By Alexandra Cooper, Class of 2017

Somewhere in the depths of my closet, I have a box filled with medals and trophies. If an alien or post apocalyptic species were to inspect the contents, they would likely believe that I was some athletic prodigy. However, the reality is that I participated in a lower school soccer league where there were more kids wearing Juicy Couture tracksuits than there were wearing cleats or shin guards. The discrepancy between the future humans’ interpretation and the reality is not to suggest that our earth dwelling successors are primitive or have a totally foreign reward system. Rather, it suggests that we, current, pre-apocalyptic humans are the ones with a warped reward system.

The kids with some potential—who maybe did wear cleats and shinguards—got trophies. The kids that worked hard got trophies; and so did the kids that cried, the kids that rarely showed up, and the kids that hardly even knew the rules of the game. In other words, every player—regardless of effort, athletic prowess, attendance, or team spirit—was rewarded. When the coaches based their teaching philosophy on the belief that “everyone is a winner”, I approached the team with the same attitude. Why should I try extra hard when I would receive a trophy regardless? Of course there are other factors that could and should motivate me in the same way that sparingly distributed trophies may have, but my six year old self did not acknowledge those factors. It is much easier to be motivated by the prospect of some tangible prize than it is to be motivated by the prospect of a sensation.

Without any sense of competition, the trophies I “won” were essentially meaningless. How could I win something in an environment void of any and all competition? The answer is that I could not. By definition, in order to win someone else needs to lose. One’s pride can only exist if someone else’s does not. My experience can attest to that: there was nothing exciting or rewarding about getting a trophy when everyone else did too. Yes, the pursuit of happiness and pride is far more admirable than the superficial pursuit of a trophy. However, those--like the coaches--who believe everyone should receive a trophy are the truly superficial ones. Giving each child a trophy in order to perpetuate some delusion that everyone is equal is a worse dead than competing for a trophy.

Perhaps in his past life John Rawls was a girls soccer coach. His emphasis on fair distribution, his disregard of a group’s range of abilities, and his eagerness to craft a sense of equality all make him perfect for the job. I imagine that living in a Rawls-ian utopia would fill me with the same lackluster feelings as my soccer experience. If I consider the latter to be a microcosm of the former, then I can see that--unlike as Rawls suggests--happiness and pride are not always enough to motivate people. Perhaps I am too shallow to truly embrace such a non-materialistic lifestyle however, I do not object to the Rawls-ian utopia exclusively on superficial grounds. I would feel underwhelmed, or unsatisfied living in such an environment not because my happiness relies on a trophy or wealth, but because I believe that internal or personal satisfaction--while of paramount importance--should not eclipse external acknowledgements of success. If someone is more deserving of success than another, then the former individual should receive special acknowledgement. The superior individual should not be penalized (i.e not recognized) for the sake of the inferior individual’s equanimity. However, because of Rawls’s denunciation of the “wildcards” and his rejection of monetary gain this person would be left to him or herself to celebrate. Even this solitary celebration would be hard given that the very qualities that allow for success--i.e the “wildcard” qualities--are hard to acknowledge since they are considered to be negligible.

Although there are certainly unfair consequences associated with significant deviations from economic equality, I believe that it is ultimately more unfair to tamper with the natural and just process that results in such economic disparity. While well intentioned, giving everyone a trophy or equal wealth does not yield a more just system. Rather, it gives everyone something that they do not deserve by disassociating people from their actions. What you receive has nothing to do with you and everything to do with preserving equality. I ultimately believe that significant deviations from economic equality are morally justifiable, but perhaps not morally ideal.

Milton Friedman, an American economist, famously noted the distinction between freedom and equality when he said “a society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” What I find particularly poignant about this quote is Friedman’s ability to address the flaws of equality without dismissing it as an undesired quality. Rawls’s economic philosophies, while well intentioned, embody the first condition of Friedman’s quote. That is, they try to prioritize equality at the cost of both sincere equality and freedom.

According to Rawls, economic equality is the bedrock of a just society. If everyone has the same wealth, then it is fair for all; no one is disadvantaged or advantaged. However, giving everyone the same wealth assumes that everyone has the same needs. Being free means different things to different people, and a society that gives everyone equal wealth is assuming that everyone has the same notion of freedom. Making this decision for everyone robs them of their freedom and equality. While equality denotes acceptance, tolerance, and fairness it is important to consider those things that are dismissed in order to achieve equality. Rawls’s economic ideologies underscore the constraining potential of such forced equality. Those at the top (in terms of intellect, work capacity, skills, wealth, etc…) are forced to compromise or ‘round down’, and those at the bottom are granted status or wealth that they do not deserve. Rawls is willing to dismiss the natural factors that shape the social and intellectual hierarchy in order to secure such equality.

As Aristotle said, “the worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” When everyone--ranging from mediocre to stellar--receives a trophy, no one is really that content. As touched on earlier, personal satisfaction is ultimately of the utmost importance. However, that does not mean that it should supersede external recognition. Knowing where you stand, being able to determine how you and your work are received by others, and having others acknowledge you as you acknowledge yourself are all highly influential factors. I knew that I was not an equal with the more invested players on my team, and I did not need anyone to publicly pretend that I was. The distribution of trophies, a gesture meant to assert that we were all equals, actually served to further inequality. All should be treated equally, and that does not mean that everyone should receive the same trophy or wealth--it means exactly the opposite. Everyone should be treated according to what he or she deserves--based on character, work ethic, intellect, creativity, etc. While the gains may be unequal, the process by which individuals attained their wealth would be ‘equal’.

The equality that Rawls promotes has to do with the ends, rather than the means. In order to justify his ideology he suggests that the means, or the process by which people attain their wealth, is highly unequal or unjust therefore making it an inadequate system to determine wealth. Because some people have, for example, a greater capacity for hard work than others, they will have greater opportunity to achieve wealth. Rawls sees humans’ varying capacities as a problematic source of inequality and therefore, his suggestion to evenly distribute wealth is an attempt to reject such inequality.

Robert Nozick, on the other hand, prioritizes freedom over equality. His three principles on justice in holdings suggest that “if economic inequality is the result of informed, voluntary exchanges among individuals, then significant deviations from economic equality are morally justifiable” (Economic Justice powerpoint). Unlike Rawls, Nozick believes that economic justice depends on the just distribution or exchange of holdings. In prioritizing freedom, a society governed by Nozick’s principles would achieve both freedom and equality.

While Nozick and I would likely agree that equality should be emphasized in regard to the means rather than the ends, Rawls would argue that such an emphasis can be detrimental. When a society allows random and unfair factors to govern the system of success, the success that results is unfair as well. Giving everyone equal wealth shoots two birds with one stone: the unfair “wildcard” qualities are discounted for, and everyone has what they need to live. Rawls would argue that it is more important that everyone is financially stable rather than valuing individuals’ varying abilities. Furthermore, a society that strives for wealth and material items, according to Rawls, is greedy and shallow whereas a society that strives for knowledge and happiness is pleasant and more genuine. Everyone believes that “money does not buy happiness”, however no one is truly willing to give up the chase for wealth. In a society governed by Rawls’ beliefs, people are not fixated on wealth and can truly embrace this anecdote.

Although I respect Rawls’s vision of a more down to earth and non materialistic society, I ultimately believe that his disregard or discredit of individuality is highly problematic. In a 2014 article entitled The Benefits of ‘Binocularity’, social researcher Erik Parens’ addresses the growing influence brain imaging has on the criminal justice system and questions if “advances in neuroscience [will] move reasonable people to abandon the idea that criminals deserve to be punished.” In other words, does knowing that someone has, for example, a thyroid condition absolve the individual from his or her crime? What is particularly relevant about this article is that like Rawls’s work it challenges notions of culpability, the legitimacy of free choice, and how these factors influence our understanding of who deserves what. I am not exactly sure how I would respond to Parens’s question, however I do believe that people have to take responsibility for their actions. One’s actions are an extension of the individual’s character and so if someone has to be punished or rewarded, then it makes most sense to give that punishment or prize to the person that sparked such action. If a society disassociates individuals from their actions, as Rawls promotes (when such actions result in wealth disparity), then individuals lose their sense of individuality.

