Innovation Journal 2020

I nnov a ti on J o u r na l o fCr e a t i v ea ndSc ho l a r l yWo r k s

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Innovation: Journal of Creative and Scholarly Works

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Volume 8, 2020

Innovation The Journal of Creative and Scholarly Works

www.highpoint.edu/urcw/hpu-journal/ journal.urcw@highpoint.edu Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Works High Point University One University Parkway High Point, NC 27268

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Editor-in-Chief

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Dr. Joanne D. Altman, PhD Director, Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Professor of Psychology

Student Editors Alexa Addeo High Point University, ‘21 Strategic Communication

Hannah Nemanic High Point University, ‘22 Political Science

Emily Poindexter High Point University, ‘21 English Literature

Cover design by Laura Schramm ‘13 High Point University alumna, Laura Schramm, graduated in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in business after completing a nonprofit business major and graphic design minor. In the fall of 2012, Schramm won the journal cover design competition hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Works. The artistic process began with brainstorming ideas in a sketch book and led to the final design of photographed lightbulbs—an image that symbolizes the tedious trial and error required to produce one brilliant idea across disciplines and the process of innovation at work. Today, Schramm continues her artistic pursuits as a graphic designer in North Carolina.

Copyright @ 2020 High Point University

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2020 Board of Reviewers Dr. Joanne Altman Director of Undergraduate Research and Creative Works; Professor of Psychology Dr. Arden Anderson Assistant Professor of Sports Management Dr. Gordon Ballingrud Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Dr. Kristina Bell Director of the Media Fellows Program; Assistant Professor of Game and Interactive Media Design Dr. Matthew Carlson Associate Professor of English Dr. Clint Corcoran Chair of the Religion and Philosophy Department; Professor of Religion Dr. Peng Deng Professor of History Dr. Ashley Dreff Assistant Professor of Religion Dr. Emily Estrada Assistant Professor of Sociology Dr. Michael Flatt Assistant Professor of English

Dr. Gerald Fox Associate Professor of Economics Dr. John Graeber Assistant Professor of Political Science Dr. Nathan Hedman Interim Director of the Honors Scholar Program; Assistant Professor of English and Theatre Ms. Jessica Higgins Instructor of English Dr. Michael Kennedy Instructor of History Dr. Martin Kifer Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science Dr. Cara Kozma Co-Director of the Community Writing Center; Assistant Director of the HPU Service Learning Program; Associate Professor of English Dr. Virginia Leclercq Assistant Professor of English and French Dr. Brandon Lenoir Professor of Political Science and Political Communication Dr. Holly Middleton Director of First-Year Writing; Associate Professor of English

Dr. Lynne Murray Instructor of English Dr. Timothy O'Keefe Visiting Assistant Professor of English Dr. Melissa Richard Instructor of English Dr. Paul Ringel Associate Professor of History Dr. Suryadipta Roy Associate Professor of Economics Dr. Donna Scheidt Assistant Professor of English; Pre-Law Advisor Dr. Mark Setzler Director of International Relations; Professor of Political Science Dr. George (Larry) Simpson Professor of History Dr. Erin Trauth Assistant Professor of English Dr. Bryan Vescio Chair and Professor of English Ms. Allison Walker Instructor of English

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Letter from the Editor-in-Chief The Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Works (URCW) encourages and supports the establishment of collaborative partnerships between nurturing faculty mentors and enterprising students. Within these partnerships, critical inquiry, brainstorming, debate, and mutual discovery intertwine, leading over time to the production of finished work suitable for presentation, exhibition, and publication. This journal gives students the opportunity to follow their completed work all the way through the professional process to publication.

Thus, URCW is pleased to publish the eighth volume of the refereed journal, Innovation: Journal of Creative and Scholarly Works. In this issue, we include 12 submissions in a range of disciplines from students who have completed independent undergraduate creative or scholarly work. We hope this journal inspires many young scholars to consider publishing their undergraduate academic work before they graduate from college.

Joanne D. Altman, Ph.D. Director of Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Editor-in-Chief of Innovation: Journal of Creative and Scholarly Works

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Table of Contents Dr. Rebus and Mr. Reeve? An Investigation into the Genre of Knots and Crosses Leslie Bosse

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Psychoanalyzing Robert Jr. in James Hogg’s Private Memoirs Sydney Daneman

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How Do African American Millennials View Race-Based Affirmative Action in Higher Education Shirley Garrett

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the forgottenness of della Vivian McAllister

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The Differences between American and Canadian National Identity Avery Moon

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A Comparative Economic Analysis of the Dominican Republic and Haiti Avery Moon and Jennifer Urena

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Marlow as the Buddha in Heart of Darkness Emmi Palenbaum

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The Other Sex: Intertextuality and Abjection in Faulkner and McCarthy Meagan Pusser

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Athletic Media Messaging and How Sports Fandom and Message Processing Are Associated with Attendance at Mid-Sized University Athletic Events Eric Small

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Not-So-Minor Characters: The Christian Examples in Bleak House Raegan Thomas

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An Unsung Literary Father: How Buchan’s Scottish Identity is Key to the Modern Spy Genre Christine Watt A Rebel’s Lullaby: A Comparative History of Punk Rock Music from the 1970s vs the 2000s Revival Emily Yacuzzo

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Dr. Rebus and Mr. Reeve? An Investigation into the Genre of Knots and Crosses Leslie Bosse Leslie Bosse (‘22), a sophomore English literature major with minors in Spanish and environmental studies, became interested in the duality of Scottish culture in a course titled Literary Scotland. Students studied Scottish texts during the semester and traveled to Scotland for two weeks. Her interest in detective fiction intensified while reading famous Scottish detective stories, leading to the combination of these interests into a research project. The most fulfilling part of this process was feeling connected to another culture through analyzing their literature, but her proudest moment was presenting this research at the Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA) Conference in Chicago in November of 2019. Dr. Matthew Carlson encouraged her to continue her research process after the class by submitting her research to the MMLA and the journal, pushing her to accomplish more than she knew she could.

Abstract Ian Rankin clearly connects his first John Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, to Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Not only has he acknowledged Stevenson’s work as an inspiration, he also directly mentions the Jekyll and Hyde scenario numerous times in the novel. Some, including Rankin himself, even go as far to say that Knots and Crosses is a modern retelling of Jekyll and Hyde. Although the connection between the two texts is apparent, Rankin’s novel ultimately owes more to the classic detective story tradition than it does to Stevenson. This essay aims to analyze the specificity of the setting, the emphasis on puzzle solving, and the character development to support this claim. Rankin exposes the underbelly of Edinburgh, advertising it for its criminal secrets instead of its tourist attractions.

The specificity and duality of the setting make the reader focus on the crimes at hand, rather than the global applicability of Jekyll and Hyde. Rankin also incorporates the motif of puzzle solving, which has deep ties to detective fiction pioneers such as Poe and Doyle. While the rivalry between Rebus and Gordon Reeve echoes Sherlock and Moriarty (more so than Jekyll and Hyde), Rebus himself fits into the hard-boiled detective mold. Like Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, Rankin’s protagonist plays the tough, isolated, and somewhat insensitive anti-hero detective.

Keywords: ian rankin, scottish literature, detective fiction

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I

an Rankin’s Knots & Crosses, the first entry in one of the most popular modern Scottish detective series, is a psychological revenge story about Detective John Rebus’ job on the police force in Edinburgh and his deep, twisted past. The reader follows Rebus through a sinister case of a serial killer who is attacking young girls one by one in a seemingly random pattern. Rankin began his first novel during his time as a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh, where he was studying Scottish literature. As it was Rankin’s first novel, he wanted to make his mark as a serious literary author. To do this, he took influence from several of his favorite famous Scottish writers from his studies like Robert Louis Stevenson, James Hogg, and Muriel Spark. Rankin most clearly tries to connect his first John Rebus novel to Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Some readers, critics, and even Rankin himself go as far as to say that Knots & Crosses is a modern retelling of Jekyll and Hyde.

Eleven years after Knots & Crosses was published, Rankin wrote that the story “was not meant to be a whodunit . . . I thought I was updating Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, delivering a ‘Scots Gothic’ for the 1980s” (13). He insists that the story is not detective fiction, and although the connection to his claimed inspiration is obvious, Rankin wrote a classic example of a detective fiction story, not just a retelling of the more Gothic and Romantic Jekyll and Hyde. Despite his claimed intentions, Knots & Crosses belongs in the category of detective fiction based on its ties to four of the genre’s foundational authors: Dashiell Hammett, Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edgar Allan Poe. In reverse chronological order, Rankin’s use of a hardboiled detective, an unexpected setting, a classic rivalry, and a focus on game-playing and puzzle-solving will be compared to the use of these four techniques in classic detective fiction.

The character of John Rebus is very clearly related to Sam Spade from one of Dashiell Hammett’s most famous texts, The Maltese Falcon. Hammett is often credited as one of the first authors of the American hard-boiled detective style. The detective, Samuel Spade, is a beat-up private investigator that smokes too much, is a bit of a womanizer, and lives a tough, lonely life.

Spade and Rebus live such similarly lonesome lifestyles that it is impossible to ignore these hard-boiled influences on Rebus’ character.

The hard-boiled style was much more violent and raw than what preceded it, and it followed a rough, urban detective. Both Spade and Rebus are perfect depictions of this type of character.

As John Cawelti puts it: Like in the classic story, we usually begin with the introduction of the detective, but instead of the charming bachelor apartment of Holmes and Watson . . . the hard-boiled detective belongs to the dusty and sordid atmosphere of an office located in a brokendown building on the margin of the city’s business district. (144) Rebus is exactly this. He smokes too much and drinks even more. Not only does he live in a dusty, crumbling apartment on his own, he belongs in it. His failed marriage, his disconnect with his daughter, and the way the police force ignores him, define his character, and although he knows it’s pitiful, he likes it that way. As he lies in bed at night, reflecting on his failed marriage, he realizes that “Rhona [his ex-wife] had taken away the bed proper, but had left him the mattress, so it was easy for him to reach down for his mug of coffee, easy for him to discard one book and find another” (46). The ease of his routine without the bed frame is symbolic of the ease of his life without relationships. He can easily put one book down and pick up another the 7

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same as he can spend a night with one woman and the next with another. His lack of attachment and comfort in leading a simplistic, lonely lifestyle are some of the main characteristics of a hard-boiled detective. In The Maltese Falcon, when Spade’s business partner, Miles Archer, dies almost immediately after starting the book’s main case, Spade feels next to nothing. When called to the scene, he decides not to look at the body because the police had “seen everything [he] could” already (13). He sends his secretary to inform Archer’s wife, relinquishing all personal involvement. Later, the reader finds out that Spade was so disconnected from his partner that he was having an affair with his wife, Iva, which highlights the hard-boiled detective’s womanizing as well. He tells his secretary to “have the Spade & Archer taken off the door and Samuel Spade put on” within days of Archer’s death (23). The casual removal of Archer’s name from their door reveals how detached Spade is from others, just like Rebus.

The setting of Knots & Crosses is another aspect of the text that makes it more of a conventional crime novel than a retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson was a very traveled author, and although he was Scottish, he wrote texts that were much more globally applicable. Because the setting is so adaptable, the story also becomes more relevant for larger themes like the conflict between science and art. In contrast, Rankin’s specific Scottishness makes the text more focused on the crime because the location is so integral to the story.

Rankin accomplishes this distinct Scottishness by incorporating small facets of Edinburgh into the story. Rankin mentions Haymarket Station, Waverley Road, Princes Street, and, most importantly for the plot, the Edinburgh Library. Rankin is genuinely fascinated by the place where he lives. As he puts it: Some critics have shrewdly commented that Rebus is not the main character in the series, that my main character is Edinburgh itself, and the country of which it is capital. I've been asked why I don't write about Glasgow; wouldn't it be a more fruitful setting for a crime novel? Perhaps, but I don't know Glasgow. I choose to live and work in Edinburgh.

It's a city that fascinates me and puzzles me, and these feelings become part of the fabric of my stories. (14) Rankin was, and still is, captivated by the duality of his city, which he makes clear in Knots & Crosses. Edinburgh is often seen as a tourist town, one where nothing bad would ever happen. Its attractive exterior hides the secret world of crime that Rankin exposes in his novel. This is exactly the stereotype that authors like Agatha Christie played on in the Golden-Age style of detective fiction. Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a prime example of the use of an unexpected setting in Golden-Age detective fiction. The story is set in a small town called King’s Abbot, where all of the inhabitants know each other. As the narrator, Dr. James Sheppard, describes it, “Our hobbies and recreations can be summed up in one word, ‘gossip’” (6). On the surface, the quaint town is simple and pleasant, but underneath, it is full of secrets and scandals that culminate in a murder. As Hercule Poirot, a famed but retired detective, uncovers the secrets of the town piece by piece, he observes that “everyone . . . has something to hide” (63), just like every place, especially an unsuspecting town like King’s Abbot or even Edinburgh.

Both Golden-Age settings and Edinburgh have an image of being safe, happy, touristworthy towns. Although Rankin uses the Golden-Age template, he enhances the scale by using 8

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such a large, populated city and creates a story where no one, including the characters, expects to find such violent murders, which makes it the perfect place for a crime. Rebus, possibly as a reflection of Rankin himself, knew better than to see Edinburgh as tourists see it. Rebus “knew that Edinburgh was all appearances, which made the crime less easy to spot, but no less evident.

Edinburgh was a schizophrenic city, the place of Jekyll & Hyde, sure enough, the city of Deacon Brodie, of fur coats and no knickers” (220). These references are so clearly Scottish and so clearly dual. The two sides of Edinburgh are in some ways similar to Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde in that Jekyll and Hyde are two sides divided by pleasant appearances and sinister secrets.

Deacon Brodie, an Edinburgh cabinet maker and city councilor by day, but a thief by night, does represent the duality of the city. Although these similarities are apparent, the use of duality in Knots & Crosses is even more akin to Christie’s use in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd because these two texts apply the theme of duality to location more so than that of human nature. In Knots & Crosses, Edinburgh is not the place of Jekyll and Hyde, it is Jekyll and Hyde. The dualistic setting draws attention to the unexpectedness of the crime itself, showing how beautiful facades can hide ugly secrets.

There is also a sense of the duality of human nature in Rebus’ relationship to the culprit, Gordon Reeve, but their bond is more reminiscent of the connection between detective and criminal that is more true to the classic model of detective fiction. The relationship between Rebus and Reeve differs from Jekyll and Hyde in the effect of the duality of the characters. Mr. Hyde was simultaneously beneficial and harmful to Dr. Jekyll. On one hand, he was a way for Jekyll to express his suppressed evil, while on the other, he took over Jekyll’s life to the point of death. Rebus and Reeve’s relationship is more of a rivalry, like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty’s in Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem,” than Jekyll and Hyde’s symbiotically harmful relationship. Holmes and Moriarty are of equal mental capability: one committing the crimes and the other solving them. “It is, however, a game at which two may play,” Sherlock says (85). The relationship is so extreme that Sherlock concludes that one cannot exist without the other, therefore leading to their dual success and defeat. In describing Professor Moriarty to Watson, Sherlock says, “I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal. My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill” (79). Sherlock and Moriarty are equal intellectually, but they took their skill in opposite directions. Because of this, Sherlock is able to combat Moriarty by thinking like him. However, Moriarty can do the same, leaving them in a constant battle that can only end with their concurrent triumph and defeat.

Similarly, Rebus and Reeve are so dependent on each other that Reeve’s crimes couldn’t exist without Rebus, and Rebus’ lifestyle wouldn’t be the same without the influence of Reeve.

They are two connected, equal, rivals rather than two competing pieces of the same whole. After Rebus confronts Reeve for the first time since their Special Air Service—or SAS—training, he realizes “Blood brothers they had been, enduring together, able to read the other’s mind almost” (241). The two were so connected, so intertwined, that their existence isn’t possible without the existence of the other. This is exactly the relationship that Sherlock and Moriarty have. Without Moriarty, Sherlock’s “career had in any case reached its crisis, and that no possible conclusion to it could be more congenial to [him]” than simultaneously defeating and losing to his rival. When Rebus finally confronts Reeve, “he could not let Gordon Reeve win. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair” (251). With his hands around Rebus’ neck, “Reeve, startled, froze for a second, then folded like paper, falling across Rebus, smothering him, Rebus, unable to move, decided it 9

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was safe to go to sleep now” (251). Rebus and Reeve’s battle ends with both of them lying defeated on the ground, together. This scene is highly reminiscent of Sherlock and Moriarty falling to their deaths, interlocked in their final fight. The comparison of Rebus and Reeve to Sherlock and Moriarty ties Knots & Crosses back to classic detective fiction.

Knots & Crosses goes even further back to the origins of detective fiction with its links to Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories about Dupin, which are credited as some of the first detective fiction stories ever written. A major theme in Poe’s stories is game playing and puzzle solving.

“The Purloined Letter” is one of the strongest examples and clearest comparisons to Rankin’s Knots & Crosses. The plot of “The Purloined Letter” is purely mental and structured like an algebra problem. Dupin solves the puzzle step by step, rationally, mathematically. Within the story, Poe uses two games as representations of Dupin’s mental process. First, he describes a game of “even and odd,” where the guesser must put themselves into the mind of their opponent in order to deduce whether they are thinking of an even or odd number (Poe 7). This demonstrates how a detective must try to think about how the criminal would think. The second game is related to a map, where one player chooses any word on the map and their opponent has to guess which word was chosen (Poe 11). Dupin states that the guesser usually tries to find the small, obscure words, so the best strategy would be to pick the large, more spread out words because they are hidden in plain sight. These are Dupin’s metaphors for the way he puts himself into the game-playing mind of a criminal. Like Sherlock and Moriarty, Dupin thinks that the detective must think like the criminal in order to understand the crime, emphasizing the duality of detective and criminal.

Similarly, Rankin uses the game of noughts and crosses, or tic-tac-toe, to represent the conflict between Gordon Reeve and Rebus. The game serves as the origin story of Rebus and Reeve’s connection, with Reeve latched on to Rebus’ companionship as they played together in the stressful, fear-inducing conditions of the SAS test. After Reeve teaches Rebus a trick for winning noughts and crosses, signs of insanity and attachment become clear as Reeve “danced round the cell, then stared at me, a leer on his face. ‘You’re just like the brother I never had, John.’ I smiled back at him, knowing that he had become too dependent on me already, and that if we were separated he would not be able to cope” (188). A simple game brings Reeve into a childlike state of attachment to Rebus. The way he relies on Rebus in the SAS training is the setup for Rebus’ ultimate betrayal of Reeve. Reeve cannot play noughts and crosses without another person, and he can’t talk about stories without another person; he must be on his own, and he, therefore, cannot cope. The game is so central to their connection that Reeve strategically chooses it as his secret, personal way of hinting to Rebus through the mysterious letters that the crime is all about him, all about them. Rankin even chose to name the novel after the criminal game. Rankin emphasizes puzzle solving and game playing throughout the text, which places Knots & Crosses in a lineage of classic detective novels. As Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes put it, “the game is afoot” when there is a crime to be solved (Conan Doyle, “Adventure” 1).

