English 015 - Americans Abroad
Diana Heald
Passports and Identities
Category: 4E: O'Brien | Diana Heald
The United States passport is one of the most popular symbols of American travel abroad. Passports allow travelers to truly assume Western identities and label them as foreigners; traveling without a passport is somewhat suspect, if not illegal. As the travelers in The Sheltering Sky and Going After Cacciato move...
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Posted by on December 15, 2003 at 12:10 PM
Junk Food
Category: 08B: Going After Cacciato | Diana Heald
Both in battle and on the road to Paris, the soldiers in Going After Cacciato yearn for home. While they occasionally admit to missing their families and hometowns, the soldiers most often express their homesickness in both situations by relating their cravings for junk food. When they emerge from hidden...
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Posted by on December 01, 2003 at 10:56 PM
Life and Death Under The Sheltering Sky
Category: 3E: Bowles | Diana Heald
Death is an ever-present factor in Kit and Port’s lives, sometimes a small, dark pinpoint in the distance, at other times overwhelmingly great and foreboding. The signs of death are everywhere: in the sickly children crawling on mounds of garbage, in the rotting, spoiled food served at every meal, in...
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Posted by on November 25, 2003 at 12:56 PM
The Sheltering Sky and Mortal Existence
Category: 07B: The Sheltering Sky | Diana Heald
In The Sheltering Sky, life and death are inextricably linked. Bowles’s “sheltering sky” refers to the sky Kit can see with her own eyes, which represents mortal existence and behind which is a blackness that is death. In order to reach death, one must “[r]each out, pierce the fine fabric...
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Posted by on November 13, 2003 at 01:45 PM
Formlessness and Substance
Category: 06B: The Sheltering Sky | Diana Heald
The very first thing Port notices about Eric Lyle is how completely nondescript he is: Eric has a “formless face which [is] saved from complete nonexistence by an undefined brown beard” (p. 53). After Port acquaints himself with Mrs. Lyle, he notes that she “[is] even more objectionable than her...
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Posted by on November 06, 2003 at 01:13 PM
Isolation and Desperation
Category: 2E: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald | Diana Heald
“He wasn’t young anymore, with a lot of nice thoughts and dreams to have by himself. He was absolutely sure Helen wouldn’t have wanted him to be so alone” (Fitzgerald p. 402). In The Sun Also Rises and “Babylon Revisited,” Hemingway and Fitzgerald, respectively, explore the loneliness of American travelers...
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Posted by on October 30, 2003 at 04:06 PM
False Sense of Ownership
Category: 05B: Babylon Revisited | Diana Heald
“It was not an American bar any more—he felt polite in it, and not as if he owned it. It had gone back to France” (p. 385). In this line, Fitzgerald summarizes the feelings of the Lost Generation, as personified by Charlie: by the late 1920s, they have realized that...
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Posted by on October 23, 2003 at 01:42 PM
Courage and Comfort in The Sun Also Rises and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Category: 04B: Autobiography of ABT | Diana Heald
In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein quietly exudes confidence in much the same way as Jake in The Sun Also Rises. Unlike his friends, Jake converses easily in both French and Spanish, and is quite knowledgeable about bullfighting, the art form that is most relevant to...
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Posted by on October 14, 2003 at 11:45 AM
Jake: Almost a Hero
Category: 03B: The Sun Also Rises | Diana Heald
Hemingway’s characters in The Sun Also Rises come from diverse backgrounds, but they come together because of their shared unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Brett is one of the more compelling characters in this respect because of her wit and charm, in spite of her somewhat pathetic lifestyle. Hemingway establishes Jake as...
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Posted by on October 07, 2003 at 12:30 AM
Culture and Pretension in The Innocents Abroad and Daisy Miller
Category: 1E: Twain, James, Wharton | Diana Heald
For many years, Americans have traveled to Europe in search of something that is not supposed to be available in their country: culture. Many Americans have found that first-hand knowledge of the world’s more established societies is necessary in order to become a well-rounded, “cultured” person. The travelers in Mark...
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Posted by on October 02, 2003 at 01:18 PM
The Colosseum in "Daisy Miller" and "Roman Fever"
Category: 02B: Roman Fever | Diana Heald
In both “Daisy Miller” and “Roman Fever,” the Colosseum looms in the horizon, literally and figuratively. Although the dangers in the two stories are different, for both Daisy and Mrs. Ansley the Roman ruins serve as an illicit meeting place and as an escape from the constraints of American expatriate...
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Posted by on September 22, 2003 at 07:53 PM
Daisy Miller
Category: 01B: Daisy Miller | Diana Heald
Mark Twain and Henry James were both Americans abroad during the same time period, yet their observations and outlooks differ in their regard for the citizens of the countries they visit. While Twain is primarily concerned with describing his interactions with foreigners and his observations of their cities and villages,...
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Posted by on September 15, 2003 at 07:21 PM
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Category: Diana Heald
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Posted by on September 15, 2003 at 01:41 PM