In order for Rawls’s vision to work, society would have to be comprised of a group of highly secure and content individuals. Additionally, his theories could only be successful if you believe that the pursuit of happiness is just as, if not more, important than the pursuit of wealth. Rawls disregards the fact that people are driven by self interest, and that self interest is not solely defined by achieving happiness or knowledge but also wealth or status. To suggest that people’s internal satisfaction or pride is enough is to assume that the population is full of very secure individuals. Rawls believes that truly content people do not need material incentives or prizes; the prospect of personal satisfaction is enough. In prioritizing personal pride over external recognitions, Rawls criminalizes superficiality. He would assert that those who strive for materialistic items or wealth are trying to fill a self satisfaction shaped void with material items; truly happy and secure individuals would not have such superficial wants. However, is being superficial really the worst thing? If the prospect of wealth motivates someone to pursue a project or job, should that person be condemned for the thing that initially prompted him or her to get involved? Rawls would argue that people should be motivated by the prospect of happiness, but based on the amount of people who are in jobs that they do not like it seems that wealth is a more compelling prospect.

Work cited:

Aristotle. "A Quote by Aristotle." Blog post. Goodreads. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 June 2017. <http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1261749-the-worst-form-of-inequality-is-to-try-to-make>.

Friedman, Milton, M. H. Peston, Peter Jay, Nigel Lawson, and Neil Gordon Kinnock. Created Equal. N.p.: n.p., 1980. Print.

Ideas discussed from Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State, and Utopia”

Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State and Utopia. N.p.: Blackwell, n.d. Print.

Parens, Erik. "The Benefits of 'Binocularity'." The New York Times. The New York Times, 28 Sept. 2014. Web. 12 June 2017. <https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/the-benefits-of-binocularity/?_r=0>.

Ideas discussed from John Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice”

      Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. New Delhi: Universal Law Co, 2013. Print.

By Ethan Cobb, Class of 2017

In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow, a European seaman, tells the story of his journey up the Congo River to the heart of Africa, where the famed and mysterious Kurtz, a trader in ivory, resides. In the novella, Conrad develops the dichotomy of  the savage versus the civilized and twists that binary upside down: he undermines the idea that white imperialists are superior to Africans. The acts of savagery are committed by white Europeans, rather than native Africans; it is the Europeans who kill and plunder. The dichotomy between the savage and the civilized is also the dichotomy between nature and civilization. Conrad collapses this binary as well; in his dark vision, nature and civilization are both deadly forces.

In the beginning of the novella, Conrad simultaneously sets up and undermines the dichotomy of the civilized versus the savage through the unnamed narrator’s description of the Europeans who explore and trade with the “savage” world. The narrator describes the Company Director, who is also the captain of the ship he and Marlow are travelling on, in admiring terms: “He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom” (1). This brooding gloom is not the savage, wild sea though; it is actually London, a commercial and cultural European center, the “biggest, and the greatest, town on earth” (1). And the true work of the apparently admirable and trustworthy Captain/Director is business, presumably with the merchants and bankers of London. Darkness does not surround the “luminous estuary;” it surrounds the center of civilization.  In this sense, the binary between savagery and civilization seems to collapse. Similarly, the narrator’s description of great British explorers also simultaneously establishes and reverses the dichotomy of savage and civilized.  The narrator calls them “the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled—the great knights-errant of the sea” (2). Sir Francis Drake, the “great knight-errant,” was also a slave trader and privateer who was involved in an English action in Ulster where the English massacred 600 Irish men, women, and children after they surrendered. Conrad collapses the binary, showing the savagery that exists inside civilization.

There is another aspect of the dichotomy between savagery and civilization: the binary between the vitality of nature and the deadliness of civilization. Conrad establishes the Company headquarters in Belgium as a symbol of civilization- science, commerce, ideas of progress, cold white reason- but also as a symbol of death. The Company is located in a city that Marlow compares to a “whited sepulcher” (7), thus associating white European civilization immediately with death. The Company is colorless and silent, unadorned and seemingly passionless.  It sits on a street characterized by “dead silence” (13). The only colors Marlow mentions are black and white. The staircase is “swept and ungarnished, as arid as a desert” (13). The woman in the outer room wears a dress “as plain as an umbrella-cover”  (13) and the chairs Marlow sees are also plain. The only note of color, in contrast, is the “shining” map of Africa, full of reds, blues, orange and purple. The colors mark the places where the Company is doing business, extracting wealth.

     The Company is also associated with science and reason, prime components of the European civilization. Marlow is examined by a doctor who measures his head with calipers and quotes Plato. But everything - science, reason, courage - is subordinated to the motive of profit. Marlow notes that there is “something ominous” about the atmosphere: “It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy” (8).  The conspiracy is the scheme to plunder Africa while pretending to civilize and raise up its native population.  The doctor conversing with Marlow over civilized vermouths “glorified the Company’s business” (8) and the profit-seeking Company dominates the city: “It was the biggest thing in the town” and everybody Marlow meets “was full of it” (7).  The Company intends to “run an oversea empire, and make no end of coin by trade” (7).   However, the Company claims its motives are to civilize the natives, an idea which is widely accepted. Sitting with his aunt next to a cozy civilized hearth, Marlow says his aunt sees him as “Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk … she talked about ‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways’” (17). This is another dichotomy: between what is said and what is actually done.

The Company’s hypocritical veneer of a humanizing and civilizing mission is central to its success as a commercial enterprise. The Company, in effect, is the doorway to the riches of Africa, and at that doorway, sits a guardian, a woman, who seems to be the epitome of civilization with “a starched white affair on her head… and silver rimmed spectacles” (13). The woman, like his aunt and women in general, is, according to Marlow,  “out of touch with the truth” (10). Sitting alongside her is another woman; the two are “guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall” (8). Marlow notes that the face of the woman in spectacles expresses an “indifferent placidity” (13).  Marlow is troubled by that look; the woman is indifferent both to the human suffering the Company is causing thousands of miles away and to the likely possibility that the men- “ youths with foolish and cheery countenances”- who are employed by the Company will die while serving it (15). In their naiveness and indifference to human suffering, the women are enabling death.

In contrast to the cold, sterile, criminal “civilized” European environment is the so-called savage land of Africa. Africa is expansive and teeming with life: “The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life… ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence” (26). In contrast to the “white sepulcher” of civilization, Marlow describes Africa frequently as dark and ominous- its coast “so dark-green as to be almost black” (10), its interior “the depths of darkness” (15). Although the historical meaning of darkness in relation to Africa is that Africa is primitive and removed from the “light” of reason and civilization with people therefore, closer to dark primal emotions, darkness actually has many meanings in the story. Darkness is related to nature; nature is often a kind of dark, malign force that resists human efforts, including colonialism: “Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair” (11). Nature, which is the force that brings life into the world, also brings death. The vital vegetation of the jungle both thrives and rots.  Nature is not just the colorful life that the map at Company headquarters symbolizes, it is also death and darkness.

Another meaning of the darkness may be that Africa is dark because white imperialists are both metaphorically and actually projecting their dark, evil impulses on the land: “this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention” (30). However, the white imperialists don’t just project evil onto the idea of Africa, they commit evil by their actions. While claiming to bring civilization to Africa, the Europeans cause human suffering and create wreckage.  On his journey up the river to the outer station, Marlow describes a scene of “inhabited destruction”: “mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity”  (12). He sees an overturned railway truck, a product of civilization that is useful in Europe and could be useful in Africa except that it is wrecked and “looked as dead as the carcass of some animal” (12). Furthermore, European contact with the Africans, far from raising the Africans up to a higher level, often results in bringing the Africans down to a lower lever. Kurtz creates followers through his charisma and his followers are the ones who carry out his dark crazed commands. It is not clear whether Kurtz - and by extension, the white imperialists - are corrupting the Africans or just taking advantage of the Africans’ own savage impulses. In either case, the civilizers are not ennobling or elevating the natives; they are corrupting or exploiting them.