In addition to the game of noughts and crosses, the plot of Knots & Crosses itself is centered around solving a complex puzzle, not the turmoil of inner conflict like Stevenson focuses on in Jekyll and Hyde. For a large majority of Rankin’s text, the emphasis is on being a detective, whether it is Rebus and the police force trying to solve the crime, colleague and love interest Gill Templer trying to read Rebus, or reporter Jim Stevens trying to bust both Rebus and his brother for crimes he suspects they’re committing. The only focus on the internal conflicts of John Rebus 10

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is when his brother, Michael Rebus, hypnotizes him and his inner conflicts are exposed. Rebus’ complicated past is put on display for the other characters and for the reader. In a sense, this is similar to Dr. Jekyll’s “Hyde.” Rebus’ own “Hyde” is his repressed memory of a time he wishes he couldn’t remember. However, the focus returns to puzzle solving as soon as Rebus comes out of his hypnotic state. At this point, he understands how the crime and the mysterious letters connect, saying, “The whole thing makes sense now. So at least I know that Gordon is alive, if not well…And to get [Samantha] back, I’m going to have to kill him” (196). It doesn’t take Rebus long to come back to being a detective after reflecting on his own inner problems. Even in the face of the death of his daughter, Rebus “had to remember that it was still a game” (236).

Reeve’s meticulously planned crimes were all an intellectual competition. The acronym from the murdered girls’ initials that spelled out Samantha, the knots of string and the matchstick crosses, the fake name “Ian Knott”: these were all parts of one vengeful, torturous game. Rebus chooses to play the game he knows Reeve is playing, “for Reeve wanted to be found, but slowly, a sort of cat-and-mouse game in reverse…That was Reeve’s game. Cat and mouse, and he the mouse with the sting in his tail, the bite in his teeth, and Rebus as soft as milk, as pliant as fur and contentment” (235). This theme is common in traditional detective fiction novels. In S.S. Van Dine’s “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories,” he explicitly declares that the main purpose of detective fiction “is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion.” Classic detective fiction is about solving a puzzle in the form of a crime, which is also what propels the plot of Knots & Crosses.

This novel undoubtedly demonstrates characteristics of detective fiction, but over time, the influences of this style became even more distinct in Rankin’s work. After Knots & Crosses was published, it became increasingly popular with the Scottish public. Since it was so successful, Rankin continued to write Rebus novels. He embraced what his readership loved so much about his first novel, the detective plot, and leaned into the detective archetypes that made Knots & Crosses so popular. Saints of the Shadow Bible, a later novel in the Rebus series, clearly demonstrates Rankin’s conscious adaptation of the detective fiction style. Rather than forcing classic literature like Jekyll and Hyde into the story, the plot focuses more heavily on Rebus’ detective life and his efforts to solve the crime, satisfying the detective in all of his readers.

Knots & Crosses was just the beginning of a long series of detective novels that conform more and more to the genre’s expectations as the series goes on.

Knots & Crosses is so much more than what Rankin seemingly intended it to be. As an author who was just beginning his career, he was guided by many influential texts that were clearly interwoven into his first Rebus novel. In order to become more like those who inspired him, Rankin tried to fit his novel into a Scottish literary tradition. Rather than proving his literary proficiency, however, Rankin combined quintessential aspects of classic detective fiction to create a wildly popular “whodunit” for the general reader. He may not have meant it, but Rankin’s use of a hard-boiled style protagonist, a dual setting, a well-matched rivalry, and a focus on game playing undeniably tie Knots & Crosses back to classic detective fiction works by Hammett, Christie, Conan Doyle, and Poe. While literary prestige may have eluded him, Rankin nonetheless created a novel and series that is loved and read by many, perhaps because of the classic elements of the detective fiction genre that he claimed not to follow.

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Works Cited Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. U of Chicago P, 1976.

Conan Doyle, Arthur. “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.” https://sherlockholm.es/stories/pdf/a4/1-sided/abbe.pdf.

Conan Doyle, Arthur. “The Final Problem.” Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories. Dover, 2014, pp.

76-90.

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. Knopf, 1992.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Purloined Letter. 1844, https://poestories.com/read/purloined Rankin, Ian. "Detective Novels: The Pact between Authors and Readers." The Writer, vol. 111, no. 12, 12, 1998, pp. 13-15.

Rankin, Ian. Knots and Crosses. St. Martin's, 2008.

Sienkiewicz, Agnieszka. “Genre Mixture in Ian Rankin's Detective Fiction.” Beyond Philology, vol. 6, 2009, pp. 183-205.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dover, 1991.

Van Dine, S.S. “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Fiction Stories.” The Thrilling Detective Web Site, www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv288.html

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Psychoanalyzing Robert Jr. in James Hogg’s Private Memoirs Sydney Daneman Sydney Daneman (‘21) was a junior at High Point University double majoring in psychology and English literature when she submitted this paper. After reading Private Memoirs, Sydney immediately became fascinated with the exploration of the psychological effects of religion, especially because she felt that James Hogg had a truly progressive understanding of the human psyche for the 19th century. After Sydney graduates, she plans on obtaining a PhD in clinical psychology, with the ultimate goal of becoming a psychotherapist. Sydney says, “Being involved in undergraduate research and creative works has allowed me to combine my academic interests in a beautifully cohesive way.

Additionally, this experience has helped me gain confidence in both my presentation and writing skills.” Working with Dr. Carlson has provided her with countless opportunities that she would not have had access to otherwise.

Sydney claims that she is a much more well-rounded, confident, and enthusiastic thanks to his support.

Abstract James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner delves into the mind of a religious zealot, providing perspectives both from an outsider editor who struggles to comprehend and from the affected himself. The Presbyterian concept of predestination acts as a major motivator and justification for characters’ actions, leading to the narrator of the second section of the novel, Robert Wringhim Jr., to attempt to separate himself from the guilt that his actions bring. This essay analyzes the psychology of Wringhim Jr., especially in relation to his religious roots and the relationship with the character Gil-Martin. I argue that, not only is GilMartin a psychological manifestation of a cognitive break within the mind of Robert Wringhim Jr., but also that he manifested as a result of extreme stress related to his religious guilt.

Examining the psychology of religion, the relationship between religion and guilt, and the specific representation of psychopathology within the novel itself, provides evidence that GilMartin exists only within Wringhim Jr.’s mind as a “second self,” as Gil-Martin says himself (89). Due to the tremendous emotional and mental stress of failing to follow the perfect expectations of his religion, Wringhim Jr.’s inability to rationalize how he could do wrong as one of the elite, leads to a psychological break and the creation of a figure of temptation and evil in the form of an irresistible, shapeshifting man. Following the slow, deliberate demise of Robert Wringhim Jr. will reveal the negative psychological effects involved in oppressive religion.

Keywords: psychology, religion, literary analysis

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J

ames Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner follows the life of religious zealot Robert Wringhim Jr. In a unique narrative structure that mirrors itself, bisected plots told from the point of view of the titular sinner as well as that of an outside editor simultaneously support and contradict each other. Hogg tells the story of a son shunned by his father and instead raised by his mother, a religious fanatic, and her favored Reverend Robert Wringhim, who gave the child his name. While Robert Wringhim Jr.’s resentment toward his father and brother George grew, so did his love for the reverend and the Presbyterian religion.

These feelings increase exponentially until Robert, spurred on by his friend Gil-Martin and his own belief in his moral security, decides to kill his brother. After the initial joy at his action, Robert then begins to spiral into a mess of poor mental and physical health until he awakens one day with no memory of the past several months. Now suddenly accused of two counts of murder and seeing no escape, Robert commits the ultimate sin of suicide.

Written in a time long before the studies of psychology and psychopathology, Hogg nonetheless managed to anticipate much of the modern understanding of the human mind.

Unfortunately, the majority of Hogg’s initial 1824 audience found the story too strange to enjoy.

The repetitive narrative and the negative commentary on religious zealotry caused much of the public to turn away. As such, the novel remained in relative obscurity until André Gide, an influential French novelist, created a raving introduction for the 1947 reissue. Since then, critics view the Private Memoirs as one of the most influential Scottish novels. Despite this, they find little common ground on their interpretation of events and characters, most especially those regarding the perplexing Gil-Martin. When considering his ambiguous nature, many analysts claim that the editor’s tale serves as proof that others, aside from Robert, witness the two walking together. Some, like the notable Louis Simpson, insist this proves Gil-Martin’s physical presence, perhaps as a demon or even the Devil himself (187-188). However, L. L. Lee reminds critics that they “are seeing at a number of removes: the editor may accept tradition as fact, but Hogg has reminded us that the tale is based on tradition, a notoriously inaccurate reporter of factual truth” (234). In his “Introduction”, Gide himself refers to Hogg’s devil-like character with the knowing understanding that he represents “the exteriorized development of our own desires, of our pride, and of our most secret thoughts,” coming close to the understanding of a psychological, not supernatural, origin (xv).

Double imagery persists throughout the entirety of the novel, with characters consistently sharing names and repeating similar actions. One such example exists within the construct of religion, especially concerning the Presbyterian belief of predestination, or the predetermined delineation between those that God accepts into heaven after death, and those that He does not. A major shift in Robert’s perspective occurs with his own transformation from one of the unsaved to a member of the chosen elite. While initially exciting, this change comes with an unexpected increase in religious responsibility. Along with the emotional and mental burden of failing to follow the perfect expectations of his religion, Wringhim Jr.’s inability to rationalize how he could do wrong as one of the elite leads to a psychological break and the creation of a figure of temptation and evil in the form of an irresistible, shapeshifting man. As a result of extreme stress related to his religious guilt, the mind of Robert Wringhim Jr. suffers a cognitive break resulting in a psychological manifestation of Gil-Martin.

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The Presbyterian belief in predestination creates a unique conflict for the few within the sanctified elite that still feel that they fail to reach the expected state of sinlessness.

Predestination removes responsibility and takes agency away from the hands of the faithful. It grants clemency for the condemned, as they cannot help their faults, and provides approval for every action of the chosen since they exist to fulfill God’s will. Robert Wringhim Jr. faces a twisted version of this religious tenet, considering how he learns of his status only after spending many years believing he had no access to the grace that should have kept him from error. He both recognizes and internalizes the real existence of his sins, stating how “[he] was utterly confounded at the multitude of [his] transgressions; for [he] was sensible that there were great numbers of sins of which [he] had never been able thoroughly to repent” (Hogg 82). By acknowledging his confusion, Robert reveals a personal sense of guilt for his actions, especially his inability to feel the full extent of remorse that might cleanse his soul. Yet, immediately following his father’s revelation, “[Robert] relies on his belief that he is one of the elect and cannot fall from grace,” as though his previous apprehension never existed in the first place (Cojocaru 186). After his admittance into the number, these occasions of self-reflection disappear within the narrative for a time, in favor of depictions of personal infallibility. To some, the epiphany uplifts the soul, clearing all fear and confusion. However, when compounded with preexisting religious guilt, a steadfast Presbyterian will face far more complicated emotions. To admit to the remaining psychological effects of his own culpability would clearly conflict with the teachings of his church.

Robert continues feeling decidedly guilty for his impure motivations and various manipulations, facets of his person that endure past his metaphorical clean slate. However, he no longer has a proper outlet for coping with and repenting for his actions. His acceptance into the elite presupposes his goodness, regardless of repentance, whereas before he asked for forgiveness despite believing his situation could never improve. This reversal requires a full change in mental processing. Robert quickly attempts to adhere to this alternate state of mind but cannot help the emotional turmoil that results. In the Encyclopedia of Psychology, June P. Tangney defines shame as that which “emerges by failing to achieve one’s personal or social ideal of self… [having a] focus on the self, not on a specific behavior or its victim” (266).

Because this transcendence constitutes a higher expectation, “the grace of repentance being withheld from [him]” suddenly no longer suffices as an acceptable way to alleviate Robert’s moral responsibility (Hogg 87). He should not be able to sin, and yet he knows that he does.

Even as he internally rejoices in his ascension, he “could make no answer save by looks of surprise,” likely due to the realization of the true weight, or apparent lack thereof, of his actions (Hogg 88). Without the ability to cope with or manage this contradictory state of mind in a traditional or healthy sense, shame settles subconsciously into the sinner’s psyche. However, even that emotion, unfortunately, would similarly challenge the religious belief, since one does not feel shame without a reason, and such a reason should not occur within the community of the saved. Consequently, Robert unintentionally begins repressing this emotion, unconsciously burying it under false confidence. The act of suppression reflects the findings that indicate “an association between shame and defensive reactions, including anger, hostility, denial and projection” (Seo 10-11). The reverend’s son certainly exhibits much hostility, especially towards those like his mother and brother, but the more passive response of denial is far more significant to the novel’s ensuing events.

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Projecting comes in many forms, but ultimately culminates in the shifting of personal actions or perceived faults onto another in an attempt to similarly shift the blame that they may generate. The various lies that Robert tells throughout his childhood show his tendency to execute this defensive measure even when faced only with someone he dislikes. When combined with the Encyclopedia of Psychology definition of shame including the concept that people who feel shame often regret their actions and wish that they could be someone else, this symptom in Robert intensifies further. The aforementioned expectation for perfection leads to greater desires for impossible ideals. Though he attempts to believe in his infallibility, “Robert gives away the fact that he doubts his own words” (Cojocaru 186). Incidentally, Gil-Martin enters the narrative at this exact point. Charismatic and eloquent, he perfectly matches all of Robert Wringhim Jr.’s religious principles with zeal and charm. Instantly and almost instinctively, Robert connects with this man, feeling somehow both awed and nervous in his presence. His arrival corresponds alltoo-perfectly with the moment that Robert first becomes a part of the number in circumstances far too improbable to be coincidental. With his supernatural abilities and the fact that Robert declares, “what was my astonishment on perceiving that he was the same being as myself! . . . this singular being read my thoughts in my looks, anticipating the very words that I was going to utter,” Hogg immediately notifies the audience that Gil-Martin exists outside the confines of reality (89). After considering the psychological factors of shame and defensive maneuvers, the character of Gil-Martin appears more and more like that of a mental projection, a creation made of the culmination of Robert’s nefarious impulses and desires that live solely within his mind.

Ample evidence supports the position that a psychological split, reminiscent of those deemed split personalities or dissociative identities has taken place. Robert discusses how Gil-Martin “was the same person in every respect,” multiple times throughout the novel (Hogg 91). This visual relation intimates at a lack of distinction between the two beings, suggesting that the sameness extends to both body and mind. Furthermore, when Robert begins to neglect his spiritual duties like prayer he immediately blames “this singular and unaccountable being” (Hogg 90). Even from the very start of their relationship, Robert uses Gil-Martin to justify his sins. When he tries to argue his points, his companion simply rationalizes and excuses the behavior until Robert acquiesces. As such, “the question of agency becomes increasingly blurred to Robert Wringhim,” until he no longer takes any responsibility for any of his actions (Cojocaru 192). The creation of Gil-Martin is a direct result of a desire to avoid the negative emotions consequent of acknowledging one’s own imperfections. Typically, “guilt and shame subtly shape behavior, often by causing people to behave so as to avoid experiencing them” (Bedford and Hwang 1). However, because Robert cannot openly admit his feelings, even to himself, his psyche creates a different avenue for relief in the form of a supernatural scapegoat. By relocating responsibility, Robert avoids his shame without modifying his behaviors in any way. Creating Gil-Martin mends the contradiction that directly derives from the steadfast conformity to Presbyterian beliefs. With a newfound destination for unwanted accountability, Robert’s nefarious deeds escalate continually to the point of homicide.

Although Gil-Martin verbally rationalizes Robert’s motivation for murder, the idea of predestination itself justifies his ambition as an act of God. After all, in his conscious mind, Robert kills merely to rid the world of blasphemers and evildoers, a concept his spiritual confidant convinces him is his duty in the first place. Instead of recognizing the “obvious material benefits he reaps from George’s death,” Robert manufactures a disparate rationale that he internally insists originated from a being outside of himself (Cojocaru 189). Ed Cameron 16

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agrees, claiming how, essentially, Robert has created “a reality [he] is certain of, in order to prevent ‘reality’ from collapsing from the intrusion of the real” (159), which in this case refers to the earthly motivation for killing. As Robert continues to commit mortal sins, these mental acrobatics become harder to maintain until ultimately his mental state snaps under the strain. A six-month period of amnesia, during which Robert reportedly rapes a young woman before murdering her along with his mother, marks the zenith of this disintegration.

Severe mental disorders often involve memory loss and alteration, symptoms that Robert expressly admits to experiencing on various occasions even early on in the narrative. The sheer fact that he admits “his own immediate impressions of this affair in some degree differed from this statement [about the fight against his brother]” but rather “is precisely as my illustrious friend described it to me afterwards” shows how easily his recollection could be manipulated (Hogg 129). Selective memory conceals the truth of Robert’s actions from him when they become too extreme to ignore and impossible to pass off as righteous. Robert despises the sin of carnal pleasure especially, specifically avoiding women to the point of hatred from the time of his youth. Since his mind cannot rationalize breaking that oath as an act of fulfilling a duty, it instead represses it. Upon waking with no recollection of these events, Robert falls back on old habits, immediately insisting on his innocence. He conceals these facts from his consciousness, and again Gil-Martin arrives exactly when Robert requires someone on whom to pin the blame.

Yet, the text hints at his true guilt with his discomfort over the discovery of his mother’s body, even as he claims to not know that she had been missing, as well as the speed and ease with which he realizes he must flee from his home.

The audience never discovers for certain the facts of Rabina Cowan’s murder. The subtle intonations and peeks into her son’s mental state, as well as the convenient arrival of companionturned-villain, Gil-Martin, provide enough context to arrive at the same conclusion as the townsfolk that found the discarded corpses, especially when describing the “strange and unwonted delight” Robert feels upon seeing the bodies (Hogg 156). Nonetheless, until the bitter end, he denies that he perpetrated their murders, choosing instead to imply his double’s guilt.

