on the characters to spotlight certain people, specifically Bill and Amsterdam. Fire, being a symbol of power and destruction, serves as prelude and catalyst to the battle that ensues with the two men. In a fast-paced sequence, the chaotic transition from Amsterdam throwing the knife to Bill countering with his own attack emphasizes the severity of each person’s actions and confirms the inevitable turn of events.

The culmination of Amsterdam and Bill’s struggle hits its peak when Bill gains the upper hand over Amsterdam, and proceeds to showcase both Amsterdam’s deceit and Bill’s dominance in front of a crowd of rowdy spectators. In this moment, the theater becomes an arena, where strangers are calling for a gruesome death by the notorious Butcher. The tracking shot of the butcher knife in the air and landing next to Amsterdam’s head parallels the Jenny sequence with the knife throwing, thus emphasizing Bill’s superiority over everyone in the room. Scorsese makes it known just how brutal the world that the story is set in is, and how power is only achieved through violence and through loyalty.

This scene in particular drew my attention because of the execution of the shots taken to create a tense buildup of anxiety and suspense to the ending shot of Bill marking Amsterdam with the hot poker. Even after all the beatings that he gives Amsterdam, Bill gets the last laugh by putting salt in the wound of the victim, branding him as his own and essentially making him an outcast from his society. It is this intensity that creates the most vivid imagery and metaphor within Scorsese’s film.

The History of White People by Neil Irvin Painter

In his chapter, “The First Alien Wave”, Painter discusses the notion of anti-Catholicism as having “a long but often bloody national history” (Painter, 132) and one that precludes the modern day anti-black sentiment. The nativist rhetoric established in nineteenth century America caused a division between “Scotch Irish” or Irishmen who were protestant over Catholic Irish.

This rhetoric had been established since the colonial era, in which British colonies had provided various forms of anti-Catholic resentment, such as immigration barriers and extraneous taxes on religion (Painter, 133). Following the Irish potato famine, European intellectuals like Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont toured Ireland and considered the conditions they found as “the very extreme of human wretchedness” (Painter, 134). From their eyes, these intellectuals considered “the history of the poor as the history of Ireland” (Painter, 134). Moving back to American societal standards, there was a constant juxtaposition between Irish Celts and Black Negroes, centered around their assumed animalistic nature, bringing analogies such as “Am I not a horse, a half-brother?” (Painter, 135). The influx of Irish emigration to America caused a retaliatory nativist movement, accelerating the development of groups like the Native American Party to provoke anti-Catholic conspiracy theories that the Irish were just a tool of the Pope “for the sole purpose of converting [them] to the religion of the Popery” (Painter, 136). Anti-Catholicism also attacked the practices of Irish priesthood, claiming that nuns in convents were raped and beat to death by their religious superiors. Additionally, Irish were claimed to have “drank liquor, partied on the Sabbath, and had near-constant sex—especially in their convents and churches.” (Painter, 136). While none of these accusations were actually true, the feeling of Irish resentment had already surged within nativist communities.

Tensions rose to a climax as Western unemployment and poverty spurred political unrest in Europeans, insinuating the translation that class conflict meant race war (Painter, 137). There was also a large disparity in how different immigrants, in particular Germans versus Irish, were observed under the scope of American society. German immigration had a relatively non-controversial assimilation, in part due to their well-established economic status once crossing over (Painter, 138).

By the nineteenth century, anti-Irish propaganda had manifested itself into a cultural stereotype that severely damaged the image of Irish immigrants. As American intellectual Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, the “Paddy” was a figure of “drunkenness, brawling, laziness, pauperism, and crime” and one that propagated the idea that the Irish were a naturally inferior race that was considered separate from Anglo-Saxons (Painter, 139-140). Cartoons were also used to exaggerate the differences between the “civilized” Protestant and the “ape-like” Irish as well as slang terms like “paddy wagon” and “Paddy Doyle” that reinforced criminalized stereotypes (Painter, 141-142). The “black-Irish parallel” was one that highlighted throughout the course of American socio-economics. In the political spectrum, both blacks and Irish were seen as “equally unsuited for the vote during Reconstruction.” However, abolitionists identified with the common “oppression” that both parties experienced at the hands of white Protestant Americans, going as far to claim that “the Irish need only ‘black skin and wooly hair, to complete their likeness to the plantation Negro’” (Painter, 143). On the other hand, Irish immigrants moved to distinguish themselves from the black impoverished by using their skin to “elevate white…over black” (Painter, 143). In fact, the Irish were known to be proslavery and anti-abolition in order to push themselves higher up the social hierarchy, so much so that during the 1863 draft riots, Irish Americans attacked African Americans in an effort to reject black-Irish commonality (Painter, 143).

In terms of Celtic literature, French philosopher Ernest Renan and English poet Matthew Arnold both wrote works discussing the tragic histories of the Irish through exceedingly chauvinistic descriptions. In short, both write about the Irish incapacity and the deficits that they face in politics and in lifestyle (Painter, 145).

The nativist movement in America grew exponentially as numerous cases of arson against Irish churches and discriminatory literacy tests ran rampant across New England. The “know-nothing” nativist group operated under the conditions of slowing down Irish development and combatting issues such as liquor and political corruption. The group grew prominent; inciting riots and harassing “non-Americans” across the country in an attempt to retain American purity.

Drawing Parallels and Borders in Atrocities

Quinn draws the comparison between the Holocaust and the famine emigration initially to highlight the impact of the Famine on the Irish population and the magnitude of its catastrophic effect on Irish culture and lifestyle. Quinn’s juxtaposition is based on the fact that both events affected an exorbitantly large amount of people over a prolonged period of time, in a way that completely altered the foundation of the targeted societies. The Famine forced the Irish poor to find assistance from another external source because of England’s lack of concern for a “source of national weakness” (Quinn, 53). The Holocaust both shattered the physical and cultural bases of Jewish life; shifting the focus from living in isolation to surviving from the ashes of near extinction.

However, Quinn later refutes this parallel to draw distinction between what the purpose behind each atrocity was. The Famine started as a natural disaster in Ireland’s main subsistent crop, only to then be used by English aristocracy as an opportunity to dictate Irish populations and policies by hindering them from receiving external assistance for their subsistence strategies. Essentially, the Famine served as a social control on the socio-economic status of the Irish people within the context of the English domain. Additionally, there was no debate as to the extent of damage the famine left the Irish community; a large portion of Irish were lost to the seven-year ordeal. On the other hand, the Holocaust was a premeditated attack on a specific group of people (Jews) in order to completely eliminate the chosen population, otherwise known as genocide. The level of impact here is more much substantial and the intentions of the oppressors are much more actively lethal. There was no question as to what was being done: systematic murder. Survivors and offspring from the event took years to piece together exactly how awful Hitler’s actions were and how exactly it impacted each individual’s life.