In addition to the physical and moral wreckage the Europeans create, they brutalize the natives savagely. Marlow describes an incident where Fresleven, a Swede, beat an elder African chief because he thought he was wronged over a deal involving two hens. Marlow sarcastically provides a reason for Fresleven’s petty brutality: “He had been a couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way” (6). Marlow’s direct speech to the reader (“you know”) seems to suggest that he actually finds the rationale quite absurd.  Later, when Marlow is with the manager of the central station, they hear a groan from an African. To this, a European remarks, “What a row the brute makes!... Serve him right. Transgression—punishment—bang! Pitiless, pitiless. That’s the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations for the future” (22).  The Europeans force the Africans to work to the point where they destroy their will to live. Marlow describes a “grove of death” (16) where the African workers “had withdrawn to die” (14). The Africans there are “nothing but shadows of disease and starvation” and are suffering “pain, abandonment, and despair” (14). Whether their actions or deliberate or impulsive, the Europeans, in search of profit,  are bringers of  death to Africa, transforming a grove - a place where things grow - into a graveyard.

Kurtz represents the ultimate inversion and collapse of the dichotomy between the savage and the civilized. Kurtz is half British and half French; as Marlow says, “All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz” (45).  Additionally, he embodies the achievements of civilization; the manager of the Company remarks that Kurtz is “a great musician” (66) and “an emissary of pity and science and progress” (67).  However, this model of civilization is also the epitome of savagery in the novella. Kurtz goes to Africa, supposedly on a civilizing mission, proclaiming that each trading outpost  “should be like a beacon on the road to better things, a center for trade of course, but also for humanizing improving instructing” (29). However, in Africa, he is consumed by power; he feels “there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased” (51). Kurtz throws himself into savagery and evil behavior that is so dark, it’s unspeakable. There are shrunken heads outside his hut and bloody savage rituals he leads the natives in, but Marlow won’t spell out what they are. Kurtz, the most successful ivory extractor the company has and a charismatic spokesman for the civilizing mission shows how savage the Company’s agenda really is. According to the Company manager, Kurtz’s inconceivable acts of savagery have “closed” the region to the Company, disrupting the Company’s flow of ivory and therefore have “done more harm than good to the Company” (57). In the face of Kurtz’s insanity and savagery, the Manager’s complaint is not that Kurtz brutalized the natives, but that his “method” was “unsound” (57). The true savages are the white European Company men. As Kurtz lays dying, Marlow provides an apt epithet for the civilized savage; he says he sees “a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear” (61).

In seeing how the dichotomy of the savage and the civilized is collapsed in Heart of Darkness, I realized that the relevance of this idea is not at all restricted to the period of history the novella depicts. Every form of imperialism throughout history has involved this binary. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin explore this concept in Postcolonial Studies; The Key Concepts: “the binary logic of imperialism is a development of that tendency of Western thought in general to see the world in terms of binary oppositions that establish a relation of dominance” (26). The imperialist power always claims that it is civilized and that the colonized need to be educated and raised up to their level. The United States used this kind of rhetoric in its annexation of Philippines, as it did, more recently, in a different way, in nation-building in Iraq. Political and social changes since Conrad’s time have been enormous; but what hasn’t changed is the savagery inside the human heart.  

Works Cited:

• Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. "Binarism." Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts., 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2000. Print. pp.  25-28.

• Conrad, Joseph.  Heart of Darkness.  Dover Thrift ed., New York City, Dover Publications, Inc., 1990.

By Alex Oreskes, Class of 2018

After the War of 1812, white Americans, Europeans, and Native Americans all knew with certainty that the United States of America did exist and probably would continue to exist for some time. For white Americans, this raised a few questions. What defines this new country? What defines the people who live in it? In brief, who are we? Many Americans had at least one answer in mind: not European. For American artists, this posed a challenge. They needed to make their own art that would define the nation.  The European Romantic movement had found inspiration in ruins embedded in nature, fertile ground for elegy and lamentation. However, there were no huge ruins in the United States. The only past there was to romanticise was nature itself and the Native Americans. Thus, American romanticists such as the Hudson River School built a romantic image of the past which contained scenes of sweeping nature and noble Indians, all of which were gone or disappearing. However, Native Americans like Elias Boudinot of the Cherokee Nation pushed back by trying to give a modern view of their people. By linking Native Americans to a romantic vision of the past, white American artists yoked Native Americans to a past that was fast disappearing in favor of progress, and allowed themselves to believe that the disappearance of Native Americans was just a part of the growth of their new nation. Native Americans themselves saw the necessity of trying to fight against this fatal romanticism, and made an effort to show they could live alongside the modern United States.

Thomas Cole, one of the most prominent artists in the Hudson River school, in particular linked Native Americans to his romanticized landscapes, which he viewed as rapidly, lamentably, disappearing. In his painting, Falls of Kaaterskill, a lone Native American stands on one side of a water fall, surrounded by the forest, across from a rainbow, and, beneath the falls, dead trees litter the rocks (Thomas Cole, Falls of Kaaterskill 1826). The Native American’s clothing is the same color as the surrounding leaves and Cole embeds him squarely in the middle of this natural scene. Moreover, the unstrung bow in his hand mimics the bare tree branches all around him. This Native American figure is unmistakably linked to the landscape surrounding him. However, the beauty of this landscape is disappearing, even in a still painting. A rainbow, a transient beauty, dominates the other side of the waterfall. Moreover, a large dead tree, an image of death and decay, takes up the bottom of the painting. Cole echoes these themes in another painting: The Clove, Catskills. A Native American figure stands on a rock with a shaded autumn forest in the middleground and a dead tree in a dark space to his right (Thomas Cole, The Clove, Catskills 1827). Here again, the reds of the figure’s dress match the reds of the fall trees. Moreover, the figure does not necessarily appear at first glance because he blends into the shadow cast by the trees. The dead tree and the darkness in the far right of the painting again add a dark note of mortality into this otherwise vibrant scene. In both paintings, the Native American figure is painted to make him appear as part of the landscape—not an inhabitant of the landscape. Cole makes an effort to remind the viewer the landscape is mortal and fragile, and Cole is very conscious that expanding American industry, such as the Catskill tanning industry, is destroying the nature he is immortalising. (When he painted the Kaaterskill falls, there was already a safety rail for tourists which he left out). By linking the Native Americans to the nature they live in, he also suggests that those Native Americans are casualties of American expansion. Even in trying to emphasize that nature should be preserved, Cole implies that the destruction of Native Americans goes hand in hand with the progress of the United States.

In the play, Metamora; or, the Last of the Wampanoags (which premiered in 1829), King Philip, the famous Native American leader who fought the New England colonies in 1675, is likewise treated as a noble warrior who found his defeat at the hands of expanding colonies—a defeat of equal parts tragedy and inevitability. As Metamora, who white settlers knew as King Philip, lies dying in the last scene, he gives his swan song:

My curses on you, white men! May the Great Spirit curse you when he speaks in his war voice      from the clouds! Murderers! The last of the Wampanoags’ curse be on you! May your graves and the graves of your children be in the path the red man shall trace! And may the wolf and panther howl o’er your fleshless bones, fit banquet for the destroyers! Spirits of the grave, I come! But the curse of Metamora stays with the white man! (Jill Lepore, The Name of War, 191)

Again, the piece links Native Americans to the land. Metamora wants the Great Spirit to speak “from the clouds” and the remains of the whites to be desecrated by “the wolf and the panther.” More importantly, the tragedy in this death monologue comes from how futile Metamora’s curse is and how inevitable his destruction. Metamora wants “the graves of your children [to] be in the path the red man shall trace.” However, the audience of Metamora—at least in the North, where Native American tribes had been mostly expelled—would be aware that such a reversal of fortune was near impossible. Moreover, to a Christian audience, “the Great Spirit” is fantasy and Metamora is invoking the wrath of an imaginary god. Metamora’s curse is sad and tragic because it never comes true. Furthermore, the white audience already knows Metamora as “the last of the Wampanoags” who has been destroyed by the onslaught of the “white men.” The dramatic irony of this scene allows the audience to see Metamora as foolish and, therefore, think of his defeat as naturally proceeding from his misconceptions. The scene is tragic because Metamora believes in a false god, and can not discern the tide of history. Thus, his destruction was inevitable. Even when a Native American is the tragic hero of a play, white artists burden him with the inevitability of defeat, and, while tragic, they ultimately portray these events as the natural course of history.