Pursued by the law, Robert still cannot escape his internal demons, represented as an increasingly haggard Gil-Martin. Hogg finally, definitively acknowledges a conclusive fall from grace when Gil-Martin persuades him to end his own life, a transgression “for which, according to the tenets he embraced, there was no remission” (Hogg 189). In fact, the unnamed editor’s comments serve to cement Gil-Martin into the role of imaginary figment of Robert’s dilapidated psyche with his concluding sentence: “at the height of madness…he believed himself the very object whom he had been all along describing” (Hogg 189).

The path set in place when predestination clashed against Robert’s preexisting conceptions of his spiritual agency culminates in one final tragedy. Personified temptations and villainy create a figure Robert finds easier to deem evil than himself. He avoids deserved shame for so long that, once it all catches up to him and he can no longer hide behind the mask of Gil-Martin, everything overflows. Desperate for some semblance of the lost comfort of ignorance, he writes his confession. The unbelievable account documents every committed wrong, marking every way that Gil-Martin pushed him in erroneous directions. As much a plea for redemption and forgiveness as it is a suicide note, Robert Wringhim Jr.’s final words nevertheless still make attempts at dismissing his actions as those of a justified sinner. Until the very end, the self17

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proclaimed religious reprobate fails to accept the personal responsibility for one’s actions required for true repentance.

Works Cited Bedford, Olwen, and Kwang-Kuo Hwang. “Guilt and Shame in Chinese Culture: A CrossCultural Framework from the Perspective of Morality and Identity.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, vol. 33, no. 2, 2003, pp. 127-44.

Beveridge, Allan. “The Presentation of Mental Disturbance in Modern Scottish Literature.”

Medical Humanities, vol. 43, no. 2, 2017, pp. 81-85.

Cameron, Ed. The Psychopathology of the Gothic Romance: Perversion, Neuroses and Psychosis in the Early Works of the Genre. McFarland, 2010.

Cojocaru, Daniel. “Confessions of an American Psycho; James Hogg’s and Bret Easton Ellis’s Anti-Heroes’ Journey from Vulnerability to Violence.” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, vol. 15, no. 1, 2008, pp. 185-200.

Gide, André. “Introduction” in The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg. 1824. Grove Press, 1959.

Hogg, James. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. 1824. Oxford UP, 2010.

Lee, L. L. “The Devil’s Figure: James Hogg’s Justified Sinner,” Studies in Scottish Literature.

Western Washington State College, 1965, pp. 230-239.

Seo, Eun Kyng. A Cross Cultural Study on Shame and Guilt in Religiosity: A Comparison of Americans and Koreans. 2016. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, PhD dissertation.

Simpson, Louis. James Hogg: A Critical Study. Edinburgh and London. Oliver and Boyd. 1962.

Tangney, June P. “Shame.” Encyclopedia of Psychology. Edited by A. E. Kazdin, vol. 7, Oxford UP, 2000, pp. 266-69.

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How Do African American Millennials View RaceBased Affirmative Action in Higher Education Shirley Garrett Shirley Garrett (’19) graduated from High Point University with a double major in political science and international relations. Interested in racism from the perspective of the targeted group, Garrett’s senior thesis investigated whether African Americans still supported affirmative action, as a potential indicator of whether we are moving into a postracial society. Under Dr. Mark Setzler’s mentorship, Garrett was encouraged to elevate her writing and received in-depth feedback on writing assignments which prepared her for this research project; the pinnacle of her written work. She credits Dr. Setzler’s perfect teaching approach—a technique which balances teaching and individual student exploration—for her personal growth on this project. Garrett graduated in December 2019 and became the Elections Program Intern at Democracy Fund in Washington DC. Following that, she will be a fellow at Reality Ministries in Durham, North Carolina and plans to attend law school in the future.

Abstract Studies on attitudes toward affirmative action policies in higher education indicate that the majority of Americans believe college admissions should be based solely on merit (Graf 2019).

Additionally, some scholars suppose that race-relations in American society are moving in a direction that makes them believe affirmative-action policies may be a thing of the past. AfricanAmericans and millennials, generally speaking, differ from this majority and tend to support policies aimed at correcting past discrimination (Stoltz 2016). My research analyzes how being an African American millennial affects views of affirmative action policies compared to African American non-millennials, White non-Latino millennial Americans, and White non-Latino, nonmillennial Americans. My analysis shows that race is a much stronger predictor than generation when predicting opinions of African American millennials. These findings suggest that although racial discrimination in American society has greatly decreased since the creation of affirmative action in 1961, there is still a need for a policy like affirmative action, as demonstrated by the strong support from African Americans.

Keywords: affirmative action, public policy

A

ffirmative action policies have been hotly debated, especially in the United States, and some Americans believe that policies made to prevent racial discrimination now foster discrimination against other groups. Many believe that affirmative action is still a policy necessary in a society in which there are myriad lingering effects from slavery, many of which are present in the education system. One argument is that affirmative action policies in education 19

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may hurt African Americans in the long run because students of color are seen as being admitted to college to increase diversity rather than their academic merit, which essentially sets them up for failure, because they may not able to perform at the same level as other students (Dietrich 2015). Another argument, most commonly heard in studies on White American opinion, is that the type of discrimination against African Americans that once made affirmative action policies necessary no longer exists. From this perspective, these policies now give African Americans an unfair advantage.

African American millennials live in a society that makes higher education much more accessible to non-Whites than in generations past, but they still trail the national average for college enrollment. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Current Population Survey, in 2017, 41% of White students ages 18 to 24 were enrolled in college, while only 36% of Black students of the same age were enrolled. Opportunities have clearly improved over time.

In 1964, only about 4% of African Americans had obtained at least a bachelor's degree. By 2016, that number more than quadrupled to 21% (Dimock, Kiley, and Suls, 2013).

It is clear that perceptions about the need for, and the effects of, affirmative action may be changing, especially for younger Americans. The main focus of my study compares African American and White American opinion of affirmative action programs in higher education as well as the extent to which a person believes that present-day poverty for African Americans is attributable to past discrimination. Specifically, I analyze African American non-millennials, White non-millennials, and White millennials, using African American millennials as my reference category. This approach allows me to see if other groups’ support is significantly different after controlling for education, political ideology, and gender, because they all likely have an influence on opinions of affirmative action policies and the extent to which individuals attribute present-day difficulties for African Americans to historical circumstances.

Research on African American millennials can provide a deeper understanding of the trajectory of support for affirmative action across different age and racial groups. In doing so, I hope to provide insights into where race relations are headed in what some scholars call an increasingly post-racial society (Lum 2009). My study aims to discover if African Americans have reached a pivotal point in American politics in which they believe programs designed to repair past wrongdoings are no longer necessary. If this were the case, these findings could signal the beginning of large-scale changes in policy regarding race. In the case that African American millennials still support affirmative action, however, these findings could indicate more effort needs to be made to reconcile for past policies that restricted African Americans from obtaining an equal education.

What We Know About Affirmative Action, and Why that May be Changing There has been much debate in recent years over whether or not affirmative action policies are still effective mechanisms to ensure racial equality for groups who long have been targets of discrimination. Some argue that these policies are still necessary and effective, while others say that affirmative action harms highly qualified non-Whites by making them seen as less deserving of their achievements. It is clear that most Americans do not support the “idea of colleges using race and ethnicity as a factor in decisions on college admissions” (Newport 2018). However, the 20

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rationale behind the lack of support for affirmative action varies for different racial and generational groups. This difference is most drastic when specifically comparing African American non-millennials, White non-millennials, and White millennials.

White Non-Millennials White non-millennials do not support affirmative action for a variety of reasons. Some older White Americans do not support affirmative action because they believe African Americans bring their problems on themselves (Wenger and Wilkins 2014). Some scholars point to the fact that the media perpetually stereotypes African Americans as “rule breakers,” leading to negative opinions toward affirmative action (Ramasubramanian 2011, 499). Another argument behind White Americans rejecting these policies is the idea of “White backlash.” Roger Hewett defines White backlash as: Negative reactions within White communities to...the potential acquisition of new power and/or status by blacks, or... the fashioning of policies or legislation to bring about greater equality between “racial”/ ethnic groups, [and] the enforcing of such policies or legislation.

Most research shows that White Americans’ lack of support for affirmative action programs is a reflection of their belief that these policies are akin to social welfare programs and seen as “group entitlement and handouts…paid for by hard-working White individuals” (Hughey 2014).

Many White non-millennials do not outwardly express their disapproval of affirmative action policies; however, studies on symbolic racism reveal they have conflicting underlying opinions. Symbolic racism, a belief system that reflects an underlying prejudice toward an ethnic group, helps scholars understand how opinions about affirmative action policies are formulated (Kinder and Sears 1981). Donald Kinder and David Sears pioneered research on symbolic racism, which allows social scientists to uncover forms of racism that are not overtly expressed.

Studies on symbolic racism have allowed scholars to determine that although most White Americans support racial equality in principle, they often do not support affirmative action policies because they believe African Americans already are given equal opportunities or are “responsible for their own social problems” (Clair and Denis 2015).

White Millennials White millennials and older White Americans share in large part their overall opinions of affirmative action policies, but they have distinct reasoning behind their views. Previous literature shows that race is a stronger determinant of public opinion among Whites than generation (Schildkraut and Marotta 2018). As a result, although White millennials are slightly less likely to strongly oppose affirmative action than older Whites, strong opposition is still highly prevalent among both White millennials and White non-millennials (Schildkraut and Marotta 2018). Most of the research on White millennials’ opinion on affirmative action focuses on the idea that their opposition is generally based on conservative principles. Specifically, many studies report that White millennials support “color-blind policies,” which “emphasize individual achievement and equal opportunity” in ways that ignore the current realities of racial discrimination (Dietrich 2015).

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The general consensus among White Americans is that African Americans are responsible for their own present-day problems, but many White millennials also believe that American society has reached a point where affirmative action policies are no longer necessary because they believe racial discrimination in higher education admissions no longer exists (Bonilla-Silva 2006). This view is reflected in statistics from a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted in 2013, which showed that 63% of millennials do not believe a person’s race or gender will affect future career prospects. Most respondents saw “racism and race-based affirmative action as a relic of an earlier age” (Diggles 2014). Other recent survey research report only a quarter of individuals under 40 support using race in university admissions (“Same-Sex Marriage and Affirmative Action” 2013).

Research suggests White millennials essentially want to “even the playing field” and believe color-blind policies are the way to achieve this outcome (Bonilla-Silva 2006). An example of a color-blind policy to address social inequities that White millennials are more likely to support would be an affirmative action policy based on class or income (Kahlenberg 1995). In short, White millennials are clearly more liberal on social welfare programs than their parents, but not nearly as drastically more liberal as the media makes them out to be (Davis 2013).

African American Non-Millennials African American non-millennials overwhelmingly support affirmative action policies, but the small number of those who do not, have similar reasoning to White millennials, believing that society has moved into an era where discrimination in university admissions no longer exists (Smith 2014). Nevertheless, there has been little research to date that specifically analyzes African American opinion on affirmative action policies that relate to racial discrimination. From the limited work so far, it can be inferred that as a whole, African Americans support redistributive programs because they believe discrimination still persists and believe that they still do not have equal access to employment and educational opportunities (Stoltz 2016).

Additionally, most African Americans feel as though this type of discrimination is directly attributable to their race (Stoltz 2016).

African American Millennials Although some research has been conducted separately for African American, White nonmillennial, and White millennial opinions of affirmative action, there has been no research conducted on African American millennial opinion. This oversight is odd because of how strong a determinant age/generation is for overall African American support of affirmative action policies (Smith 2014). The political attitudes of Americans typically reflect the political circumstances present during their youth, and age cohorts oftentimes view political issues in ways that differ substantially from generations preceding or following them (Jennings 1987).

Studying African American millennial support of affirmative action policies could give policymakers insight into how this group feels about whether or not these policies are still necessary. It is imperative to research African American millennial opinion on affirmative action because young African Americans are the main benefactors of affirmative action policies.

Therefore, surveying their levels of support for the policies allows policymakers to understand how to proceed with legislation in the future.

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Reflecting on the degree to which the Civil Rights Movement transformed American politics, it is possible that for African American millennials, age/generation may be a stronger indicator than race on opinions of affirmative action policies. If this is true, and their opinions align more with White non-millennials and White millennials, it could demonstrate that we have reached a new era in which African Americans feel like they have equal educational opportunities and no longer need assistance from affirmative action. On the other hand, it is possible that race may remain the strongest indicator of African American millennial opinion on affirmative action policies, just like it is for older generations of African Americans.

Even if young African Americans do not believe that they have equal access to opportunity in present-day America, they might still question the value of affirmative action policies. Some research has suggested that affirmative action can have subtle harmful consequences for the groups these policies are intended to benefit (Nacoste 1989). Specifically, it is possible that many African American millennials may believe that affirmative action delegitimizes their successes, even when those achievements are due solely to merit (Nacoste 1990).

Data and Methods In this study, I consider three contradictory hypotheses for what African American millennial opinion toward affirmative action may look like. The first hypothesis suggests that race still matters most. Regardless of a person’s generation, African Americans are the primary intended beneficiaries of affirmative action, so it is reasonable to anticipate that White Americans across all generations would oppose it, while African Americans across all generations would exhibit high levels of support. My second hypothesis assumes that there is a generational divide between millennial and non-millennial Americans’ opinion of affirmative action policies. Researchers have shown that there presently is a significant generational divide on a wide range of policy issues, partisanship, and beliefs about living in a majority-minority society (“The Generation Gap in American Politics” 2018). For my second hypothesis, I thus anticipate that older Whites and African Americans will hold to these group’s traditional views on affirmative action, but that millennials may view both dependent variables similarly, regardless of a person’s race. Lastly, my third hypothesis expects that African American millennials will have lower levels of support for affirmative action than older African Americans. In this view, African American millennials should recognize there are more opportunities available for them than in generations past and perhaps be concerned that White Americans are inaccurately attributing their merit-derived success to affirmative action. Young African Americans under this hypothesis may believe affirmative action policies were useful in their parents’ generation but no longer necessary for them.

To test my hypotheses, I used the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) dataset, which was the last version of this biannual survey to ask about support for affirmative action. The CCES is a nationally stratified sample survey administered to over 50,000 Americans

by YouGov; because of its large sample, it is regularly used in studies of African American behaviors and attitudes (Jacobsmeier 2015; Stout and Garcia 2015). It uses matched sample methodology─ surveying respondents who share certain characteristics─ to select representative samples from non-randomly selected pools of respondents. In this survey, 54,535 adults were interviewed in October 2012 for pre-election data and in November 2012 for post-election data.

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Over 5,000 respondents were African American non-millennials, 1,500 respondents were African American millennials, 4,879 respondents were White millennials, and 34,548 respondents were White non-millennial Americans. Although this dataset includes multiple racial categories, my hypotheses all focus on the differences between African American and White individuals. Thus, I looked at respondents who identify as White or African American, who together make up 53,841 of the 54,535 respondents.

Dependent Variables Support for Affirmative Action To analyze how being a millennial and African American separately influences opinion on affirmative action policies for African American millennials, I used two questions from the 2012 CCES survey. One directly asks respondents about their support for affirmative action: “Affirmative action programs give preference to racial minorities in employment and college admissions in order to correct for past discrimination. Do you support or oppose affirmative action?” This variable is originally measured on a one-to-four scale, ranging from “strongly support” to “strongly oppose.”

I also analyzed a second question that helps to identify hidden opinions about race preferences that respondents may not be comfortable explicitly admitting, due to social desirability bias. This item asks about support for the following statement: “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” This variable is also originally measured on a one-to-four scale that ranges from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” In my analysis, both variables were recoded into dichotomous indicators that distinguish likely affirmative action supporters from opponents.

Independent Variables Race The 2012 CCES survey asks respondents “What racial or ethnic group best describes you?”

Because I only want to compare African Americans and White Americans, I included only respondents who answered “Black” or “White.”: 1 = Black and 0= White.

Generation The 2012 CCES survey asks respondents “In what year were you born?” The youngest respondent in the survey was born in 1994, and all individuals born between 1981 and that year were coded as millennials. Anyone born before 1981 was coded as a non-millennial (1 = millennial, and 0 = non-millennial).

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Race-Generation Variables I created four variables to identify African American millennials, White millennials, African American non-millennials, and White non-millennials. The African American millennial variable combines respondents who identified as “Black” and who were born in or after 1981. The White millennial variable refers to “Whites” born in or after 1981. The African American nonmillennial variable denotes individuals identifying as “Black” who were born before 1981.

Lastly, the White non-millennials are respondents who identify as “White” and were born before 1981.

Findings As can be seen in Figure 1 and Table 1, after running preliminary bivariate analyses, it is evident there are statistically significant differences between mean levels of support for affirmative action among African American millennials and White millennials. These findings strongly support my first hypothesis, that African American non-millennials (87.2%), and African American millennials (81.1%) will exhibit similar levels of support for affirmative action. These findings also weakly support my second hypothesis that there will be a generational divide between millennials and non-millennials on affirmative action. Although it is clear the levels of support for affirmative action for African American millennials are much more similar to the levels exhibited by African American non-millennials, millennials across both races exhibit slightly lower levels of support for affirmative action than their elders. Specifically, 6% more African American non-millennials supported affirmative action than did African American millennials. Similarly, 4% more White millennials supported affirmative action than did White non-millennials. My third hypothesis clearly is not supported by these findings. There is no evidence to suggest that African American millennials are rejecting affirmation action because they think that these policies negatively impact perceptions of their ability to succeed on the basis of merit.

Support for Affirmative Action (%)

Figure 1: Percentage Support for Affirmative Action Across Independent Variables 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

African-American African-American White Millennials Millennials Non-Millennials

White NonMillennials 25

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The results in Figure 1 summarize the levels of support of the different racial and generational categories. Table 1 shows 81% of African American millennials and 87% of African American non-millennials support using race-based affirmative action in college admissions. This result gives us clear evidence that African American millennials still strongly support affirmative action in college admissions. On the other hand, only 32% of White millennials and 28% of White non-millennials support using race-based affirmative action in college admissions. These results show that across both generational categories, White Americans overall exhibit low levels of support for affirmative action.