Native Americans, such as the Cherokee Nation, tried to escape from this characterization by proving that they could modernise their nation along a Western model and, in so doing, move their cultural presence into the present. In 1826, Elias Boudinot, a member of the Cherokee nation, only months after the Creek had lost much of their territory and with support for the removal of Native American tribes growing, asked a group of Philadelphian elites to support the Cherokee’s cause. In trying to prove the Cherokee had substantially modernized, Boudinot claimed that “there is not a single family in the nation, that can be said to subsist on the slender support which the wilderness can afford” (Elias Boudinot, An Address to the Whites, 1882). Boudinot wants to make it clear that the Cherokee no longer live off “the wilderness.” Thus, they are no longer like the hunters of Cole’s paintings, living amongst disappearing nature and have instead adapted to a more stable mode of life. To further this point, Boudinot describes how in sixteen years the number of pigs in the Cherokee Nation doubled, the number of wagons more than quintupled, and the number of ploughs sextupled (Boudinot, 1883). Boudinot is specifically trying to show that the Cherokee are now following a Western model of large scale agriculture and that they have abandoned their traditional ways. In so doing, Boudinot pushes the white American image of the Cherokee into the future by cutting their ties to the past which Cole and Metamora are romanticising. However, Boudinot is not challenging this tragic and romanticised vision of Native Americans in the past, only trying to escape from it. Boudinot says of the Cherokee Nation that “Their fathers were born in darkness, and have died in darkness; without your assistance so will their sons” (Boudinot, 1886). Boudinot freely states that the Cherokee were in “darkness” not long ago, and plays into the notion that they were tragically primitive. Moreover, he does not refute the idea that the natural course of nature will keep their sons in darkness. Boudinot is in essence agreeing that the Native Americans are tragically ignorant like Metamora and, therefore, vulnerable to an expansionist United States. Boudinot’s point of departure is that the “assistance” of white Americans could easily reverse this trend and the destruction of Native Americans is not an unavoidable consequence of the growth of the United States. Boudinot exemplifies that Native Americans did not passively accept their consignment to the past and, in fact, tried to make white Americans see them as part of the present.

However, we know that Boudinot’s efforts were not successful. Four years after he gave “An Address to the Whites”, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. Nine year after that, the Cherokee lost their legal battle and the government forced off their homeland in the Trail of Tears. In the end, the romanticists won out. In our day and age, most white Americans don’t think much about Native Americans. Perhaps they remember some of the history they learned in school. Maybe they have read Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales or seen Pocahontas or gambled at Mohegan Sun or are fans of the Washington Redskins. White Americans view today’s Native Americans as the remnants of a sad tragedy, but an irreversible one. This paper itself, by looking at Native Americans through their characterization in the past, is perhaps guilty of linking them to the past. Artists like Cole and Cooper probably didn’t think about the fact that they were launching an act of cultural warfare. In trying to find out what this new American nation was they obfuscated the lives of peoples who had lived on the continent for generations. The Cherokee did not disappear after they walked the Trail of Tears. They live to this day on the other end of that trail, in Oklahoma and North Carolina. It is not within the scope of this paper to discuss how Americans should move past this tyranny of images, but it is no secret that “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”

Work Cited

Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. New

York, NY: Vintage Books, 1999.

Boudinot, Elias. An Address to the Whites (as quoted in the Riverdale Constructing America

Reader). 1826.

By Samantha Silverman, Class of 2018

As I finished reading the final lines of Edith Wharton’s Souls Belated, I was interrupted by the faint thumping of heavy bass coming from my sister’s room. After a few seconds, I registered the unmistakable voice of Beyonce imploring “all the single ladies” to “put [their] hands up.” In an unusual moment of academic/pop culture hybridization, I began to wonder what the Queen B would think of the decision that Lydia makes at the end of the story. As I considered this question, I sauntered into my sister’s room and began listening to Beyonce’s story of being jilted by a former lover and deciding to embrace the freedom of being young, beautiful, and available. It was the first time I had bothered to listen to the lyrics carefully. By the last verse of the song, I realized that it's message is far more ambiguous than I had originally thought. When the song first came out, I made the simplistic assumption that it was a celebration of “singlehood” and the merits of being able to shamelessly shake your butt in the club. However, by announcing to the men of the world that “if [they] liked it then [they] should have put a ring on it,” Beyonce is implicitly suggesting that there is an ideal endgame for single women—marriage. It was with this realization that I began to imagine a fictional conversation between Beyonce and Lydia. How would Lydia respond to the slightly conservative, pro-marriage stance that Beyonce echoes by the end of “All the Single Ladies?” I have a feeling that Lydia would feel deeply conflicted by the central thesis of Beyonce’s song. Although Lydia seems to surrender to the idea of marrying Gannett by the end of the story, she does so with a heavy heart, knowing that she is agreeing to a life that will―sooner or later―strip her of the autonomy and freedom with which she hopes to live her life.

        When we first meet Lydia, she is in the same basic position as the recently “freed” protagonist in Beyonce’s song—excited to be unlocked from the shackles of her previous relationship and ready to indulge in the next phase of her life. Unlike the protagonist of the song, however, Lydia does not cry tears “for three good years” in response to her breakup. In fact, the reader gets the impression that Lydia’s divorce is a cause for celebration. Wharton writes that “Nothing mattered, in those first days of supreme deliverance, but the fact that she was free; and not so much...that freedom had released her from Tillotson as that it had given her to Gannett” (2). The word “deliverance” is particularly meaningful because it implies that Gannett rescued her from the soulless “fifth avenue” existence of the Tillotson family. The boredom that characterizes Lydia’s unremarkable first husband is so powerful that it fills every room of his family’s meticulously furnished mansion. It is in this luxurious prison that Lydia is forced to listen to her husband speak endlessly about such exciting and provocative topics such as how often “he wore galoshes on damp days, his punctuality at meals...his elaborate precautions against burglars and contagious diseases” and probably the regularity of his bowel movements (2). Compared to this living, breathing cure for insomnia, Gannett must have seemed like a shot of adrenaline. Gannet is literally the “brother” in the club who encounters Beyonce’s protagonist and reminds her of everything she is missing out on.

Unlike Beyonce, who suggests that the goal of a worthwhile courtship is to have a “ring put on it,” Lydia seems to perceive marriage as an institution that will stifle her independence—regardless of the quality of her husband. Gannett, who apparently belongs to the Beyonce-school of relationships, makes the gentlemanly—if annoying—assumption that marriage to Lydia is a forgone conclusion. Although he shares Lydia’s immediate desire to drift around Europe from villa to villa, he wants to eventually settle down. In a tense exchange between Lydia and Gannett, it becomes clear that they have drastically different interpretations of Lydia’s newfound freedom. To Lydia, freedom is the ability to pursue her life without having to consider the rules and obligations of married life. Gannett, however, views Lydia’s divorce as something that frees her up to marry him. When Lydia emphatically declares, “But I don’t want to marry you,” Gannett is devastated. Lydia tries to explain her stance by stating, “If I'd known you as a girl that would have been a real marriage! But now this vulgar fraud...upon a society we despised and laughed at ...don't you see what a cheap compromise it is?” (5). The words “despised and laughed at” are particularly relevant because they underscore the idea that marriage and married culture are concepts that both Gannett and Lydia have ridiculed as part of their courtship. One might even conclude that it is the rejection of the supposedly sacred institution of marriage that gives their relationship it's fire. They are like the unmarried modern couple that is able to go out till the crack of dawn, stumble into an Uber at 4am, and flip a symbolic middle finger at all the married couples who have to wake up early and go to Home Depot to buy paint for the new nurseries they are putting into their suburban homes. Lydia is repulsed by the idea of willingly giving up such freedom—or at least the late 19th century version of it—and rejoining the cult of married people from which she has just escaped. Gannett, however, seems unmoved by her perspective and utters words that hover over the rest of the story: “Life is made up of compromises” (6). Sadly, Lydia seems poised to make one of these compromises by the end of the story.