Table 1: Descriptive Statistics

All Minimum Maximum Mean

African African American White American NonMillennial Millennial Millennial Mean Mean Mean

White NonMillennial Mean

Respondent graduated from undergrad

0.00

1.00

0.3533 0.2660

0.3224

0.2802

0.3720

Liberal Index

0.00

7.00

3.5252 3.8267

4.0403

3.6983

3.4117

Female

0.00

1.00

0.5330 0.6760

0.6204

0.6772

0.4934

Support Affirmative Action

0.00

1.00

0.3687 0.8111

0.8722

0.3243

0.2814

Slavery made it hard for Blacks to 0.00 get out of lower class

1.00

0.4088 0.8542

0.8269

0.4244

0.3617

The results in Table 1 summarize the descriptive statistics for all of the study’s variables for each racial-generational group. Table 1 shows 85% of African American millennials and 83% of African American non-millennials believe slavery has made it hard for blacks to get out of the lower class. This finding is interesting considering that 6% more African American nonmillennials support affirmative action than African American millennials. The table also shows 42% of White millennials and 36% of White non-millennials believe slavery made it hard for Blacks to get out of the lower class. This finding was to be expected since, as was noted in

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Figure 1, White millennials showed higher levels of support for affirmative action than White non-millennials.

Table 2: Influence of Controls and Independent Variables on Support for Affirmative Action and Symbolic Racism Question Support for Affirmative Action (Logistic)

Generations of Slavery (Logistic)

White (non-Hispanic) NonMillennial

0.058***

.065***

African American NonMillennial

1.399***

0.624**

White (Non-Hispanic) Millennial

0.062***

0.072***

Respondent Graduated from undergrad

1.443***

1.787***

Respondent is Female

1.125***

0.949

Liberal Index

1.716***

1.792***

Observations

46045

46045

Pseudo R squared

0.416

0.374

To ensure that race and generation, rather than other factors that can be closely related to a person’s age cohort and racial background, predict support for affirmative action, I reexamined the relationship between my independent and dependent variables with regression analysis.

Because the dependent variables are both dichotomous, logistic regression is the appropriate method. Table 2 shows the results from two binary logistic regression models that predict the influence of my independent variables and control variables on support for affirmative action and then the symbolic racism indicator. In this model, I excluded African American millennials because they were used as a reference category, allowing me to assess whether each of the racegeneration category statistically differs. The pseudo-R-squared statistics indicate that these models explain about 42% of why someone supports affirmative action and about 37% of why someone believes that generations of slavery have made it harder for Blacks to work their way out to the lower class.

The regression analyses provide considerable support for my first hypothesis, which assumes that African Americans of all generations will support affirmative action, with Whites consistently rejecting it. Nevertheless, there were important differences among millennial African Americans and their older co-racial peers. Controlling for other relevant factors, African American non-millennials were about one and a half times more likely than younger African 27

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Americans to support affirmative action in higher education. Interestingly, while older African Americans are considerably more supportive of affirmative action, they were much less likely than millennial African Americans —about 40% so—to attribute present-day poverty to the legacy of slavery. My first hypothesis finds even more support among White attitudes. White millennials were 94% less likely than their African American generational peers to support affirmative action, and this gap is almost exactly the same difference as that between young African Americans and older Whites. There was a similar pattern for the measure of symbolic racism: older and young Whites were both over 90% less likely than millennial African Americans to say that generations of slavery have resulted in a class system that works to the disadvantage of poor African Americans.

As a whole, the findings provide only partial support for my second hypothesis and none for my third. My second hypothesis posited that support for affirmative action would vary by generation more than by race, with both young Whites and African Americans being highly supportive, even if younger African Americans were less supportive than their non-millennial co-racial peers. I only found support for the latter of these expectations. While there are important differences among older and younger African Americans when it comes to supporting affirmative action and beliefs about how much the legacy of slavery plays in explaining contemporary class outcomes, there obviously were no similar gaps between millennial and older Whites.

Similarly, we can reject my third hypothesis, which tested the idea that young African Americans might be rejecting affirmative action even if they think that longstanding legacies of discrimination still play a decisive role in social outcomes. Specifically, I posited that African American millennials might be suspicious of affirmative action in higher education out of a fear that their merit-based successes in college and afterward might be discounted because they were taking advantage of affirmative action opportunities. My findings, however, show that millennial African Americans were over 90% more likely to support affirmative action then Whites, regardless of the latter’s generation.

Conclusion After testing several hypotheses, it is clear that race is still the best predictor for support of affirmative action. African American millennials and non-millennials exhibit high levels of support for affirmative action, while White millennials and non-millennials do not. Among Whites, regardless of generation, there was similarly low support for both affirmative action and the idea that present-day difficulties for African Americans are largely due to historical discrimination. There were some important differences between older and millennial African Americans. Specifically, when compared to African American millennials, African American non-millennials were almost 40% less likely to believe that generations of slavery made it harder for Blacks to get out of the lower class. This finding is surprising because African American non-millennials aw almost 40% more likely than African American millennials to support affirmative action. This discrepancy could be due to the notion that in past generations African Americans felt as though they needed to work hard despite their circumstances, and now African Americans increasingly understand the multiple factors that contribute to high levels of African Americans in the lower class.

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Since African Americans still strongly support affirmative action, the findings of my research suggest lawmakers should focus on continuing to institute affirmative action in higher education. Furthermore, these findings suggest African Americans as a whole, support programs that address the disparities that are present in their access to all levels of education. More focused research could uncover additional information to help scholars understand the rationale behind differing levels of support between the two racial categories analyzed. Since this study uses data from 2012, it is possible that levels of support have changed. Based on previous research, the most important factor in changing opinions on affirmative action, specifically for African Americans, is instituting other forms of legislation that correct for institutional disparities between access to quality education for White and African American students.

References Bonilla-Silva, E. 2006. Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

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Davis, J. A. 2013. A generation of attitude trends among US householders as measured in the NORC General Social Survey 1972–2010. Social science research, 42(3), 571-583.

Deborah J. Schildkraut, & Satia A. Marotta. 2018. Assessing the Political Distinctiveness of White Millennials: How Race and Generation Shape Racial and Political Attitudes in a Changing America. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 4(5), 158-187.

Dietrich, D. R. 2015. Racially Charged Cookies and White Scholarships: Anti-Affirmative Action Protests on American College Campuses. Sociological Focus, 48(2), 105-125.

Diggles, M. 2014. Millennials–Political Explorers. Washington, DC: Third Way. Graf, Nikki. 2019. Most Americans Say Colleges Should not Consider Race or Ethnicity in Admissions. Pew Research Center.

Dimock, Michael, Kiley, Jocelyn, and Suls, Rob. 2013. King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal; Many Americans See Racial Disparities. Pew Research Center.

Hewitt, R. 2005. White backlash and the politics of multiculturalism. Cambridge University Press.

Hughey, M. W. 2014. White backlash in the ‘post-racial’ United States. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37(5), 721-730.

Jacobsmeier, Matthew L. 2015. "From Black and White to left and right: Race, perceptions of candidates’ ideologies, and voting behavior in US House elections." Political Behavior 37.3.

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Kinder, D.R., Sears, D.O. 1981. Prejudice and politics: Symbolic racism versus racial threats to the good life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40(3): 414–431.

Lum, L. 2009. The Obama Era: A Post-Racial Society? Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, 25(26), 14-16.

Nacoste, R. W. 1989. Affirmative action and self-evaluation. Affirmative action in perspective.

103-109. Springer, New York, NY. 29

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Nacoste, R. B. 1990. Sources of stigma: Analyzing the psychology of affirmative action. Law & Policy, 12(2), 175-195.

Newport, Frank. 2018. The Harvard Affirmative Action Case and Public Opinion. Gallup.

The Generation Gap in American Politics. 2018. Pew Research Center.

Ramasubramanian, S. 2011. The Impact of Stereotypical Versus Counterstereotypical Media Exemplars on Racial Attitudes, Causal Attributions, and Support for Affirmative Action.

Communication Research, 38(4), 497–516.

Same-Sex Marriage and Affirmative Action. 2013. Washington post-ABC Poll.

Schildkraut, D. J., & Marotta, S. A. 2018. Assessing the political distinctiveness of White millennials: How race and generation shape racial and political attitudes in a changing America. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 4(5), 158-187.

Smith, C. W. 2014. Shifting from Structural to Individual Attributions of Black Disadvantage: Age, Period, and Cohort Effects on Black Explanations of Racial Disparities. Journal of Black Studies, 45(5), 432–452.

Stoker, Laura. 1998. Understanding Whites' Resistance to Affirmative Action: The Role of Principled Commitments and Racial Prejudice. In Perception and prejudice: Race and Politics in the United States, edited by Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Stoltz, F. 2016. 2014 in Black & White: A Measure of Social Policy Attitudes. Undergraduate Review, 12(1), 140-147.

Stout, Christopher T., and Jennifer R. Garcia. 2015. "The big tent effect: Descriptive candidates and black and Latino political partisanship." American Politics Research 43.2. 205-231.

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the forgottenness of della Vivian McAllister Vivian McAllister (’22), a psychology major with a Spanish minor, was completing a sophomore year Honors course when she was asked to construct an autoethnography based on personal identity. Since family plays a pinnacle role in Vivian’s life, she chose to dig into her family history and tell the story of her great aunt, della. Vivian stated, “As an African American woman, this manuscript about della was both a reflective and emotionally evocative research experience for me.” Vivian feels that her involvement in research and creative work provides her with important opportunities to develop and embrace her voice as a scholar and an artist.

Vivian credits her mentor, Dr. Melissa Richard, for her unfailing support with the challenges of her autoethnographic research and encouraging her to publish this work. Vivian claims, “Mentorship at HPU has been a wonderful privilege to have for assistance with academic endeavors and more informal discussions about how class content and real life intersect.” Vivian plans to pursue a PhD in psychology, doing research, and incorporating her Spanish.

Abstract The sinking of the Titanic changed lives and affected many families. The Williams family of Bladen County, North Carolina was one of those families. To untangle the mystery and explore the life of a relative, della, who died on the Titanic, I journeyed back in history and attempted to reconstruct her life as a creative autoethnography. Since little information about della’s life was known, I relied heavily on research supplying historical context from 1850 to 1912, particularly work that gave me insight into the experiences of African American women before slavery and after slavery. Built from the research, imagination, and my experiences as a member of the Williams family, creative artifacts are included to highlight stages of della’s life and the ways in which she impacts my life today, especially in regard to African American foodways. The essay No Name Woman by Maxine Kingston and theories of philosopher Michel Foucault in Technologies of the Self are used as frameworks to analyze the implications of della’s life in 1912, when she died, and in 2019, when she became part of my life. della’s life is one of forgottenness on two dimensions: 1) a testament to the process of internalizing unworthiness from society and 2) an example of how unworthiness can make bloodlines untraceable. della’s name appears in lowercase to symbolize these dimensions.

Keywords: ethnography, africanamerican, titanic, internalization, oppression, history, family, food, slavery

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T

here are only four sentences that tell of the beginning and ending of della’s life: “It is unknown when della was born. But it is known that she left home before 1880. It is believed that she went with a white family to England before the Civil War ended. There she was hired as a cook on the Titanic and died on the night of April 14-15, 1912 on its first voyage from England to New York City” (Hayes et al. 2). The Titanic, however, is only important for it is her final resting place. della’s life is painted on many canvases, such as the mass migration of black women to the North in the late 1800s, the unique creation of African foodways, and the familial aftermath of trying to trace a bloodline that was never meant to be traced. These social factors occurring inland, before and after the Titanic sank, are the rods from which her story hinges.

This paper was born out of an assignment that was required for a course called Autobiographics that I took in the fall 2019 semester. I was asked to write an autoethnography about a community that I belonged to and then through the writing of that autoethnography, unveil things about myself. As someone who has strong family ties, I knew that my familial community would have the richest information. In a casual conversation with my grandmother, I was shocked to learn of a relative, named della, who died on the Titanic. Although I had never heard of della, I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about her. In the few months following my grandmother’s revelation, I used creative interventions and historical research to aid me in the reconstruction of della’s life. For creative interventions, I framed my understanding of della’s life based on inspiration from Maxine Kingston’s essay “No Name Woman” and used Michel Foucault’s ideas in Technologies of the Self for epistemological analysis of della’s life. These two texts will later be discussed in greater detail.

For historical research, in order to understand the life della may have lived, I operated between the historical context of the late 1850s and 1912. Two years before her death, della was part of the 90% of black women in New York who were domestic servants from 1890 to 1910 (Sacks 129). She was also part of two unofficial movements: 1) black women entering into domestic service, while white and immigrant women were leaving service, between 1900 and 1920 (Branch and Wooten 182) and 2) black women moving from the South to the North in search of better financial opportunities (Branch and Sacks 35; Louis 12; Wooten 183). Although there were economic advantages, domestic servants, like della, were vulnerable to unwanted sexual advances from their white male employers and had no recourse (Sacks 20). In a firsthand account of domestic service for black women, Negro Nurse (Negro Nurse) confirms the sad realities of black women and their sexuality in the 1900s. The identity of Negro Nurse is unknown, in which Negro Nurse was probably used as a pen name for either one black woman or a group of black women. Negro Nurse writes, “I lost my place because I refused to let the madam’s husband kiss me, a colored woman’s virtue in this part of the country has no protection” (Negro Nurse). This account, from More Slavery at the South, was published in New York’s Independent, just eighty days before the Titanic sank with della onboard. Living in the aftermath of slavery and attempting to understand what freedom meant for her, it is possible that della faced similar social hardships and sexual harassment.

As a domestic servant, della spent many hours in the kitchen of her work family. I am confident that she cooked for them with influences of the south, just as our slave ancestors pulled from their mixed pre-slavery origins in meals for their masters (Eves 283; Sacks 198). Born into 32

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slavery at the Prospect Hall Plantation in Bladen County, North Carolina before the Civil War ended (Hayes et al. 4), della was raised on a “slave diet” (Covey and Eisnach 4). Plantations were “self-sufficient enterprises,” where slave diets depended on the dominant crops of the area like pork, cornmeal, molasses, buttermilk, and sweet potatoes (Covey and Eisnach 4, 12). Covey and Eisnach sum up slavery cooking as a mix of cultural influences writing, “African foodways were combined with French, Spanish, and Native American influences and were interfused by the necessities and limitations forced by slavery to create both food that filled empty bellies and food that inspired the soul of the southern style” (38). In addition to meals, slaves also prepared desserts. Slave narratives from North Carolina tell fond memories of baking pies, pound cakes, cobblers, and cookies (Covey and Eisnach 160, 268-271).

I found this information to be particularly compelling because there is an ongoing legacy of baking within our family, from those deceased like my great-grandmother (pies), to those living, including my grandmother (pound cakes), mother (cobblers) and myself (cookies) (Williams).

Also notable is how many of the foods that Americans enjoy today, like sweet potato pie and pound cake, were prepared by slaves for their masters (Miller 261-263). Although African American cooking is an important part of American cuisine, the contributions of African American women are often limited to stereotypical images like Aunt Jemima, the “mammy cook,” and seldom acknowledged (Eves 284; Zafar 450). This lack of acknowledgment can be seen in books that aim to chronicle the history of American food but have little information on African American women cooks, such as Mary Anna DuSablon’s America’s Collectible Cookbooks and Sherrie Inness’ Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture (Eves 284). Food allows us to critically evaluate and understand how African Americans interacted with food and the reasons why (Eves 283). As I analyze della’s life with the racial hierarchy that she lived under in mind, I see a picture of what life and food was like for her in the 1900s: complex and complicated, just like the African American foodways.

While I was researching della’s life, I sought out numerous creative texts by authors who had crafted stories about the unique communities that they belonged to for inspiration. However, Maxine Kingston’s essay “No Name Woman” was the reading that resonated with me the most.

Her reconstruction of her no name aunt’s story heavily influenced the way that I viewed della’s life. In addition to creative readings, I also explored philosophical texts. Michel Foucault’s philosophical ideas in Technologies of the Self were important as I sought to understand how della’s story revealed things about myself.

In “No Name Woman,” Kingston tells the story of an aunt, her father’s sister who dishonored the family when she became pregnant as an unwed woman. Kingston’s mother gives her few details about this no name aunt, telling Kingston to never speak of her and that her father’s family does not acknowledge the no name aunt’s existence. Therefore, Kingston has to reconstruct the story of this no name aunt with the little information that has been given to her, filling in gaps with her imagination and cultural knowledge. She imagines the traditional Chinese life that her no name aunt lived, the rape that resulted in her no name aunt becoming pregnant and the night that the villagers stormed the family home, later causing her no name aunt to commit suicide. Within Kingston’s story, she writes a compelling theory about why her no name aunt faced harsh punishment from the villagers. Kingston writes, “In the village structure, spirits shimmered among the live creatures, balanced and held in equilibrium by time and land. The 33

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frightened villagers, who depended on one another to maintain the real, went to my aunt to show her a personal, physical representation of the break she had made in the "roundness” (Kingston 13). The villagers did not wake up one day and say, “We are a circle and must all do our best to maintain the integrity of that circle for our village,” but over the years the actions and words of others had conditioned all of the village’s inhabitants to adopt a priority for the majority.

Unfortunately, Kingston’s no name aunt disturbed this equilibrium. della was never reported dead or missing, not because her parents had hopes that she survived but because they knew she was unworthy of being accounted for as a black American.

This was not a conscious thought of “I have absorbed feelings of inferiority from my past ancestors and the current media and for those reasons, I know della is worthless to society, dead or alive.” However, as African Americans, with a legacy of slavery and racism, my family had assimilated this belief of subordinateness. Much like the villagers in “No Name Woman”, my family too, had been influenced by the society around them. Although the stories of Kingston’s aunt and my aunt diverge, I do see parallels. Both of our aunts’ stories were almost forgotten, Kingston’s no name aunt, for cultural reasons, and my aunt della by unconscious omission.

Reasons that were both constructed through a process of internalization, no name aunt was shunned from her family’s memory because of the disgrace that she brought upon her collectivist community and the family. Whereas della was omitted because my family had little options for recourse due to their racial status in the 1900s.

In Technologies of the Self, Michel Foucault discusses how humans have used epistemology tools throughout history to acquire information about themselves (Foucault 2). Although Foucault identifies four technologies: 1) technologies of production, 2) technologies of sign systems, (3) technologies of power and 4) technologies of the self, and asserts that these four technologies function interdependently, for the sake of analysis, I will only be discussing technologies of the self (Foucault 2). In his seminar, Foucault discussed techniques, by which the technology of self operates and two, in particular, lingered with me. The techniques of 1) disclosure of self and 2) examination of self and conscience (Foucault 7). Letters between Marcus Cornelius Fronto and Marcus Aurelius, prominent members of the Roman Empire, where recounts of one’s day provide information about what a person did and how they felt are examples of disclosure of self (Foucault 7). Whereas the letters of Socrates, a Greek philosopher, are examples of the examination of self and conscience, in which writing is used to aid reflection and keep an account of oneself (Foucault 6). Foucault writes, “The examination of conscience begins with this letter writing” (Foucault 7). This entire manuscript is, in essence, an imaginary letter exchange between della and I. Drawing from historical research, I have created a probable account of her daily life, through conversation about life as a domestic servant in New York and how African American foodways impacted her livelihood as a cook. Since della cannot reply to my letters, this creates an opportunity for me to critically envision her life through the lens of information that is available to me and my own life experiences. Thus, my current life speaks to della’s past life as we are both African American women. Mirroring the disclosure self-element of letter writing between companions, della’s life and mine have both similarities, such as our love for cooking and family, and differences, such as the century we lived in and our career choices. Throughout this reconstruction process, I also engaged with an examination of self and conscience, in which I have reflected upon my life from two perspectives: 1) a separate entity from della’s life and 2) an intertwined entity with della’s life. For twenty years, I lived without 34

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any knowledge of della and thus interpret those experiences through a lens outside of della.

However, since undertaking this exploration of della’s life, she has become a part of my life and thus, my evaluation now considers her life experiences.

Throughout Foucault’s seminar, he emphasizes the development of knowledge about self. It was in personal reflective letter writing that I first begin to contemplate the idea of internalization. How communities internalize “unworthiness” and a general lack of value is complex and difficult to fully comprehend. Internalization is still currently ongoing within my family and the African American community as we struggle to address issues. What does that say about me, someone who partakes (at least implicitly) in this internalization and perpetuation process? I suppose it says that I, too, despite my attempts to think beyond the confines of society, am still a product of the overall social environment. Researching and writing della’s story led me to ponder things that I did not before, like acknowledging the past and present dysfunctions between society, my family, and my race. As Foucault would have expected, writing this manuscript did evolve to become a tool that enabled me to uncover knowledge about della and myself. Such as the sad reality that I too, despite being a century apart in time from della, am still faced with similar challenges due to the color of my skin. However, in della’s life and mine, I also see the ability to preserve and rise from the ashes of racism. Sometimes knowledge is not always new information but rather an unveiling of it, allowing for clearer understanding.

Why does della have significance now, when she did not a hundred years ago? Times have changed. As part of a living generation who will one day birth another generation, I care and esteem her to be worthy. I also care about exposing the things that I and those before me have internalized. della’s heart stopped beating, her skin grew cold, and her spirit ascended to Heaven.

Yet the spirit of her story lives on, wandering and waiting for someone to see value in it. What does that say about me, someone who decides that a rarely mentioned relative is worth three months of my energy? It says that I have a heart for those who are overlooked and forgotten, not on purpose but by the mere consequences of society’s appraisals of importance. My family’s response to della’s death on the Titanic was the product of unconscious internalization from society, and not an attempt at intentional erasure.

Influenced by the extensive research and my emotional experiences throughout this project, I was compelled to create figures that symbolize della’s life. Since I did not have della’s birth information but knew that slave owners were known to keep records of births, deaths and marriages, I created a probable birth record of della and her siblings (Figure 1). As a cook, della spent a large portion of her life in the kitchen, so I created a handwritten recipe of my grandmother’s pound cake to fuse the past and present of bakers within the Williams family (Figure 2). Her identity as an African American woman and a cook meant that she would not have been accounted for on the Titanic. However, in researching the Titanic, I was inspired to render a third-class ticket that could have been what della used to board the fateful liner (Figure 3). These three figures run parallel with the three sentences about her in the Williams family history book, all that tells her story from birth (Figure 1), to living (Figure 2), to death (Figure 3).

This paper seemed incomplete and unfinished without me taking the time to address della personally. The letter to della is like putting a wax seal on an important document (Figure 4).

However, now that the letter is written, I can pour the wax and now stamp this paper with great feelings of satisfaction and peace.

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I have no more definitive answers about della and her life, after three months of digging, than when I initially started. Time has been my enemy, taking people and artifacts with answers far away to never be reunited with the corresponding questions. Yet, I enjoyed all the conversations that della and I have had as she revealed herself through the research and reflections of our family. Her story is one that can never be forgotten again because she lives on in the hearts of all who choose to experience her life. Sometimes it is not about getting an answer but embracing the journey and the company of those who are embarking on the quest with you. I began with family and ended with family. All I am left with, is all that is worth living for; and never forgetting.

“What if she did not board the Titanic?” or “What if she boarded the Titanic, but did not die?” These are questions that I have been inundated with—from myself, my family and my mentor. Questions that I can only answer with this one truth: I will never have definitive answers about why my family never heard from della again after April 1912. However, this raises other more disturbing questions, such as “Why are there no records of her existence?” and “Why do I have to resort to generic history to learn about a unique individual’s life?” This is the reality for African Americans and other minority families who attempt to trace their lineage. Not only is worthlessness internalized, worthlessness is institutionalized through the justice system, the economy, education, and all sectors of existence. In short, racism is embedded in American society. All of which creates a system that operates independent of and does not include groups that are not deemed worthy. Although the facts and objective truths are not present, the emotional and subjective truths are. Since della’s story cannot be presented as factual history, it is now a story of emotional history.

It is a tragedy for the African American community to passively absorb beliefs that paralyze us from fighting for ourselves. These false but pervasive degradations have woven themselves into the fabric of families and continue to knot themselves through our lives and the lives of our future generations. However, this is not exclusively an African American issue, as people of any group, especially marginalized groups, can fall victim to the treacherous waters of internalization. And it is an abysmally deep fall, from which it is nearly impossible to escape.

For once an object is submerged, it succumbs to the overwhelmingly aqueous environment that surrounds it, though poisonous it may be. This poison becomes problematic when African Americans choose to undertake autoethnographic projects such as this one. The historical record available to them becomes blurred with internalization and their loved one’s story is lost in namelessness. Until America reaches post-racial status, little can be done to counter the biased social infrastructure that exists. However, the opportunity to write is free for all. African American families can start with the current familial knowledge that is available, writing it all down, using that process as both a technology of self and a chance to write history without forgottenness.

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Appendix of Creative Artifacts FIGURE 1. Through casual conversations with my family and my prior knowledge of African American slave history, I knew that the births of slaves were often recorded. I used A Journey Through the Generations: The Williams Family History to recreate the birth record. Although della's birth date is unknown, I deduced that she had to be born before 1861 because she left for New York before the 1880 Census, putting her at a teenager/young adult leaving North Carolina.

FIGURE 2: Inspired by What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives and knowing the legacy of baking within the Williams family, I asked my grandmother, SG to share her pound cake recipe with me. The recipe is close in age to my mother and no one but SG can make it successfully.

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FIGURE 3: I searched for Titanic tickets online and ran across the article “First Class Ticket for the White Star Liner Titanic” that talks about the only known surviving ticket (first-class) from the Titanic, which belonged to Reverend Stuart Holden. Since della was not first-class, I recreated Holden’s ticket and changed ‘first-class’ to ‘third class.’

FIGURE 4: It took the Titanic roughly 160 minutes (2 hours and 40 minutes) to sink. If given the opportunity to go back in time and speak to her, this 160-word letter in poem form is what I would say. I relied on the overall knowledge that I gained from the culmination of this paper and a visual minute-by-minute reenactment of the Titanic sinking online, Stunning Animation Lets Viewers Vividly Relive 2 hours and 40 Minutes it Took for Titanic to Sink.

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Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. First ed., Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

Louis, Kyriakoudes M. "Lookin’ for Better All the Time". African American Life in the Rural South, 1900-1950, edited by Hurt, Douglass R., 2013, pp. 10-26. E-book. University of Missouri Press, 2003.

Merseyside Maritime Museum. “First Class Ticket for the White Star Liner Titanic.”, 2019, https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/archive/highlights/titanic-ticket.aspx.

Accessed 28 Nov 2019.

Miller, Adrian. Soul Food. E-book, The University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

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Sacks, Marcy S. Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City Before World War I. Ebook. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

“Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued by Carpathia, Probably 1250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing.” The New York Times, 1912, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0415.html#ar ticle. Accessed 09 November 2019.

Williams, Lethe. Personal interview. 13 September 2019.

---. Personal interview. 26 October 2019.

Williams-Forson, Psyche. “More than Just the ‘Big Piece of Chicken”: The Power of Race, Class and Food in American Consciousness". Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Counihan, Carole and Penny Van Ester, 2013, pp. 107-118. E-book. Routledge, 2013.

Zafar, Rafia. “The Signifying Dish: Autobiography and History in Two Black Women's Cookbooks.” Feminist Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 1999, pp. 449–469. JSTOR, doi: 10.2307/3178690 39

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The Differences Between American and Canadian National Identity Avery Moon Avery Moon (’20) graduated from High Point University with a Bachelor of Arts in international relations and sociology and anthropology. Since Moon’s freshman year, the topic of national identity within the realm of political science and international relations often piqued her curiosity due to its seemingly unchanging nature—a concept which differed from Moon’s conception of personal identity, defined by continuous change. This prompted a research report in her freshman research methods class that later developed into the topic of her senior thesis. Moon credits the extremely impactful collaboration with her faculty mentor, Dr. Mark Setzler, for the success of her research. Dr. Setzler helped Moon develop close working relationships with faculty at an early stage in her college career and challenged her to create a thorough and innovative project. As a graduate, Moon is serving as an HPU AmeriCorps VISTA as a School and Community Partnership Coordinator in the city of High Point.

Abstract The body of research investigating cross-national differences in national identity across the Americas is slim. This research paper aims to fill that gap by comparing American and Canadian perceptions of national identity and testing whether there are fundamental differences in what Americans and Canadians view as important to national identity. Using data from the Pew Research Center, this paper uses logistic regression models to determine the extent to which Americans have more restrictive views than Canadians of what it means to belong to the nation given that the sociopolitical contexts of the two nations vary considerably. My initial results demonstrate that Americans are more likely to believe all of the characteristics I analyze are essential to national identity except for the sharing of customs and traditions. Specifically, Americans are more likely to think “exclusive” characteristics of national identity are important.

Additionally, multivariate analyses also show Americans’ views of the national identity are unlike those of their northern peers because of a distinct sense of being American, rather than socioeconomic and demographic factors.

Keywords: national identity, inclusive, exclusive, united states, american, canada, canadian

A

s immigration rates have risen, the question of national identity and what specifically makes someone identify with their country has become a topic of global political science research (Stokes 2017; Raney 2011; Hanson & Hesli 2009; Citrin & Sears 2009). Scholars have conducted research to determine which characteristics are most important in defining one’s national identity and what groups of people associate specific characteristics with national identity. This study aims to build on this research by discerning which 40

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characteristics are most important in defining national identity in the United States and Canada.

The study at which demographic groups prioritize certain characteristics and analyzes how these characteristics and groups differ across the U.S. and Canada. Both countries are developed, Westernized, democratic, immigrant-receiving, North American countries. Thus, one might expect their citizens to be quite similar due to their nations’ close proximity and similar societal development. Specifically, these parallels perhaps lead to comparable views on which characteristics are essential for identifying as either American or Canadian. On the other hand, the deep present-day differences in the prevailing political views, ideologies, and cultures in the United States and Canada may be producing differences in which characteristics are viewed as essential for national identity. The core purposes of this study is to examine which of these hypotheses is correct and to build upon the small body of literature investigating the differences between Americans and Canadians.

National Identity and Social Identity Theory National identity refers to the general consensus in a country about the criteria that “define[s] membership in the nation” and differentiates “outsiders” from “nationals” (Wright, Citrin, and Wand, 2012). The roots of national identity are grounded in social identity theory and the basis of self-categorization. Social identity theory proposes that in the second stage of social identification, people tend to adopt the identity of the group they categorized themselves as belonging to (Tajfel and Turner, 1979). This is also known as the “in-group “and “out-group” complex, which consists of “the national ingroup” and “the outsiders” (Wright, Citrin, and Wand, 2012; Smith, 1991). For national identity, this translates to the “process of selfcategorization,” in which someone self-identifies with their nation and differentiates themselves from people living in other nations. Even so, one’s self-categorization must be reaffirmed by those who are already members of the “in-group” to make sure the new member possesses all the required defining traits and characteristics (Turner et al., 1987).

Characteristics of National Identity Scholars have found the most frequently cited characteristics that shape different countries' conceptualization of national identity include birthplace, geographical descent (e.g., being of western European origin), race, citizenship, spoken language, sharing a country's prevailing customs and traditions, respecting a nation's laws and institutions, and practicing a country's dominant religion (Wright, Citrin, & Wand 2019; Stokes 2017; Hanson & Hesli 2009; Kunovich 2009; Shulman 2004). Which specific characteristics are most important in determining one's national identity, however, are ultimately dependent upon the ideologies and cultural values of the country in question. Some nations prioritize traits such as birthplace, descent, spoken language, and practicing a nation's dominant religion. Other nations prioritize more permeable criteria based on the acceptance of a nation's laws, institutions, customs, and traditions. Despite considerable variation in the terminology they apply, scholars have developed two core concepts of national identity to classify this basic dichotomy of national identity criteria: "inclusive” and “exclusive” (Citrin, Wong, and Duff, 2011; Kunovich, 2009).

An “inclusive” national identity is one that lacks an exclusive foundation (Hansen and Hesli, 2010). Traits of an “inclusive” identity generally focus on the ideas of societal inclusion, with 41

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many of the criteria being subjective. Inclusive nations have criteria based on jus soli principles, or “voluntarist and inclusive” principles in which national identity is based on whether or not an individual “accepts certain fundamental values and institutions” of a nation (Wright, Cirtin, and Wand, 2012). This also includes the concept of citizenship, and, for the purpose of this study, whether individuals participate in society by sharing the customs and traditions of the nation.

Interestingly, the United States is considered to be a strongly “inclusive” nation on an international level of analysis due to its diversity (Shulman, 2004), but scholars have noted that it appears to be strikingly “exclusive” when compared alongside its northern neighbor, Canada, after accounting for differences in immigration policies and ideologies (Wright, Citrin, and Wand, 2012; Raney, 2011).

In contrast to inclusive conceptualizations of the national identity, an “exclusive” national identity is one composed of ascriptive qualities, including birthplace, descent/race, feelings of belonging, and shared values and cultural traditions (Liebkind, 2006). The criteria of “exclusive" national identity are based largely on jus sanguinis principles, because many of the qualities viewed as essential are objective (Wright, Citrin, and Wand, 2012). Some scholars also see exclusive national identity as including traits that one cannot change easily, such as religion and spoken language, but other scholars dismiss these inclusions because language and citizenship can be acquired over time (Byrne, 2011). Exclusive nations, such as Germany and Japan, prioritize descent in what it means to be a member of their nation. In less rigidly exclusive nations, including the United States, a shift over time away from the importance of ascriptive qualities such as being a member of the “white race” and being Christian toward the importance of speaking the national language as the “primary exclusive marker of national identity” (Schulman, 2004). This recent shift in the United States is most likely due to the lack of exclusive homogeneity in the United States as a result of historical and modern immigration patterns.

Despite the differences, most broad definitions of national identity now include both “inclusive” and “exclusive” traits. Though both the United States and Canada fall into the realm of Western “inclusive” national identity, scholars have found that Canada is more likely to fall into the “inclusive” national identity category due to its liberalism, its position as a global citizen, and its acceptance of and attitudes towards immigrants (Berdahl and Raney, 2010). The United States, on the other hand, is more likely to favor an “exclusive" national identity due to the rise of anti-immigration sentiments, xenophobia, nationalism, and a more conservative political climate as a consequence of perceived high immigration rates and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2014).

Individual-Level Determinants of National Identity Both the United States and Canada were founded as “predominantly ‘middle-class’ liberal societies,” (Lipset, 1986) leading analysts to assume that industrialization, urbanization, and increased education would result in a greater sense of universalism, or concern for others regardless of national allegiance, and a reduced sense of particularism, or an attachment to one’s own nation. However, while citizens in Canada’s society are growing to become more progressive, immigrant-accepting, and open to change over time, the United States finds itself trending in the opposite direction for several decades.

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Conservatism Despite their many similarities, there are important differences between the United States and Canada that may be influencing how inclusive their citizens are when it comes to national identity. Levels of conservatism are predictably higher in the United States than in Canada because of differences in societal values and political climates (Farney, 2012), and there is reason to believe the difference in conservatism levels between the U.S. and Canada may also impact perceptions of which characteristics are essential to national identity. In the United States, this may be especially true when discussing the importance of birthplace and citizenship.

American national identity was largely founded upon speaking the English language, practicing Christianity and religious commitment, valuing the rights of individuals, having a strong work ethic, being male, and being White, amongst others (Haivry & Hazony, 2017). Yet, over time, these values became associated with conservatism due to their "traditional" and non-inclusive nature. Such values are now also associated with the Republican Party, and scholars have found that Republicans in the United States tend to prefer exclusive qualities of national identity more so than their independent and Democratic counterparts (Strokes, 2017). Because conservative and Republican attitudes are stronger in the United States than Canada (Farney, 2012), it is likely that being a conservative in the United States will influence one’s perceptions of what is essential to being truly “American.”

Christianity Another difference between the United States and Canada is the role of religion in society.

Traditional Anglo-Saxon characteristics associated with conservatism in the United States may also be influencing how much of a role Christianity plays in national identity in the United States. Studies have shown that Americans who identify as Christian, and particularly white Evangelical Protestants, are far more likely to consider being Christian as essential to being fully American (Stokes, 2017). Additionally, since the mid-1990s, there has been an increase in the number of Americans who view the United States as a “Christian nation” (Straughn and Feld, 2010). Yet, there is some disparity to how essential being a Christian truly is for being American.

While some studies have found that most Americans do not consider “being Christian” as important for being truly American (Huynh, Devos, and Altman, 2015), other studies do reveal strong connections between “religiosity and the belief that having ascriptive qualities, especially being a Christian, are essential” to being American (Taylor, Gershon, and Pantoja, 2014; Straughn and Felk, 2010). Because religion and Christianity have a lot of influence on conservative values and questionable effects on national identity in the United States, religion and being a Christian may cause a different level of influence in the United States with respect to which characteristics are essential to national identity.

Education Whether or not someone has a college degree has long been understood to be influential on which criteria a person sees as being essential to national identity. From the start of elementary education, nations condition school children to be patriotic and loyal to their countries (Stamp, 1971). Yet, the primary emphasis on patriotism in students’ inclusive education often stops after children graduate from secondary education. Liberal college education models are the most 43

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popular type of higher education in the United States and Canada, and one of the modern goals of this approach to education is the promotion of global thinking, tolerance for others, and an acceptance of differences. Having a college education may influence perceptions on how important exclusive or inclusive characteristics are to national identity. This could be a source of difference between the United States and Canada. Canada is ranked as the most educated country in the world in terms of the percentage of the country’s population holding a four-year college degree, and Canada’s population is about 10 percent more educated than the population in the United States (OECD, 2018). Therefore, it may be that Canadians have less strict perceptions of which criteria are essential to national identity.