As the story progresses, Lydia comes to realize that the mores and expectations of late 19th century American high-society--particularly those that have to do with marriage--have embedded themselves so deeply within her mind that she cannot escape them. Lydia comes to this realization after spending some time at the Hotel Bellosguardo. In an attempt to avoid scandal, she and Gannett pretend to be married. However, the “act” eventually becomes a little too real as Lydia and Gannett comfortably settle into the rhythms of their fake married life. The terror and disappointment of this realization are illustrated when Lydia confesses that “I fancied it was for your sake that I insisted on staying because you thought you could write here; and perhaps just at first that really was the reason. But afterwards I wanted to stay myself [because] I loved it” (17). In acknowledging this uncomfortable truth, Lydia also confronts the possibility that she is a fraud. Though she never explicitly says so, she must wonder if she is like the “prototyp[ical] bores” that Gannet supposedly rescued her from (18). Rather than immediately surrendering to this idea, Lydia does the one and only thing that can rescue her from married life—she decides to leave Gannett. However, right before she walks onto the ship that will take her away from Gannett and all that he represents, something draws her back. I suppose there’s a possibility that she forgot her Dramamine, but I suspect it is something else. Quite frankly, I think what Lydia comes back for is security. Lydia is exchanging the uncertainty and danger of singlehood for the stability of marriage. She’s clearly not happy about it, but as she re-enters Gannett’s room, she surrenders to the familiar instead of embracing the unknown.

Let’s get back to the imaginary conversation between Beyonce and Lydia that I mentioned in the first paragraph. I think that the Queen B would console the soon-to-be Mrs. Gannett by reminding her that getting a “ring put on it” is a way to ensure that you are properly valued by your significant other. Unfortunately, I doubt this would make Lydia feel much better about her predicament.  She almost certainly loves Gannett but can’t have him on her terms. She may agree to marriage by the end of the short story, but it’s a moment of resignation. Although Lydia acknowledges that some small part of her likes the idea of being married to Gannett, this part will be in constant conflict with the part that almost gets on the boat. This is where my lack of experience prevents me from commenting further. I am not sure how someone can live her life constantly second guessing a decision as important as marriage. It seems like torture. Perhaps this is the lesson that I’ll keep stored in my memory bank.

By De Cece King, Class of 2019

La Conquista de Saner sirve de un libro de texto imaginativo de la historia de las conquistas españolas de Latinoamérica. El artista es de México y muchas culturas indígenas vivían en él antes de que España las conquistaran. Los españoles llegaron a Latinoamérica y explotaron a los indígenas para obtener su tierra, recursos naturales y labor. Los europeos eran violentos y usaron mucha fuerza para violarlas. La grafiti de Saner actúa como una media para explorar como los conquistaron. Muchas partes de la obra, como el esquema de colores, las acciones y la ropa de las figuras, y el fondo tienen connotaciones sexuales y violentas. Saner usa estos detalles para representar la violencia sexual como una metáfora de la dominación cultural de los españoles a las indígenas durante la colonización española de Latinoamérica.

La primera impresión de esta obra es de una escena romántica; las figuras se están besando y se abrazan enfrente de la puesta de sol. Las figuras están en el centro de la pintura. Sus acciones de lujuria son la punta de fuga. El rojo brillante de la puesta de sol transmite un tono de pasión activo y fuerte. Pero, una puesta de sol también representa un final o una muerte. En este caso, ella representa el final de romance y un aumento de mal. En la imagen, las acciones sexuales y los colores emocionales se oscurecen como el cielo después de una puesta de sol.

El abrazo, una acción del amor, es más violento que amoroso. La mano del español tiene mucha tensión. Saner separa sus dedos y están presionando sobre el indígena durante el abrazo de una manera violenta con fuerza. La mano del español es más grande que las del indígena y su cara está en el primer plano. El conquistador está más prominente en la obra, entonces está controlando la relación íntima con fuerza.

La ropa de las figuras promueve la dominación del español al indígena. El tocado de

l indígena es como una cubierta de un caballo y su cara es un animal. Entonces, como un español controla a su caballo, una bestia, el español controla el indígena. El español lleva armadura y parece preparado para una batalla. Entonces, el beso y el abrazo se convierten en armas para ganar una guerra y controlar al indígena, la bestia, en su espacio privado. También, la armadura es fría y de metal, contrastando fuertemente con la jungla exuberante y el indígena colorida, reflejando como él está metiéndose en la “casa” del indígena. El español usa acciones sexuales durante la intrusión. No hay amor. Las acciones son sólo violentas y sexuales, propagadas por el español para dominar.

La imaginería fálica de la flora, la composición y el apuñalamiento evocan la violencia sexual. Hay flores que representan la vida y la belleza inocente, pero las espinas las rodean y tienen connotaciones fálicas. Las flores están atrapadas por las espinas como el indígena está atrapada por el español, evocando la violencia sexual. También, las caras y los cuellos de las figuras crean un triángulo apuntado al indígena, penetrando su cuello. Finalmente, el apuñalamiento durante el abrazo es como una violación violenta, pervirtiendo el momento íntimo. La acción es como si el español estuviera marcando su control y declarando su poder sobre el indígena conquistada. Esta penetración es el máximo violencia, una conquista sexual, causando la muerte del indígena.

El tono de violencia sexual se refleja también en el esquema de colores de la flora y fauna. La jungla es predominantemente morada, un color cálido y frío, reflejando la mezcla de la lujuria y el mal en la violación. El rojo de las flores, todas colocadas bajo el español, tiene connotaciones de la sangre. Las flores en la sombra del español representan la sangre derramada del indígena resultante de conquista sexual. Entonces, la violación crea un clima sombrío y el tono se oscurece.

La bestia y el esqueleto en las esquinas de la jungla representan los estados mentales de las figuras principales durante el acto de la violencia sexual. La bestia y el esqueleto están en las sombras de la jungla, como el estado mental no es siempre explícito en una cara. La bestia a la izquierda representa el español y la bestia a la derecha representa el indígena porque los dos están detrás de la figura que representan como sus pensamientos escondidos. La bestia a la izquierda está burlándose y tiene una expresión hambrienta. Esta bestia refleja la lujuria de la sangre y los instintos animales y carnales del español. Y no se puede ver estos instintos reales en la cara del español, pero el apuñalamiento es una manifestación física de ellos. El esqueleto a la derecha tiene características similares a la cara del indígena; los dos tienen cavidades del ojo vacíos, reflejando la muerte emocional eventual del indígena. También, el esqueleto tiene un yelmo Español como si la muerte, que es representada por el esqueleto, es causada por la violencia sexual de los españoles y el yelmo es una firma de su trabajo malo.

Esta violencia sexual entre las figuras es un microcosmos de una violación cultural de los españoles a los indígenas. Los géneros de las figuras son ambiguos, entonces la pareja es una representación de la relación entre estas culturas y llevan símbolos de sus culturas. La figura a la izquierda lleva la armadura del estilo español. La figura indígena lleva joyería y plumas como muchas culturas indígenas en Sudamérica y América Central. También, lleva un cinturón con el maíz, una planta de la cultura indígena, y el corazón, un símbolo de los sacrificios de la sangre. El corazón no tiene sangre para representar una nación y una cultura destruidas.

El título es “La Conquista” porque los conquistadores convirtieron países en latinoamérica en conquistas sexuales para los españoles. El pillaje de las culturas era una meta, y nuestro mundo global resultó de deseos del poder político y económico durante esta época. Para obtener este poder, muchos países europeos extendieron su territorio durante el imperialismo y la colonización. Pero en este proceso muchos imperialistas y colonialistas destruyeron muchas culturas nativas. Hoy día el Oeste sigue aprovechándose de países menos desarrollados. Entonces, necesitamos preguntarnos, ¿Qué es más importante, el poder o la moralidad?

Bibliografía

Flores, Edgar “Saner.” La Conquista. 2013, graffiti, Festival Cheminance, Fleury les Aubrais,

France.

By Molly Fallek, Class of 2019

The Cold War dominated international affairs from the end of World War II until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. For more than forty years, the struggle between East and West, communism and democracy, the United States and the Soviet Union, colored the lives of people around the world. The lengthy Cold War -- and the occasional proxy hot wars it entailed -- can be traced to American policies established during the Truman Administration, most notably the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan constituted the first, unofficial battle of the Cold War and its adoption ensured that the world would be divided into increasingly separate spheres. The plan became the centerpiece of American foreign policy during the Cold War era; it helped America gain strategic allies, promote capitalism and, at all costs, impede Communist expansion.  The Marshall Plan, an articulated, long-term strategy borne of the policy of Containment, aimed to bolster the economies within the United States’ area of influence and deter communist expansion thus dividing the world into separate, competitive blocs.

The physical and economic destruction caused by World War II created an unprecedented level of instability that left Europe politically vulnerable. The European nations that had participated, many of which were crucial to the balance of power in Europe prior to the war, saw their infrastructure, economic institutions, and militaries devastated. Germany, including the once vibrant city of Berlin, was in ruins: only around 25 percent of its buildings remained standing after the War. Conditions were not much better in France, Italy, or other countries on the continent. Italy, for instance, could not produce enough food to feed its citizens. Even England, which had previously dominated the international markets and was the pre-war political superpower, was reduced to a second-tier power. The pre-existing political and economic hierarchy in Europe was destroyed, leaving a void that the United States and the Soviet Union would compete to fill.

Unlike its European counterparts, many of which were mired in economic turmoil and political uncertainty, the United States experienced a wave of post-war prosperity that allowed it to assume a leadership position in the international landscape. The United States emerged from World War II relatively unscathed and, in fact, thrived politically and economically. From the beginning of the war in 1939 to its conclusion in 1945, the United States’ gross national product doubled due to destruction of European markets. Europe’s economic issues allowed the United States to become the dominant global manufacturer, producing about half of the merchandise for the world. To put America’s rise into perspective, across the seas, two out of every three ships were manufactured in the United States. The exceptional economic success enjoyed by the United States put it in the unique position of being able to influence political relations in Europe. As a newly minted superpower the United States possessed the economic leverage and political stability to forge a new European system based on its own philosophies and ideologies. This newfound economic and political strength also pitted the United States against another rising power to the East.

The Soviet Union, although not nearly as financially stable as the United States, also sought to establish a global leadership position which would empower it to spread its Soviet-style Communism throughout Europe. The power vacuum that was left in Europe after the destruction of Nazi Germany, provided the Soviet Union with the opportunity to extend its influence.  However, its geopolitical ambitions placed the Soviet Union in direct competition with its former wartime ally, the United States. At the Yalta conference in 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin gathered to discuss the reconstruction of Europe. Stalin promised that there would be free elections in states under the Soviet sphere of influence. The United States and Britain were cautiously optimistic that democracy was a possibility in the East, but this hope turned out to be unrealistic. In reality, Stalin was acutely aware of the Soviet Union’s connection to the Slavic populations in Eastern Europe and used this cultural and philosophical affinity to inculcate Soviet ideals in the region. The Soviet Union began to meddle in Eastern European elections, using its military as a means of enforcing a Communist agenda. Throughout Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union would install puppet regimes whose political and economic policies were in line with those of the Soviet Union. Although the United States may have perceived that the Soviet Union was acting out of aggression and antagonism, its actions were motivated by historical concerns. Throughout the centuries, the Soviet Union had been invaded by foreign aggressors with malicious intent. The Soviet Union’s expansion of its sphere of influence into Eastern Europe, served to create “a buffer zone” to protect the country.

As the United States government struggled to compose a unified foreign policy strategy to address Soviet expansion; the Soviets took advantage of western indecision. In 1946, the Republicans won control of Congress after campaigning on a revamped version of Warren G. Harding's “return to normalcy.” The Republicans petitioned to demobilize the army, return jobs to America and lower taxes. The Democrats accused Republicans of isolationism because of their resistance to the “crusade against Communism.” The isolationist movement and its popularity among war-weary Americans impeded the Democrats’ ability to pursue more aggressive measures against the Soviets. The deadlock between Democrats and Republicans over the United State’s approach to Communism enabled the spread of Soviet influence into Eastern Europe and ultimately left Western power at a disadvantage. Democratic policymakers searched for a compelling rationale that would convince the American public and Congress that international communism was growing threat.

The communist-led coup in Greece, which was viewed as an indirect extension of the Soviet Union’s influence in Europe, convinced the American government that the Soviet Union posed an imminent danger to European stability. In 1946, the British shocked the United States by announcing that Britain did not have the means to support Greece. Due to Greece's strategic location in the Eastern Mediterranean and mounting pressure from the Soviet Union, the United States and specifically the State Department grew wary that Greece would gravitate towards the Soviet Union’s bloc. Greece’s tenuous position led American leaders to theorize that if Greece fell to Communism, other countries in the Mediterranean, such as Turkey, would follow the Soviet’s lead, creating a “domino” effect in the region. George Kennan, one of the most influential American foreign policy leaders of this time and a proponent of Containment, reminded Americans “that … as things stand today, it is not Russian military power, which is threatening us, it is Russian political power … If it is not entirely [a] military threat, I doubt it can be effectively met entirely by military means” (George Kennan in Gaddis, 40). Initial articulation of military containment was based around the idea that all nations would opt for a democratic system if given the chance. But the coup in Greece led policymakers to question this assumption. Greece was “threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand men, led by communists, who def[ied] the Government's authority…” (Harry S. Truman, Truman Doctrine). Truman realized that the issue was not only Russian influence, but also “homegrown” communists at the forefront of the Greek rebellion. From the American perspective, however, Soviet and Greek communism were one and the same. The coup in Greece was “led by communists” and that was all that mattered. In the aftermath, American sentiment dramatically shifted away from isolationism.  Policymakers recognized the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence was increasing, and finally called for a new policy.

As the threat of communism loomed, the Truman Administration called for the proactive containment of the Soviet Union. The policy of Containment marked the United States’ attempts to indirectly and directly interfere with Soviet expansion, described by George Kennan as a “policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show[ed] signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world” (George Kennan in Paterson, 72). The new policy directed the United States would support democracies across Europe and forge potential new allies and economic trading partners. Indirectly, the United States (through the Central Intelligence Agency) meddled in European “free” elections, encouraged governments to commit to the American bloc and accused, perhaps unfairly, the Soviet Union of foul play. The policy of Containment was, in some respects, a new form of imperialism, where the dominant nations attempted to influence regions and create puppet governments to promote their own interests. But despite this policy, communism continued to expand.

When Czechoslovakia fell to communism in 1948, American strategists realized that their policy was not strong enough; it took more than just a policy to contain communism: it took a plan. George Marshall, revered American general, Secretary of State and advocate of containment, announced during a speech at Harvard University the outlines of what would become the Marshall Plan. Marshall explained that “Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist” (George Marshall, Harvard address). The plan was not designed to override the Truman Doctrine but rather to articulate a more concrete long-term strategy. At its core, the Marshall Plan, officially known as the European Recovery Program, was a vast system of economic support for any European country that agreed to adopt capitalism and western-style democracy. Indeed, the United States gave billions of dollars to ensure that the plan was thoroughly implemented to achieve its final goal: keeping communism out of Western Europe.

In addition to the overt benefits that the Marshall Plan extended to Europe, it also created the conditions under which the United States could reinforce its global economic dominance. The Marshall Plan, in the eyes of concerned congressional leaders, was “the biggest damn interference in international affairs that there has ever been in history. We are responsible for the people who stay in power as a result of our efforts” (Henry C. Lodge in Paterson, 45). The economic stipulations of the plan gave the United States partial or complete control over previously sovereign nations. Countries were essentially placing their economic fates in the hands of the United States and with them their independence. The United States was gravely concerned about the repercussions a destroyed European economy would have on the status of the American economy. The old and new world-economic relationships became interwoven: the United States relied on Europe to buy its products, and Europe relied on money from the United States to pay for them. The Marshall Plan built alliances from which Western European nations could not afford to withdraw.