National Context and the Determinants of National Identity Scholars have long understood that citizens living in different countries often use "different criteria for what it means" to be a member of their nation because such national identities reflect a countries' larger social and historical contexts as much they do individual-level differences within nations (Wright, Citrin, and Wand, 2012; Citrin and Sears, 2009; Theiss-Morse, 2009). It is not immediately clear what this means for the United States and Canada. On the one hand, they share many features, including their emphasis on individualism and liberty, history as immigrant-receiving societies, geographical setting and a vast supply of land, and similar socioeconomic standing as outlined above. On the other hand, they clearly are two distinct countries, and there are several ways in which their policies and values differ that may influence how their citizens as a whole view what it means to belong fully to the nation.

Bilingualism The United States certainly has become more diverse in recent decades, and there are some scholars who argue America is becoming “bifurcated,” with the widespread use of Spanish leading to the emergence of two dominant languages and at least two fully distinct subcultures (e.g., Huntington, 2004). Nevertheless, English clearly remains the dominant language in the United States, and periods of high immigration continue to produce political backlashes and widespread—even if unfounded—concerns over newcomers not fully embracing the dominant language and civic culture. By comparison, Canada has been a dual-lingual, dual-national society from its inception. The province of Quebec speaks both English and French, while the rest of Canada speaks English as its primary language. Though only Quebec is fully bilingual, public documents and goods throughout Canada are in both languages. As a result, the bilingual subcultures may well make Canadians less likely than Americans to declare speaking the national language or adopting the customs and traditions of the nation as essential criteria for being Canadian.

Cultural Mosaic Theory “Cultural mosaic theory” urges exclusive minorities to preserve their exclusive identity, languages, and traditions in order to both diversify the nation and strengthen its core identity.

Similar to present-day Europe, Canada is often described as a cultural ‘mosaic’ because of Canada’s national values and its role as “a global citizen on the world stage” (Dell’Olio 2016; Berdahl and Raney, 2010). Compared to the United States, Canadian culture has eschewed 44

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nationalism in favor of stressing the importance of being law-abiding and group oriented. This being the case, Canadians’ view of their national identity may well disproportionately place less emphasis on ascriptive national identity criteria and more emphasis on fully accepting Canadian laws and institutions.

Melting Pot Theory Many Americans believe the United States operates as a “melting pot,” in which outsiders can and should assimilate into the dominant society by blending their culture with traditional American values. In a “melting pot” societal model, “new cultural contributions and “racial strains” from outsiders are welcomed and looked favorably upon in American life (Mackey, 2002; Hudson, 1978). However, the outsiders’ values are expected to blend into “a single ‘American’ identity” that will replace the individuals’ original “exclusive, religious, racial, [and] linguistic” characteristics (Raney, 2011). Because of this, Americans may be more likely to prioritize hegemonic norms, including being a member of the dominant race, speaking the dominant language, and following the dominant religion as criteria for being a true "American."

This reflects American core national values, which emphasize "exceptionalism," "providential destiny," and American superiority over other societies (Raney, 2011). As a result, Americans remain especially likely to believe birthplace is a requirement of citizenship compared to other measures of national identity.

Hypotheses, Data, and Measurement As developed in this study so far, the previous literature indicates that although Canada and the United States are quite similar in many respects, they also have significant differences in their sociodemographic makeup, the number of languages and cultures embraced by each nation’s dominant culture, and their expectations of immigrants who wish to join their society.

The following three hypotheses are contradictory hypotheses regarding which factors are most important for how Americans and Canadians define what it means to truly belong to the nation: Hypothesis 1: Individual characteristics—specifically, socioeconomic and demographic differences—rather than a person’s country best explain which national identity characteristics Americans and Canadians prioritize. Because of the lack of previous work examining national identity differences between Americans and Canadians, it is an open question as to which of these characteristics may offer the best explanation for these differences.

My first hypothesis is based on the findings in the previous literature that individual differences are highly important determinants of how people think about the national identity along with the fact that the United States and Canada share so many historical, economic, political, and cultural factors, including a long history of absorbing waves of immigrants successfully.

Hypothesis 2: Americans will be more likely than Canadians to believe all characteristics are essential to national identity.

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The second hypothesis can be supported by the literature indicating Americans are not only more likely to believe both “exclusive” and ascriptive criteria are essential to their national identity, but also because Americans, in general, are more likely than Canadians to see their nation as exceptional and better than other societies.

Hypothesis 3: Americans will be more likely to think “exclusive” characteristics of national identity are most important while Canadians will be more likely to think “inclusive” characteristics of national identity are most important.

The third hypothesis is supported by the literature identifying differences in American and Canadian societies regarding what immigrants should give up to fully join these societies.

Though the United States is considered to be an inclusive nation because of its values of inclusion, freedom, and democracy it also has historically rejected multinationalism within its borders, and Americans have been more suspicious than Canadians of outsiders’ capacity to fully culturally assimilate—as they are expected to do in the United States, but not in Canada. Moreover, Americans have been especially suspicious of outsiders’ ability to fully assimilate in the case of newcomers whose race, regional background, religion, or language differed from those of the dominant society.

Data The data used for the analyses to test these three hypotheses come from Pew Research Center’s Spring 2016 Global Attitudes Survey, which interviewed about 23,500 respondents across 19 countries from March through July in 2016. The samples for the United States (n = 1003) and Canada (n = 1020) are nationally representative of their populations.

Dependent Variables The specific question and the dependent variables derived from it are as follows: Some people say that the following things are important for being truly American/Canadian.

Others say they are not important. How important do you think each of the following is for being American/Canadian?: (a) to have been born in the United States/Canada (b) to be able to speak English (c) to be a Christian (d) to share American/Canadian customs and traditions The analyses explored the importance Americans and Canadians place on “birthplace,” “spoken language,” “being a member of a country’s dominant denomination,” and “sharing the country’s customs and traditions.” Birthplace, spoken language, and being a member of a country’s dominant denomination were considered to be “exclusive" characteristics in this study because as defined by current literature, these characteristics are usually either unchangeable (birthplace, sometimes spoken language) or changeable under more extreme circumstances (spoken language, denomination). Sharing the country's customs and traditions, however, was considered as an "inclusive” characteristic in this study because it is much easier for citizens or immigrants to adopt a country’s practices and traditions, similar to how people accept and support a nation’s institutions. Each characteristic of national identity has been recoded into its own variable in 46

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order to analyze the individual importance of each. The levels of importance in the original question were coded as one for “very important,” two for “somewhat important,” three for “not very important,” and four for “not at all important.” Preliminary analyses (not shown) on each of these variables for both Americans and Canadians revealed only slight differences between “very important” and “somewhat important” as well as “not very important” and “not at all important.”

Thus, the variables were recoded into a dichotomous measure. Specifically, “not very important” and “not at all important” recoded as zero for “not important,” whereas “very important” and “somewhat important” were recoded as one for “important.” Participants who refused to answer were coded as missing data.

Independent and Control Variables The independent variables required to test my hypotheses include the measures of an individual’s nationality (Canadian or American), age (by generation), level of college education, political affiliation (identify as conservative), and religion (identify as being a Christian).

Age may be influencing perceptions of what is important for national identity in the United States and Canada. Although the distribution of age cohorts does not differ much between the two countries, this study examined the influence of two generational groups on what is essential to national identity: Millennials and Baby Boomers. Studies have found Millennials to be more open and inclusive when it comes to what is important to national identity around the globe (Stokes, 2017). In contrast, Baby Boomers in the United States and Canada tend to hold more traditionalist perceptions of what is essential for identifying as "American" or “Canadian.”

Following the lead of other scholars, age was recoded into "35 and under," labeled as "Millennials," "36 to 55," labeled as "Generation X," and "55 and older," labeled as "Baby Boomers," in order to try and target generational age groups in the United States and Canada (Graeber and Setzler, submitted for publication). In the analyses, Generation X served as the reference category.

Religion was recoded to distinguish between the adherents of any Christianity-based religion (Evangelical, Protestant, Orthodox, Catholicism, etc.) and other persons; respondents were coded zero for “not Christian” or one for “Christian.” Ideology was originally coded on a five-point scale of either conservative-to-liberal (United States) or left-to-right (Canada). In the analyses, each variable has been recoded into dummy variables distinguishing “conservatives” from “nonconservatives.” Specifically, individuals were coded as conservative if they placed themselves into one of the first two categories on the original scale. All other respondents were coded as “not conservative.” Because higher levels of education can usually result in an increased preference for inclusive and inclusive views on national identity (Graeber and Setzler, submitted for publication), the variables for education levels for both the United States and Canada were recoded into zero for “no college education,” and one for “four-year college degree or higher.”

Finally, previous studies include a control for gender, so the analyses here included a dummy variable for males.

There are two variables I would have liked to include but were omitted due to data availability.

The first is an indicator of Evangelical Protestantism and the second for race. Many analyses of religion’s influence on American national identity have compared Evangelical Protestants to other individuals; however, this variable could not be generated for Canada because the survey 47

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did not ask about specific denominations or include Pew’s standard item asking a respondent if they see themselves as being “born again or Evangelical.”

More unfortunate is the exclusion of race from the analyses. While there was an indicator for "race" in Pew's survey for the United States, there was no comparable measure of any type for the Canadian survey. Instead (i.e., in lieu of the race question at the same point in the survey), Pew's researcher team asked respondents which language, English or French, is spoken at home.

Canada does ask about citizenship and ethnicity in census forms, but because of their multicultural society and lack of strongly racialized history, the concept of race is not emphasized in most Canadian research (Canadian Multiculturalism Act, 1985). It is a standard procedure to examine race in studies of political attitudes and behaviors in the United States because race has always played a heavy role in the history of the United States. Yet, despite the societal importance placed on race, previous studies have revealed most Americans, regardless of their racial and exclusive background, do not associate European ancestry or being white as an important characteristic to being American, and this same work finds no meaningful differences in how Americans of different races think about national identity (Schildkraut, 2007; Huynh, Devos, and Altman. 2015; Citrin, Wong, and Duff, 2011, Schildkraut, 2007).

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics U.S. Mean Independent Variables

N (U.S.)

Canada Mean

N (Canada)

Min

Max

Male

0.48

1003

0.49

1020

0

1

Millennials

0.28

984

0.28

1000

0

1

Generation X

0.32

984

0.33

1000

0

1

Baby Boomers

0.40

984

0.39

1000

0

1

College Educated Conservative

0.37

998

0.45

1013

0

1

0.40

985

0.30

991

0

1

Christian

0.70

995

0.60

998

0

1

Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics for each variable and the number of respondents per variable for the United States and Canada. There were relatively no differences between the two countries for sex and age, but Canadians had an 8% higher difference in how many respondents are college-educated. The United States had a 10% higher difference in respondents who identify as conservative and a 10% higher difference in those who identify as Christian. These findings are consistent with the literature on Canadian levels of higher education and American levels of conservatism and religiosity. All variables were coded dichotomously.

Results and Analysis The analysis of which characteristics are essential to being truly “American” or “Canadian” begins with the first hypothesis, which theorizes individual characteristics, or socioeconomic and 48

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demographic differences, rather than nationality, account for the explanations of which national identity characteristics Americans and Canadians think are more important. The results in Table 2 are from four logistic regression models examining whether individual characteristics, compared to being American, explains which national identity characteristics are most important to Americans and Canadians. All characteristics in the models were arranged from “most exclusive” to “most inclusive.”

Table 2. The Determinants of Which National Identity Components are Important Born Here

Speaks English/French

Being Christian

Male

1.22*

1.27

1.41**

Sharing Customs and Traditions 0.91

Millennials

0.53***

0.43***

0.40***

0.44***

Generation X

0.76*

0.65*

0.67**

0.80

College Educated

0.38***

0.99

0.38***

0.72*

Conservative

1.53***

1.71**

2.32***

2.07***

Christian Respondent is American Observations

1.58***

1.79***

4.86***

1.89***

1.46***

1.71***

1.99***

0.52***

1915

1914

1907

1914

R²/ Pseudo R²

0.14

0.08

0.33

0.09

Note: Coefficients are odds ratios; * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001

According to the results in Table 2, being male slightly increased the likelihood of respondents thinking three of the four characteristics are important to national identity, but only at a statistically significant level for birthplace and being Christian. Being male also made respondents less likely to believe sharing customs and traditions is important to national identity.

Age, however, made respondents much less likely to believe each of these traits are essential to national identity at a statistically significant level for both countries. Unsurprisingly, college education also made respondents less likely to think these characteristics are important in both countries while being conservative increases respondents' importance levels for each characteristic by one to two times. Similarly, identifying as Christian made respondents between 1.6 and 4.9 times more likely to think each of these characteristics is important. While this model only accounts for 8 to 33 percent of the variation in which characteristics are important to national identity, all of these findings are consistent with current literature.

Finally, respondents who identified as Americans were significantly more likely to think birthplace, spoken language, and religiosity are important to identify as American. American respondents were 1.46 times more likely than Canadians to believe being born in one's country is important to national identity and 1.71 times more likely than Canadians to think speaking English is important to national identity. Americans were also twice as likely as Canadians are to believe being Christian is important to national identity. However, Americans were 48% less likely than Canadians to think sharing customs and traditions is important to national identity.

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Table 3. Americans vs. Canadians: Which National Identity Components are Important Born Here United States Male Millennials Generation X College Educated Conservative Christian Observations R²/ Pseudo R² Canada Female Millennials Generation X College Educated Conservative Christian Observations R²/ Pseudo R²

Speaks English/French

Being Christian

Sharing Customs and Traditions

1.21 0.53*** 0.72* 0.30***

1.29 0.18*** 0.42* 0.63

1.46* 0.38*** 0.60** 0.38***

0.78 0.43*** 0.52** 0.67*

1.80*** 1.57** 963 0.17

3.24** 1.77* 961 0.15

2.92*** 5.20*** 958 0.34

2.56*** 2.14*** 962 0.12

1.22 0.52*** 0.81 0.48***

1.21 0.67 0.77 1.32

1.37* 0.42*** 0.75 0.39***

1.34 0.44** 1.65 0.80

1.27 1.58** 952 0.09

1.16 1.82** 953 0.04

1.78*** 4.44*** 949 0.25

1.45 1.55 952 0.08

Note: Coefficients are odds ratios; * p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001

The results in the logistic regression model demonstrated only partial support for Hypothesis 1. While individual characteristics explained which characteristics of national identity are most important to Americans and Canadians, the model shows these characteristics leave much of the difference between Americans and Canadians unexplained. Turning to Hypothesis 2, the fact that respondents who identified as American were 48% less likely than Canadians to believe in the importance of sharing customs and traditions, indicated this hypothesis, which states Americans will be more likely than Canadians to believe all characteristics are essential to national identity, is also incorrect. However, the results do suggest Hypothesis 3, which states Americans will be more likely to think “exclusive” characteristics of national identity are most important while Canadians will be more likely to think “inclusive” characteristics of national identity are most important, may be correct. To dig a little deeper, I ran a multivariate logistic regression model for both countries to analyze whether individual characteristics are acting the same way in each country.

The results in Table 3 show individual characteristics are acting more or less the same in the 50

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United States and Canada, which continued to show mixed support for Hypothesis 1.

Demographic variables mattered generally the same amount in both countries although some country differences are still apparent. In both countries, sex had little influence. Being male in the United States made someone slightly more likely to think birthplace, spoken language, and religiosity was important to identify as American, but less likely to think sharing customs and traditions were important. In Canada, being male made someone slightly more likely to think all characteristics were important to identify as Canadian. In both the United States and Canada, age made people less likely to believe all characteristics were important to national identity, with the exception of "Gen X-ers" in Canada, who were more likely to think sharing customs and traditions are important to national identity. Having a college education also played out similarly in both countries; in the United States, having a college education made people less likely to think any characteristic is important to national identity, with birthplace and religiosity being the least important. Interestingly, in Canada, respondents with a college education thought all characteristics were less important to national identity except speaking English.

Unsurprisingly, conservativism in the United States made people much more likely to think all characteristics were between 1.8 and 3.24 times more important to national identity than in Canada, where conservatism made each characteristic in between 1.16 and 1.8 times more important to identify as Canadian. Finally, identifying as Christian in both countries strongly increased the respondent's likelihood of believing each characteristic was important to national identity, with a range of 1.57 to 5.2 times more important in the United States and 1.55 to 4.44 times more important in Canada. However, this model only accounted for 12 to 34 percent of all variation in what influences perceptions on national identity in the United States and 4 to 25 percent of all variation in what influences perceptions on national identity in Canada.

Because it appeared individual characteristics were influencing views on which characteristics were important to national identity in similar ways for both countries, I calculated the predicted probabilities of Americans and Canadians thinking each of the dependent variables was important when holding all individual characteristics at their average value based on the logistic regression model in Table 3 (see Table 4).

Table 4. Average Predicted Probabilities

Born Here Speaks English / French Being Christian Sharing Customs and Traditions

United States 51.4% 93.2% 47.3% 86.1%

Canada 42.0% 88.8% 31% 92.3%

Note: All predicted probabilities are significant at the p < 0.05 level.

Surprisingly, after controlling for all individual characteristics, being American alone did make someone more likely to believe being born in a country, speaking the country's national language, and being a Christian is important to national identity. Regardless of individual characteristics, the average American had a 51.4% chance of thinking being born in the United States is important to identify as American and a 93.2% chance of believing speaking English is important.

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Additionally, the average American had a 47.3% chance of thinking being Christian is important to identify as American and an 86.1% chance of thinking sharing customs and traditions is important to identify as American. The average Canadian had a 42% chance of thinking being born in Canada is important to identify as Canadian, but an 88.8% chance of thinking speaking English is important. The average Canadian only had a 31% chance of thinking being Christian is important to identify as Canadian, but a 92.3% chance of thinking sharing customs and traditions is important. These results follow the expectations of current literature and the results of the bivariate analysis used to test Hypothesis 3.

Consistent with Hypothesis 3, being American made someone less likely to believe sharing customs and traditions was important to identify as American. In both analyses, Canadians placed more importance on sharing customs and traditions as a key characteristic of national identity than Americans do. These findings proved neither Hypothesis 1 nor Hypothesis 2 is exactly correct, but they did prove Hypothesis 3 as correct. Americans thought three of the four "exclusive” characteristics were important to national identity. However, Canadians were more likely to think sharing customs and traditions was important to national identity. Interestingly, based on the definitions of “inclusive” and “exclusive” national identity, sharing customs and traditions were the only “inclusive” characteristic out of the four, so these results were not inconsistent with current literature on American and Canadian national identity.