Through the Marshall Plan, the United States sought to create a community of nations whose political and social ideologies directly ran counter to those of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. The United States imposed clear criteria for nations that wished to be a part of the Marshall Plan, which was crafted for “friends of the United States.” “Friends” implied that if countries wanted economic support, they would have to dissociate from the Soviet Union and adopt democratic systems aligned with the United States’ policies. At the time the Marshall Plan was created, one of President Truman’s advisors Clark Clifford spoke of their goals: “it is our hope that [the Soviet Union] will change their minds and work out with us a fair and equitable settlement when they realize that we are too strong to be beaten and too determined to be frightened” (Clark Clifford in Gaddis, 22). Although, the United States said the plan would promote positive relations with the Soviet Union, it had the opposite effect. Countries needed to reject any relations with the Soviet Union to be included in the Marshall plan. Unlike ordinary foreign policy documents that aim to reduce tensions between nations, the Marshall Plan actually isolated the Soviet Union and dramatically polarized international relations.

The Soviet Union viewed the Marshall Plan as a fundamentally corrupt strategy that sought to “enslave Europe” in a web of capitalist obligations. The Soviet assumption that the Marshall Plan was corrupt was not utterly farfetched. Initially, the Soviet Union was disingenuously invited to participate in the Marshall. In fact, it was Dean Acheson, an influential Cold War expert, Undersecretary of State, and member of the Truman Administration, who explained, “we should not ask [the European members of the Marshall Plan] what they want; we should tell them what they need” (Dean Acheson in Paterson, 45). Through the Marshall Plan, the United States had the power to reshape Europe, and statements like Acheson’s, only made the Soviets more fearful.

The Soviet Union’s wariness of and antipathy toward the United States did not originate in the political tensions of the post-war environment. Beginning with the Russian Revolution, the Soviets had ample experience with international aggressors and, in particular, American hostility. They had reason to believe that the Marshall plan was an “American design to enslave Europe,” in pursuit of American interests. Although lacking a mutual agreement on how to handle the post-war reconstruction, the lines between the Soviet Union and the United States were bound to be sharply drawn, as each country stood determined to expand its sphere of influence. The Soviets’ notion that the Marshall Plan was a hostile act of imperial power was not, however, what European beneficiaries came to believe. The plan was an overwhelming success among Western European nations. In an effort to combat this popularity, or at least offer an alternative, the Soviets created their own “Molotov Plan,” a Soviet version of the Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe. The Molotov Plan effectively created a political and economic wall between East and West. This barricade encompassed all nations in the Soviet sphere of influence, setting up the metaphorical battlefields of the Cold War. Following this decision, diplomacy between the two nations came to a virtual standstill. Conditions between the two nations were practically unalterable because of the philosophical disagreement and the lack of communication. Instead, the two superpowers petitioned for international support more aggressively than ever, meddled in elections, sought alliances and at every opportunity indirectly fought each other. The Cold War had begun. As historian Thomas Paterson notes in his book On Every Front “The transition from full-scale war to postwar peace, hardened into a four-decade-long Cold War.”

The Cold War defied every convention starting with its opening battle of words rather than ammunition.  Its style was unorthodox as it was a primarily an economic war, not a military war between the two combatants. From the start it was the Marshall Plan that defined this style of war. In the immediate post war environment American foreign policy makers assumed that by vocalizing their strategies, they were fighting communism. In reality, tough talk sounded good but failed to achieve anything of substance in this new type of war. The only way to reduce European and American fears were to write and ultimately institute a plan. The Marshall Plan sought to make the United States and its brand of capitalism dominant across Europe and eventually the world. One of the primary reasons the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 was that its leaders finally realized communism did not have the economic capacity to compete with  capitalism. When the Soviet Union fell, due to the recognition that communism would never triumph over capitalism, it validated the ideology of the policy of Containment and the Marshall Plan. It just took fifty years to get there.

Bibliography

Ambrose, Stephen E. and Brinkley, Douglas G. Rise To Globalism. New York: Penguin Books, 1971.

Bailey, Thomas A. A Diplomatic History of the American People. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1980.

Gaddis, John L. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Hogan, Michael J. The Marshall Plan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Marshall, George C. The Marshall Plan Speech. Paper presented at an afternoon meeting of the

Harvard Alumni Association, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 5, 1947.

Miller, Merle. Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S.Truman. New York: Penguin Press, 1974.

McCormick, Thomas J. America’s Half-Century. Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Paterson, Thomas G. On Every Front: The Making And Unmaking of the Cold War. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.

Truman, Harry S. President Truman’s Address Before a Joint Session of Congress: Truman Doctrine. Paper presented at Joint Session of Congress, District of Columbia, March 12, 1947.

By Patrick Davidson, Class of 2020

How Economics were Integrated into Political Relationships:

The Consequences of Mercantilism

Capitalism did not become the global economic system overnight, and the complex relationships nations and individuals have today were not predestined to form. Throughout the majority of world history, people interacted with each other one-dimensionally. Up until the end of feudalism in the 1500s, a person earned high social status solely through his physical coercion of others. Currency was used rarely, and the possession of money was certainly not linked to one’s position in the social hierarchy. Gradually, people began to view the world with an economic mindset. Their shift in thinking resulted from a specific set of events over hundreds of years. In the 1600s-1800s, the European economic system evolved from stagnant feudalism to modern capitalism. Seventeenth-century economists propelled this transition through the popularization of mercantilism, a method of thinking about international trade in this time period. In the time of mercantilism, European countries competed to make as much money, measured in gold and silver, as possible. A country would prosper if it could create trade policies that benefited its economy while harming the economies of other nations. For the first time in history, Europeans began to conquer land and enslave people as means for generating profit, and competition for potential colonies integrated an economic aspect into political relationships.

In the time of mercantilism, European countries generated profit most efficiently through the colonization of overseas lands. Edward Misselden, a seventeenth-century author and mercantilist, explained the most basic measurement of a country’s success in the time period: “If the native commodities exported do weight down and exceed in value the foreign commodities imported, it is a rule that never fails that then the kingdom grows rich and prospers in estate and stock…” (Document 3). Essentially, Misselden argued that a country would prosper if it exported more goods than it imported. European countries created colonies because overseas lands were equipped with plentiful raw resources and farmable land: the two components necessary to cultivate crops. To achieve a favorable balance of trade for their motherlands, colonists harvested crops in their conquered land and then sold these crops for more money than they spent to produce them. In addition, when European nations colonized land, they could create trade policies that would help them generate profit. For example, in England’s passage of the Navigation Act of 1660, it was stated that:

...no goods or commodities whatsoever shall be imported into or exported out of any lands, islands, plantations or territories to his Majesty belonging or in his possession...but in such ships or vessels as do truly and without fraud belong only to the people of England or Ireland…(Document 9: Navigation Act of 1660).

The English Government prevented foreign ships from importing goods into or exporting goods out of its territories, and in doing so, England created exclusive access to more markets for itself. When a nation colonized land, it could force the inhabitants of this land to only purchase goods from the motherland. Through the enforcement of this policy, a nation increased its exports, and it also eliminated potential markets from competing countries. Because of the value of colonies, European countries demanded them highly and competed for them.

The scarcity of potential colonies provoked European countries to fight wars over them, and victorious countries used their increased economic power to reinforce their political power. Nations competed for overseas land because colonies generated profit far more efficiently than any other means to produce wealth in the time of mercantilism. Therefore, countries primarily achieved success through creating colonies. For years, the Dutch and the English fiercely competed for the conquest of the Caribbean: a potential sugar colony. A Dutch representative described his government’s aggressive mentality: “...our Lords at the Hague have sat close and resolved on the new placard which is augmented and absolutely to set up a West India Company, for taking of the Caribs’ Islands...Great swelling words abound, so that the scene is altered and nothing thought of but domineering over England…” (Document 8). The Dutch desired potential profits in the Caribbean so much so that they became political rivals with England. In this time period, a country gained political power through the possession of the strongest, most equipped military. European nations like the Netherlands and England aggressively competed for colonies and economic power because the profits they made from their colonies funded their national militaries. A wealthy European country could spend its money on weapons, materials for ships, and rations for soldiers in order to build the most forceful military in the world. This same country could then use its powerful military to conquer more overseas land and create more colonies, and it would continue to repeat this process until it created as many exclusive markets in the world as it could.

Europeans could not generate profit in their colonies if they did not enslave millions of Africans and physically force them to do labor as efficiently as possible. Colonists typically produced commodities related to agriculture, and they needed human labor to farm the land where they cultivated crops. The colonists could not make much profit on their plantations if they employed paid farmers or indentured servants because they would need to spend money on transportation and salaries for these workers. In contrast, European merchants did not need to pay nearly as much money to obtain slaves. George Downing, an English mercantilist in the 1600s, traveled to Barbados and observed: “I believe they have brought this year no less than a thousand Negroes, and the more they buy, the better able they are to buy, for in a year and half they will earn...as much as they cost” (Document 7). The obsession for money in the time of mercantilism provoked Europeans to treat others ruthlessly. Nations fought economically motivated wars, but they also enslaved people in order to generate profit. Blinded by their pursuits of prosperity, Europeans simply viewed slaves as machinery to produce profit as opposed to human beings. Slave owners forced as much work out of their slaves as possible in extreme climates to be efficient. Europeans erased the Africans that they enslaved from the social hierarchy through their harsh treatment of them. The slaves possessed close to no human rights, in contrast with the freedom that they held in their native lands prior to the emergence of mercantilism.

International relations between countries and the current social dynamic of the world would be much different if it were not for the consequences of mercantilism. Examining the effects of mercantilism proves the extent to which thought provokes action. Some of the biggest wars in world history were motivated by economics, and they may not have been fought if it were not for the popularization of mercantilist views. The demand for and use of slave labor from the 1600s-1800s caused the development of racism towards people of African descent. The roots of political and social interactions in the present can be traced back to the ideology of merchants in the seventeenth century and beyond.

By Ella Keinan, Class of 2020

You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present. The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up on your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off a thousand different streets. As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for a ride, putting things down as they come at you. (33)

Normally, we associate the word “imagination” with creativity and fantasy. In this novel, however, O’Brien introduces an alternate perspective- one that does not replace our initial idea but that sits beside it. Although imagination is normally looked at in a positive light, in The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien implies that imagination is like a magnifying glass; it makes the highs of life higher and the lows lower.

        In a positive way, imagination can be used as an escape to a place better than where someone is, as soldiers Jim Cross and Tim do. After finding Kiowa’s dead body, Jimmy Cross lies down in a lake and lets “himself slip away. He [is] back home in New Jersey. A golden afternoon on the golf course, the fairways lush and green, and he [is] teeing it up on the first hole. It [is] a world without responsibility” (170). Cross uses his imagination to escape the war and go to a place in which his unwanted, immense responsibility does not exist. Lying in the water, Cross is literally “slip[ping] away”, but he is also figuratively and emotionally slipping away. The structure of the chapter “In the Field” mirrors what is happening here. O’Brien alternates between passages about finding Kiowa and passages about the golf course in New Jersey. Jimmy Cross needs the golf course and his imagination to escape this difficult moment, even just for a little bit. Also, throughout the chapter, Cross is described as physically separated from the rest of the soldiers, only with the boy looking for the photograph of his girlfriend. These two are physically and emotionally separated from the rest. Cross is aloof, using their imaginations to think of home and carefree times. Their imagination saves them from the emotional difficulty of war, which in Cross’s case is guilt for Kiowa’s death and feeling overwhelmed at being responsible for the lives of his comrades. In addition, even outside of the war, Tim uses his imagination to escape back to a time of innocence. As a veteran, years after Linda, his childhood girlfriend’s, death, “right here, in the spell of memory and imagination, [he can] still see her as if through ice, as if [he is] gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all” (232). Imagination is an escape for Timmy, the same way it is for Tim and the soldiers. He leaves his state of confusion and grief from losing her to go see Linda again in his own mind. Timmy seeing her “as if through ice” symbolizes that in his imagination, he is frozen with her in a time and place of innocence, hope, and carefreeness. His imagination has the power to make times better and transport him to “some other world”, a better world.

On the other hand, imagination magnifies that the bad things one sees, making them far worse than what the eye sees. When recalling what happened when a soldier was sent into a dangerous tunnel, Tim claims that “in some respects, though not many, the waiting [is] worse than the tunnel itself. Imagination [is] a killer” (10). What the soldiers imagine will happen is worse than what actually happens. In times of anxiety and danger, your imagination often projects the worst-case scenario. In this case it causes the soldiers immense anxiety about going into the tunnel. Often, people overlook this aspect of imagination. In our society we are encouraged to use our imagination for creativity, but we forget about imaginations magnifying glass-like qualities versus rose-tinted glasses. O’Brien uses personification to describe imagination as “a killer”, highlighting the power that it has. Another example of imagination making the soldiers see terrible things is when the war becomes very emotionally difficult for Rat Kiley. He shares with his friend that “sometimes he’d stare at the guys who were still ok, the alive guys, and he’d start to picture how they’d look dead. Without arms or legs- that sort of thing” (211). Rat’s imagination is causing him pain and suffering. He is not even seeing the images in person, but the mental picture of his comrades in a state of harm is enough to haunt him. Unlike seeing gruesome images in person, Rat cannot look away. In a way, the Rat’s imagination allow him to contend with his reality by presenting it more starkly than it is. His imagination is so powerful, he eventually shoots himself in the foot to get out of the war.

As well as skewing one’s perception of the world, imagination exaggerates guilt. When Tim killed a man in Vietnam, he makes up a character and personality for the soldier. Tim believes that the man’s “life was now a constellation of possibilities. So, yes, maybe [he was] a scholar” (122). Tim’s imagination creates a personality for the man he killed. Believing that he can relate to the man makes him feel even worse about killing him. Similar to the fictional character in Tim’s imagination, Tim is a scholar; he was supposed to go to Harvard. O’Brien uses the metaphor about the “constellation of possibilities” to highlight that Tim’s imagination is infinite; there is no limit to how far it can take him in conjuring images of the life the man he killed might have had. Another time a character’s imagination makes them feel guilty is when Tim admits that it took him time to be able to write the story he wanted to about Kiowa’s death; “It was hard stuff to write. Kiowa, after all, had been a close friend, and for years [he had] avoided thinking about his death and [his] own complicity in it” (154). Throughout the book, O’Brien imparts the message that writing is reliving something in your imagination and facing it. The reason that he struggles to write this piece is because of the feelings of guilt arisen by imagining this horrible event. Without writing about Kiowa’s death, and, thereby, reliving it, Tim might be able to ignore his feelings and try to forget about them. By writing them down, the negative emotions come back; on the other hand, Tim can come to terms with the past by imagining what happened. The effects of writing demonstrate the two sides of imagination. Writing and reliving the past is difficult. It makes one relive one’s feelings of guilt and negative emotions; however, facing one’s past is an effective way to reconcile with it.

As a society, our perception of imagination, an idea that is so relevant in our lives, is clearly not nearly as nuanced as imagination is. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien advocates for the complexity of imagination. Imagination may make the war harder, but it also saves the soldiers. It serves as an escape. Life would be harder without imagination than it is with imagination. However, imagination is not just an escape for the soldiers; it can be an escape for anyone. O’Brien is imparting the message that people should appreciate their imaginations and use them. Our imaginations are what separate us from other animals. It’s what gives us power. After all, “Imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things” (Wallace Stevens).

Works Cited

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. NY: Mariner Books, 2009.

Stevens, Wallace. The Necessary Angel: Essays On Reality and the Imagination. New York: Vintage Books, 1951.