Conclusions The first set of regression models demonstrated individual characteristics, by themselves, do not account for why Americans and Canadians see national identity the way they do.

Specifically, Americans were more likely than Canadians to think “exclusive” characteristics of national identity are important. In this study, “exclusive" characteristics referred to birthplace, spoken language, and religion because they were not easily changeable characteristics. Though both the United States and Canada are regarded as “universally inclusive” nations because they are developed Western nations and hold roles as global citizens, the cultural aspect of “American exceptionalism” in the United States lends itself to promote the ideas of exclusive-based national identity more so than in its northern neighbor.

Moreover, multivariate analysis found individual characteristics have the same impact in both countries, yet the importance of three of the four characteristics (birthplace, speaking English, and being Christian) is higher in the United States than in Canada. These three characteristics also happen to be more "exclusive” characteristics. Perhaps this was due to the aspects of American culture that promote the ideas of “American exceptionalism.” While the difference in probabilities of Americans believing they are more important is not too much higher, future research could further investigate the differences in how Americans and Canadians identify with their country and research what effects this might have on various aspects of society, such as voting behavior, views on immigration, or sexism.

One limitation of this study was an internal geographical analysis in order to see how perceptions of American and Canadian national identity might differ by region or province.

Future research can replicate this study with additional geographical data in order to see how perceptions of national identity vary by the internal location of respondents in both countries.

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While the difference in probabilities of Americans believing they are more important is not too much higher, future research could utilize the results of this study to continue investigating the differences in how Americans and Canadians identify with their country and research what effects this might have on various aspects of society, such as voting behavior, views on immigration, or sexism. Overall, this study is important for expanding on our current knowledge of American and Canadian national identity because it can help us understand how we define social and national groups, how we classify ourselves, and what implications national identity and classification can have on other areas of society.

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Hainmueller, Jens, Hopkins, Daniel J. 2014. “The Hidden American Immigration Consensus: A Conjoint Analysis of Attitudes Towards Immigrants.” American Journal of Political Science.

Haivry, Ofir., Hazony, Yoram. 2017. “What Is Conservatism?” American Affairs Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer 2017). 219-46.

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Huntington, Samuel P. 2004. Who are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon and Schuster.

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Huynh, Que-Lam, Thierry Devos, and Hannah R. Altman. 2015. “Boundaries of American Identity: Relations between Exclusive Group Prototypicality and Policy Attitudes.” Political Psychology 36(4): 449-468.

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Schildkraut, Deborah J. 2007. “Defining American Identity in the Twenty-first Century: How Much ‘There’ Is There?” The Journal of Politics 69(3): 597-615.

Shulman, Stephen. 2004. “The Contours of Inclusive and Exclusive National Identification in Ukraine.” Europe Asia Studies. Vol 56. No1.

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Stokes, Bruce. 2017. “What It Takes to Truly Be ‘One of Us’.” Pew Research Center.

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Understanding Religious Boundaries of National Identity in the United States." Sociology of Religion 71(3): 280-306.

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Understanding the Link Between Churches, Attitudes, and ‘Being American’ Among Latino Immigrants.” Politics and Religion 7(2): 339-365.

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Turner, J. C., Hogg, Michael A., Oakes, Penelope J., Reicher, Stephen D., Wetherell, Margaret S. 1987. “Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory.” Cambridge, MA, US: Basil Blackwell.

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Wright, Mathew, Jack Citrin, and Johnathan Wand. 2019. “Alternative measures of American National Identity.” International Society of Political Psychology. Vol 33. No 4.

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A Comparative Economic Analysis of the Dominican Republic and Haiti Avery Moon & Jennifer Urena High Point University graduates, Avery Moon (’20) and Jennifer M. Urena (’20), were seniors when they submitted their work to Innovation. Jennifer studied international business, with minors in economics, finance and Spanish, while Avery studied international relations, sociology, and anthropology. Their interest for this particular topic arose during a final project where they researched the stark differences between the economies and societies of Dominican Republic and Haiti, despite their dual occupation of the same island, Hispaniola. They felt that it was interesting to read deeper into each country's individual history and analyze the landmark events that created such different outcomes. Upon graduation from HPU, Moon will as an HPU AmeriCorps VISTA as a School and Community Partnership Coordinator in the city of High Point, and Jennifer will be working full time for the Volvo Group in their purchasing department. Jennifer will also be continuing her education with a master’s in supply chain management from the European Business School of Barcelona. They would like to thank their mentor, Dr. Michael McCully for providing a greater understanding of intercultural practices and communication, and his continued support.

Abstract This paper aims to conduct a brief comparative analysis of the national economic histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti from the time of colonization to modern-day before performing an economic analysis on each country’s respective GDPs, Gini coefficients, rates of corruption, unemployment, poverty, and main economic sectors. Though both countries share strong sugarcane and tourism industries, Haiti’s agriculture-driven economy lags behind the servicebased economy of the Dominican Republic. Because of this, natural disasters affect Haiti’s economy at a much higher rate than the Dominican Republic’s. Government corruption rates are also high in both countries, which is a deterrent for direct foreign investment. However, this paper concludes that both nations must work to reduce corruption, expand tourism as an industry, and set up antitrust and anti-corruption laws and regulations for local businesses, farmers, and civilians in high-traffic tourist areas to work towards achieving the economic prosperity these countries have experienced in the past.

Keywords: dominican republic, haiti, hispaniola, history, comparative economics, economic analysis

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O

ne island, two countries, two very different economies. The drastic difference in economic development between the Dominican Republic and Haiti is the result of centuries of colonialism, foreign occupations, and conflicts. While the island was conquered by Christopher Columbus, it later became a divided territory: half-French and halfSpanish. Thus, some fundamental events and practices influenced the way the two countries evolved. In turn, such events and actions affected the economic development of each side.

Originally, Haiti was a profitable slave state for the French. Upon liberation, it became a “slave haven” to which many black slaves escaped. Haiti had gone from the richest country in the Caribbean, with multiple years of economic prosperity, to one of the poorest in the world as its economy drastically slowed down. On the other hand, the Dominican Republic had grown slowly but surely and maintained good stability relative to Haiti. The two economies ought to have similar potential for prosperity, yet Haiti lags behind.

At a time when global poverty rates are decreasing, natural disasters are becoming more frequent, and the tourism industry is thriving, it is crucial to take a closer look at the Caribbean island that makes up the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Both nations are experiencing the consequences of climate change and both nations are benefitting from the boom in the tourism industry; yet, the poverty rates are decreasing more slowly in the Dominican Republic, and especially Haiti, than across other impoverished areas of the world. In this paper, we explore the historical events that have influenced the difference in economic development between the Dominican Republic and Haiti and provide policy recommendations to boost the strength and sustainability of the economies in both nations.

Hispaniola’s Early History Dating back to Christopher Columbus’ journey in 1492, the Spanish colonization of Hispaniola brought about different styles of business, governance, and organization. When the Spanish arrived in 1492 1, they began the formation of the “Spanish colony” by spreading ideas of Christianity and exploring the island for wealth. Around 1680, the French came to the island of Hispaniola and took over the western part of the island, which Spain eventually ceded in 1697. 2 This led to the creation of the nations of Spanish-ruled Santo Domingo in the east, now the Dominican Republic, and the French-ruled Sainte Domingue in the west, now Haiti.

History of Haiti After the French acquisition of Haiti, Haiti was considered the “jewel of the French Atlantic,” 3 with booming agricultural industries in sugarcane and coffee. Haiti began to grow economically as its sugarcane industry expanded to be the leading producer of sugarcane in the world. In turn, as sugarcane cultivation and export expanded, so did the population of African slaves imported to Haiti. French colonialism was largely based on slavery and forced labor. It is known that “the prosperity of the French colony” was based upon slavery. Rather than focusing CNN. “A Brief History of Hispaniola.”

CNN. “A Brief History of Hispaniola.”

3 Frankema and Masé. “An Island Drifting Apart. Why Haiti Is Mired in Poverty While the Dominican Republic Forges Ahead.”

1 2

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on sustainability and long-term growth, all French industrial efforts were modeled to be as lucrative as possible. By the time of the French Revolution, the population of slaves in Haiti was somewhere between 500 and 700 thousand.” 4 Because of the high rates of oppression and forced labor, Haitian slaves revolted in 1791 and created the first black independent nation in the Western hemisphere. However, their freedom came at a cost. Haitians had to “buy their freedom” from the French, in which the Haitians were forced to sign an agreement to pay “150 million francs of war indemnities paid in just five years.” 5 This freedom deal left long-term effects on the Haitian economy, and the immense amount of debt put the former French colony behind. Additionally, the lucrative agricultural methods of the French left Haiti with a lot of non-arable land and instability that paved the way for multiple invasions and threats to national sovereignty.

History of the Dominican Republic Under Spanish rule, Santo Domingo lagged behind Haiti, the French colony to the west. In 1821, the Dominican Republic declared itself free from Spain and became a sovereign nation for a brief period until the Haitian Occupation of 1822. 6 On February 24, 1844, the Dominican Republic was declared free from all international potencies and began its sovereign expansion.

In the early 1900s, as Haitian power started to weaken, the Dominican Republic started to grow and develop multiple industries, including sugarcane. Because of the expertise of the Haitians in this industry, the Dominican Republic brought in Haitian nationals to work in the sugarcane fields. 7 Some could argue that this was an extension of Haitian slavery in the Dominican Republic, and thus, it led to civil and political tension between the two nations. A consequence that still exists to this day, Haitians face discrimination and unequal treatment at the hands of Dominicans.

Spanish rule on the eastern side of the island accounts for a similar historical background, but one that is slightly less destructive. Dominicans also developed a strong presence in the global sugarcane and coffee markets. However, Spanish colonialism was less destructive than French colonialism for various reasons. First, while the Spanish brought some slaves from African countries, they started bringing them only after the local indigenous people, the Tainos, started to get sick and die. While the Tainos oversaw cultivating crops for export, they took better care of the land because they had a personal attachment to it. Second, the Spanish themselves started settling on the island, leading them to think about more sustainable measures rather than quickly exploiting everything in the name of wealth. Third, the Spanish colonizers had a stronger emphasis on the mining of precious metals, such as gold and silver, from East Hispaniola before they focused on agriculture. The lag in agricultural exploitation allowed for Dominican arable land to be protected and reusable for several years beyond Haiti’s land. In

4

Watkins. “Political and Economic History of Haiti.”

Frankema and Masé. “An Island Drifting Apart. Why Haiti Is Mired in Poverty While The Dominican Republic Forges Ahead.”

6 Ibid 7 Ibid 5

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turn, this resulted in less instability in the future, as the environment was better and there was no serious concern about food insecurity in the Dominican Republic.

More recently, the Dominican Republic continues its efforts to reform and industrialize to create intrinsic growth and generate better economic health. After World War II, the Dominican economy started to shift into an era of export-led growth, which caused a booming expansion of export agriculture 8. The Trujillista regime began in the 1950s and is responsible for most of the economic expansion after the war; Trujillo had nationalist sentiments and ambitious ideas for the country. As export agriculture grew, there was also a development of import-substitution industrialization 9. Both phenomena helped the Dominican economy grow for multiple reasons.

First, the increase in exports and decrease in imports creates a net increase in national production, which translates to an increase in GDP. Import-substitution industrialization had a focus on building materials, food processing, and apparel. This expansion created a more selfsufficient Dominican economy that continued to grow and expand beyond the Trujillo regime.

Comparing and Analyzing Modern Economies Chart 1: Economic Sectors by Percentage 70.00% 60.00%

61.40%

57.60%

50.00% 40.00% 30.00%

33.60%

20.00%

22.10%

20.30%

10.00% 0.00%

5.60%

Dominican Republic Agriculture

Haiti Industry

Services

Source: CIA World Factbook

Looking at the countries today, Haiti’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), at $19.97 billion, currently ranks as the 150th highest GDP in the world. 10 With just over 200 countries globally, this makes Haiti’s GDP one of the lowest in the world despite its free-market economy with

8

Bray, David. “Economic Development: The Middle Class and International Migration in the Dominican Republic.”

9 Bray, David. “Economic Development: The Middle Class and International Migration in the Dominican Republic.”

10 “Haiti.” The World Factbook.

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tariff-free access to the United States. 11 GDP is an important measure of an economy’s total production, and Haiti’s ranking reveals that its economy is not nearly as productive as the economy of the Dominican Republic, despite being located on the same island. Since 2015, levels of inequality improved about twenty points on the Gini coefficient scale, decreasing from 60.8 to 41.1 in 2017, 12 but Haiti’s GDP per capita of $1,800 is strikingly low across the board. 13 According to the CIA World Factbook, whose statistics were used to make the economic sector charts above, 22.1% of Haiti’s GDP consists of agriculture. 14 Additionally, their GDP is largely based on forestry and fishing. This means Haiti’s economy can easily be damaged by natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. 15 Natural disasters and their effects on Haiti’s economy frequently cause high unemployment rates (40.6%) and high inflation (14.7%). 16 Much of Haiti’s external debt following the 2010 earthquake was international assistance and loans, which is an additional economic consequence of these natural disasters. However, since 2017, Haiti’s $2.762 billion of external debt 17 is owed to Venezuela for the PetroCaribe program, a program intended to provide monetary aid to improve infrastructure, education, and healthcare. 18 Haiti does not have the physical infrastructure in the form of buildings, roads, and electricity grids to withstand the wrath of the earthquakes and hurricanes they face, and the government relies on international aid to build and rebuild the country’s infrastructure and economy every couple of years. Finally, there is also a lack of direct foreign investment because of the weak economy and infrastructure and the difficulty of doing business in Haiti. Haitians are averse to foreign establishments and skeptical to let foreigners establish business and industry in their land. After independence, the nation aggressively and deliberately rid itself of all colonial institutions. Haitians prohibited foreign land ownership 19 and re-established agricultural practices to suit their preferences. Tired of being mistreated and fearing international retaliations, Haiti closed itself off without considering the effects of this in the future.

Outside of these economic indicators, Haiti also has a significant problem with internal corruption. Haiti’s corruption rank, based on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2019, is 161 out of 175 countries, making it one of the most corrupt countries in the world. 20 Corruption is present in all levels of government in Haiti, which often causes protests for the removal of the country’s president or a more equal system. 21 Many of the government’s officials will embezzle money from Haiti’s government instead of using the money for improving education, infrastructure, and healthcare services for Haiti’s poorest

11

Moody's Analytics, “Haiti - Economic Indicators,” Pasquali, Marina. “Gini Coefficient: Wealth Inequality in Haiti 2017 13 “Haiti.” The World Factbook.

14 Ibid 15 Moody’s Analytics. “Haiti - Economic Indicators.”

16 Ibid 17 Ibid 18 Ibid 19 Frankema and Masé. “An Island Drifting Apart. Why Haiti Is Mired in Poverty While the Dominican Republic Forges Ahead.”

20 Trading Economics “Haiti Corruption Rank.”

21 Merrit Kennedy, “Protesters Demand Resignation of Haitian President Over Corruption Allegations.”

12

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citizens, such as with the most recent embezzlement of about 23 percent, 22 or about $635,000,000, of the PetroCaribe program’s $2.76 billion in aid.23 As long as widespread government corruption continues to exist in Haiti, there will be many challenges to improving the current state of the country’s economy, education, and infrastructure.

Chart 2: Unemployment and Poverty Rates in the Dominican Republic and Haiti 60%

58.6%

40% 30.6%

30.5%

20%

0%

5.1%

Dominican Republic

Unemployment Rate

Poverty Rate

Haiti

Source: CIA World Factbook

In an ideal situation, Haiti’s GDP and GDP per capita should be as high as possible.

Simultaneously, its unemployment rate should be between five and ten percent for a developing country, its inflation rate should hover somewhere around two percent, and its national debt should be manageable. However, Haiti’s agriculture-based economy, lack of infrastructure, high levels of corruption, and susceptibility to natural disasters leave 58.5% of its population living below the poverty level, as can be seen in Chart 2, compared to the Dominican Republic’s 30.6% of its population living below the poverty level. 24 The Dominican Republic, on the other hand, fares much better than Haiti when it comes to economic indicators. With a mixed-market economy, the country’s GDP of $173 billion is ranked as the 72nd highest GDP in the world and is more than eight times higher than Haiti’s GDP. 25 Additionally, trends of the Dominican Republic’s GDP per capita depict an increase of around $1,000 per year since 2015 and it was about $17,000 in 2017. 26 The Dominican Republic has a GDP real growth rate of 4.6%, indicating that its economy is growing almost four times as much as Haiti’s. 27 Though both nations are on the same island, the economy of the Dominican 22

Ives, Kim. “President Moise's Companies ‘Embezzled’ Millions of PetroCaribe Funds, Court Finds.”

Roberts, James M. “Corruption and Violence Are Crippling Haiti.”

24 Ibid 25 Ibid 26 Ibid 27 Ibid 23

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Republic is structurally different from Haiti’s. The Dominican Republic has transitioned from an agricultural-based economy relying on the export of sugar, coffee beans, tobacco, and cacao to an economy where nearly two-thirds of its GDP is composed of jobs and companies in the highvalue service sector, such as tourism and customer services. 28 Because their economy is not dependent upon agriculture, the Dominican Republic’s economy is not as detrimentally affected by natural disasters in the same ways Haiti’s economy is. The country’s external debt is also significantly lower than Haiti’s at $29.16 billion. 29 The Dominican Republic also has stronger infrastructure and institutions due to direct foreign and government investments. The Dominican Gini coefficient as a measure of the equal distribution of income is 44.9 in 2015, making it a more equal country than the United States but a less equal country than Haiti. 30 The dependence on services as their dominant industry aids in maintaining an unemployment rate of 5.1% and a low inflation rate of 3.3%. 31 On the other hand, despite not being as intensely affected by natural disasters and having a services-based economy, the Dominican Republic still has 30.5% of its population living below the poverty line. 32 Similarly to Haiti, corruption exists in the Dominican Republic as well.

According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), the Dominican Republic was ranked as the 129th most corrupt country out of 175 countries in 2018, pushing it towards Haiti’s ranking of 161. 33 Corruption in the Dominican Republic manifests itself in the forms of high criminal activity such as trafficking and contract killings, the lack of public safety measures, political corruption, and theft. 34 Many protestors fight against these injustices and call for the removal of the Dominican Liberation Party, which is the political party that has been in charge since 2004. 35 People’s discontent with the current government generates a general discontent with the country as a whole. Tired of empty promises from the Liberation Party, Dominicans may take the country in a different direction during the 2020 elections. Until corruption and widespread crime are decreased in the Dominican Republic, the nation will face the possibility of stagnant or decreasing growth of its economy.

Sugarcane in Haiti After Christopher Columbus brought sugarcane to the shores of Haiti, it had become Haiti’s second most popular and profitable crop after Arabica coffee. 36 Throughout the 1970s, world prices and demand for sugar were high. Haiti was exporting six million tons of sugar by the middle of the decade. 37 In the 1980s, world prices for sugar were three times lower than the costs

28

Ibid Ibid 30 “Dominican Republic - GINI Index (World Bank Estimate).” IndexMundi.

31 Ibid 32 Ibid 33 “Dominican Republic Corruption Rank.” Trading Economics.

34 Collado, Ramon. “Corruption Crisis: How Criminal Politicians Poisoned the Dominican Republic.”

35 Pineda, Jorge. “Tens of Thousands March over Corruption in Dominican Republic.”

36 Lawless, Robert, and Murdo J. MacLeod. “Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing.”

37 “Haiti - Cash Crops.” Country Studies.

29

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of production in Haiti; quickly came the decline of sugarcane as a cash crop in Haiti. 38 Additionally, Haiti now suffers from agricultural issues such as soil erosion, deforestation, and droughts, making it difficult to continue growing sugarcane. The difficulty of growing sugarcane makes the production of other goods, such as the Haitian alcoholic beverage “clairin,” difficult and expensive as well. 39 Since the 1970s, Haiti has been a net importer of sugar as its farmers have begun shifting their focus to growing other profitable crops, such as corn, sweet potatoes, rice, plantains, and bananas. 40 These, however, are not major export crops for Haiti. Most recently, the production of cacao has become a crop of interest for many small-scale Haitian farmers. Though the production of cacao in Haiti is still small in numbers, production levels could increase in upcoming years due to the high interest in Haitian chocolate, which is described as sweet and “unbeatable.” 41 By 2024, new programs, such as USAID’s Feed The Future North program, advocating for the growth of cacao in Haiti hope to increase production levels to average world production levels of about 10,000 tons of cacao per year. 42 In Haiti’s transition from one sweet profitable crop to another, focusing on the production of cacao rather than sugarcane can yield high profits for Haiti for decades to come.

Tourism in Haiti Outside of agriculture, Haiti was a booming tourist location in the 1950s. 43 However, years of corruption, political instability, poor public health, and poverty have deterred foreigners from traveling to Haiti. Fortunately, Haiti has had a revival in its tourism industry since 2012. After the earthquake in 2010, thousands of volunteers and millions of dollars in aid poured into Haiti to restore the country’s infrastructure and public health. The period of regrowth and internal investment sparked a global interest in Haiti and its economic development, therefore promoting a new industry in tourism. Tourism has boosted Haiti’s economy by promoting local spending and the improvement of current infrastructure. 44 The influx of foreigners into Haiti promotes local spending and investment into Haiti’s economy and brings awareness to issues plaguing the island nation. 45 Yet, despite the benefits that tourism brings to Haiti, there are many downfalls to the industry as well. As an island nation, Haiti’s resources and the economy are dependent on the country’s environment. High increases in global tourism are known to cause environmental distress through air pollution, trash, and the disruption of fragile ecosystems, especially for oceans, beaches, and national monuments. 46 Any damage to these areas in the already povertystricken nation of Haiti could cause detrimental effects to both the agriculture and service sectors of their economy. Additionally, levels of tourism tend to rise and fall. With the high risk of 38

“Haiti - Cash Crops.” Country Studies Bolivar, Anne Myriam. “As Sugarcane Farmland Shrinks, Haiti's Craft Distillers Remain Hopeful.”

40 Lawless, Robert, and Murdo J. MacLeod. “Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing.”

41 Lall, Rashmee Roshan. “Could Specialty Cocoa Be Haiti's Golden Ticket to Prosperity?”

42 Lall, Rashmee Roshan. “Could Specialty Cocoa Be Haiti's Golden Ticket to Prosperity?”

43 Kujawinski, Peter. “In Haiti, Tracing a Paradise Lost.”

44 Bailey, Tom. “Haiti Experiences a Tourism Revival.”

45 Myers, Nagle. “Study Shows Haiti's Path to Tourism Economy.”

46 Nag, Oishimaya Sen. “What Are the Negative Effects of Tourism on the Environment?”

39

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political protests and disruption in Haiti, rates of tourism are more susceptible to fluctuate between high-highs and low-lows. The risk of inconsistency in tourism as a consequence of environmental issues, natural disasters, or political events puts a strain on how valuable tourism can truly be for Haiti’s economy.

Sugarcane in the Dominican Republic Sugarcane has had a similar history in the Dominican Republic as it has had for Haiti. The sixteenth-century saw the first introduction of sugar production in the Dominican Republic, which sparked a wave of agricultural production around the country’s capital, Santo Domingo. 47 Carrying over into the seventeenth century, production of sugar spread more to the rural areas of the country and remained relatively stable in these areas until the 1950s. 48 The amount of land used for sugar production peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, as production needed to accommodate the rising levels of sugar consumption in the United States. 49 During the 1980s, the Dominican Republic was exporting about 950,000 metric tons of sugar. 50 Yet, the Dominican Republic faced a similar predicament as Haiti; Sugar prices around the globe did not outweigh the costs of production. Fortunately for the Dominican Republic, industry and services were already accounting for a combined total of about 80 percent of GDP. The decrease in sugar production did not harm its economy as severely as it did Haiti’s. 51 Since then, the Dominican Republic has focused on expanding the thriving areas of its economy, including services and most recently, tourism.

Tourism in the Dominican Republic Like it is in Haiti, tourism is another important industry for the Dominican Republic. Since the early 2000s, resorts have been built around popular tourist destinations in the Dominican Republic, such as Punta Cana, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Plata. Popular tourist locations are centered around beaches, resorts, and historical monuments, which promotes local spending and incorporates a new trend called “ecotourism,” in which people will travel to places that are environmentally “exotic” or at-risk to see the locations and potentially help with environmental conservation. 52 Additionally, while most of the tourists pour into the Dominican Republic from the United States and Canada, tourism promotes the exchange of cultures and exposes outsiders to the resources and potential available within the Dominican Republic. 53 However, there are downfalls to the tourism industry in the Dominican Republic as well.

Because the Dominican Republic is on the same island as Haiti, they face similar issues with tourism. Though the Dominican Republic has been maintaining a sustainable form of tourism for several decades now, they remain as at risk as Haiti for negative environmental impacts of 47

Chardon, Roland. “Sugar Plantations in the Dominican Republic.”

Chardon, Roland. “Sugar Plantations in the Dominican Republic.”

49 Ibid 50 Ibid 51 Ibid 52 Alejandra, Maria. “Ecotourism in Dominican Republic: Our Top 5 Eco Tours.”

53 “Tourism Statistics.” Banco Central de la República Dominicana.

48

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tourism, such as air and ground pollution, the degradation of natural resources, the disruption of fragile ecosystems, and trampling impacts of vegetation and soil. 54 Natural disasters can also impact levels of tourism and the environment that the tourism industry relies too heavily upon.

Additionally, though political disturbances in the Dominican Republic do not tend to affect tourist rates, international scandals, such as the questionable deaths of at least ten Americans at Dominican resorts over the second half of 2018 and the first half of 2019, greatly impact levels of tourism. 55 Since these instances have occurred and Americans have the highest rates of tourism to the Dominican Republic, tourism rates have dropped by 74 percent. 56 It is clear that although tourism has been a successful and relatively sustainable industry for the Dominican Republic, there are still environmental risks posed by tourism. Rates of tourism are also susceptible to fluctuations based on natural disasters, political events, and, as was demonstrated in the first half of 2019, international scandals. Tourism as an industry in the Dominican Republic has kept the economy afloat and growing for years, and it can remain that way as long as the country is practicing sustainable tourism. Yet, it is important to acknowledge that tourism is a dynamic industry with high-highs and low-lows regardless of which country it is in, and the Dominican Republic must account for that as they continue to promote their half of the island as a go-to Caribbean destination.

Conclusion Both Haiti and the Dominican Republic have faced rocky roads toward development that influence their economic status and health today. The Dominican Republic is fortunate to enjoy a relatively self-sufficient economy that does not require constant foreign bailouts. Haiti, on the other hand, has been faced with a lot of shocks that have forced it to resort to foreign assistance, leaving it with very big amounts of foreign debt. The Dominican Republic and Haiti have a lot of improvements to make to foster more prosperity in their economies. Both nations need to take strong action against political corruption within their borders. It is not only the fact that politicians are becoming too powerful but also the civil instability that this is causing. People are growing more resilient to political corruption and are starting to protest and show increasing discontent. Instability, as seen in Haitian history, is a factor for stagnant growth and could be very dangerous for both nations. Additionally, given recent trends in tourism, there is potential for both nations to focus on expansion. While this is an industry that yields high returns and could boost economic growth, it needs to be developed sustainably. Tourism cannot grow at the expense of local wellbeing and industries. Similarly, strict rules about conglomerates and antitrust regulations need to be in place for tourism to continue growing in a way that benefits the nation. Just like politicians are corrupt, so are the wealthy; they tend to look out for their own good instead of the general good of the nation. Therefore, there needs to be antitrust and anticorruption laws and regulations in place for local businesses, farmers, and civilians in the areas with high tourism. There is a lot of work to be done before the Dominican Republic and Haiti can reach their full potential; however, it is not impossible. The two nations have seen glorious days of high economic growth and wellbeing, and it is possible to see these days again.

54

Sunlu, Ugur. “Environmental Impacts of Tourism.”

Holcombe, Madeline. “These 10 Americans Were Reported Dead after Staying at Dominican Republic Resorts.”

56 Leasca, Stacey. “Tourism to the Dominican Republic Has Dropped 74 Percent, According to New Study (Video).”

55

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Bibliography “A Brief History of Hispaniola.” CNN. Cable News Network. Accessed December 1, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/04/world/haiti-timeline/haiti-timeline-snippet.html Alejandra, Maria. “Ecotourism in Dominican Republic: Our Top 5 Eco Tours.” Aventuras - The best Punta Cana Tours & Dominican Excursions, March 15, 2016. https://www.mydominicanadventure.com/the-best-eco-tours-in-dominican-republic/.

Bailey, Tom. “Haiti Experiences a Tourism Revival.” Business Destinations Make travel your business. Business Destinations, July 8, 2016. https://www.businessdestinations.com/destinations/haiti-experiences-a-tourism-revival/.

Bolivar, Anne Myriam. “As Sugarcane Farmland Shrinks, Haiti's Craft Distillers Remain Hopeful.” Global Press Journal. GPJ, February 12, 2019. https://globalpressjournal.com/americas/haiti/sugarcane-farmland-shrinks-haitis-craftdistillers-remain-hopeful/.

Bray, David. “Economic Development: The Middle Class and International Migration in the Dominican Republic.” The International Migration Review 18, no. 2 (1984): 217–36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2545948.pdf?refreqid=excelsior:44eaa4db1ae9e47efa8a133 865b6c9b8.

Chardon, Roland. “Sugar Plantations in the Dominican Republic.” American Geographical Society 74, no. 4 (October 1984): 441–54. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/215026.pdf.

Collado, Ramon. “Corruption Crisis: How Criminal Politicians Poisoned the Dominican Republic.” The National Interest. The Center for the National Interest, June 24, 2019. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/corruption-crisis-how-criminal-politicians-poisoneddominican-republic-64091.

“Dominican Republic.” Central Intelligence Agency. Central Intelligence Agency, February 1, 2018. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/.

“Dominican Republic - GINI Index (World Bank Estimate).” Dominican Republic - GINI index (World Bank estimate), n.d. https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/dominicanrepublic/indicator/SI.POV.GINI. “Dominican Republic Corruption Rank.” Dominican Republic Corruption Rank | 2019 | Data | Chart | Calendar, n.d. https://tradingeconomics.com/dominican-republic/corruption-rank.

“Haiti.” Central Intelligence Agency. Central Intelligence Agency, February 1, 2018. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/.

“Haiti - Cash Crops.” Country Studies, n.d. http://countrystudies.us/haiti/51.htm.

“Haiti Corruption Rank.” Haiti Corruption Rank | 2019 | Data | Chart | Calendar | Forecast |News.

Trading Economics. Accessed December 6, 2019. https://tradingeconomics.com/haiti/corruption-rank.

Holcombe, Madeline. “These 10 Americans Were Reported Dead after Staying at Dominican Republic Resorts.” CNN. Cable News Network, June 25, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/us/dominican-republic-list-of-people-reporteddead/index.html.

Ives, Kim. “President Moise's Companies ‘Embezzled’ Millions of PetroCaribe Funds, Court Finds.” Haiti Liberte, June 5, 2019. https://haitiliberte.com/president-moises-companiesembezzled-millions-of-petrocaribe-funds-court-finds/.

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Kennedy, Merrit. “Protesters Demand Resignation of Haitian President Over Corruption Allegations.” NPR. NPR, June 11, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/06/11/731640235/protesters-demand-resignation-of-haitianpresident-over-corruption-allegations.

Kujawinski, Peter. “In Haiti, Tracing a Paradise Lost.” The New York Times. The New York Times, December 4, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/travel/in-haiti-tourismeconomy-caribbean.html.

Lall, Rashmee Roshan. “Could Specialty Cocoa Be Haiti's Golden Ticket to Prosperity?” NPR. NPR, July 29, 2014. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/07/29/336142998/couldspecialty-cocao-be-haitis-golden-ticket-to-prosperity.

Lawless, Robert, and Murdo J. MacLeod. “Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., October 30, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/place/Haiti/Agriculture-forestry-and-fishing.

Leasca, Stacey. “Tourism to the Dominican Republic Has Dropped 74 Percent, According to New Study (Video).” Travel Leisure, June 27, 2019. https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/tourist-deaths-dominican-republic-safe.

Masé, Aline, and Ewout Frankema. “An Island Drifting Apart. Why Haiti Is Mired in Poverty While the Dominican Republic Forges Ahead.” Wiley Online Library. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, May 29, 2013. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jid.2924.

Moody's Analytics. “Haiti - Economic Indicators.” Haiti | Economic Indicators | Moody's Analytics. Moody's Analytics. Accessed December 1, 2019. https://www.economy.com/haiti/indicators.

Myers, Nagle. “Study Shows Haiti's Path to Tourism Economy.” Travel Weekly. Travel Weekly, July 15, 2013. https://www.travelweekly.com/Caribbean-Travel/Study-shows-path-forHaiti-to-create-a-tourism-economy.

Nag, Oishimaya Sen. “What Are the Negative Effects of Tourism on the Environment?”

WorldAtlas, October 11, 2018. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-negativeeffects-of-tourism-on-the-environment.html.

Pasquali, Marina. “Gini Coefficient: Wealth Inequality in Haiti 2017.” Statista. Statista, April 5, 2019. https://www.statista.com/statistics/983225/income-distribution-gini-coefficient-haiti/.

Pineda, Jorge. “Tens of Thousands March over Corruption in Dominican Republic.” Reuters.

Thomson Reuters, July 16, 2017. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dominicanprotests/tens-of-thousands-march-over-corruption-in-dominican-republicidUSKBN1A10ZH. Roberts, James M. “Corruption and Violence Are Crippling Haiti.” The Heritage Foundation, June 21, 2019. https://www.heritage.org/international-economies/commentary/corruptionand-violence-are-crippling-haiti.

Sunlu, Ugur. “Environmental Impacts of Tourism.” Options Mediterraneennes, 2003, 263–70. http://om.ciheam.org/om/pdf/a57/04001977.pdf.

“Tourism Statistics.” Banco Central de la República Dominicana. Accessed December 6, 2019. https://en.centralamericadata.com/en/tsearch?q=Statistics+tourism&q1=mattersInCountry_e n_le%3A%22Dominican+Republic%22.

Watkins, Thayer. “Political and Economic History of Haiti.” Political and Economic History of Haiti. Accessed December 1, 2019. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/haiti.htm

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Marlow as the Buddha in Heart of Darkness Emmi Palenbaum High Point University graduate, Emmi Palenbaum (’20), was a senior, double majoring in strategic communication and English literature, when she wrote this piece on post-colonialism in literature. She wanted to examine this important text, but to also offer something new to the conversation. Emmi says that her mentor, Dr. Carlson, has made her academic experience at HPU what it is today. Having taken three of his courses and traveled on two summer study abroad trips with him, she feels that Dr. Carlson truly has taken the time to understand her as a student and individual. “He has always inspired me to grow inside and out of the classroom, enabled me to set big goals for myself, and has guided me to accomplish them”.

After graduation, she plans to pursue a career that combines her passions of writing and message development with environmental science. Emmi will be attending the College of Charleston to pursue her Masters of Environmental and Sustainability Studies, where she hopes to combine her passion of writing with environmental science.

Abstract As a prominent text in curriculum and literary debate, Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness examines themes of race, imperialism, perspective, and power. However, it is not often discussed through an alternative lens in which the character of Charlie Marlow and his role within the story are the focal point. Marlow’s unique position as an experienced traveler often permits him insight that separates him from other characters. Further, Marlow is described several times as the Buddha and is detailed throughout the story in accordance to this title.

Marlow’s perceived deeper understanding not only creates a link between the Eastern and Western worlds, but also causes him to examine and criticize the events happening in Africa. In these ways, Charlie Marlow functions as a character that belongs solely to neither world and illustrates the tension between the two through Conrad’s choice to depict him as the Buddha.

Keywords: heart of darkness, joseph conrad, buddha

J

oseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness has sparked many debates about race, knowledge, and imperialism. However, a small but important detail seems to have been overlooked in many of these conversations. Charlie Marlow, a dynamic character and the narrator for most of the text, is represented several times as a Buddha. His previous journey to Africa puts Marlow in a unique position from the very beginning. On this trip, he witnessed brutal and unusual sites, unfamiliar behaviors, and foreign ways of life. This exposure transforms Marlow’s way of thinking and leads him to believe that a higher sense of knowledge was revealed to him through this rare experience. It is this harsh expedition of suffering and 67

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revelation that earns Marlow the title of Buddha. Conrad uses Marlow to convey the tensions between the Eastern and Western worlds through his position as Buddha, which entails his higher understanding of the symbolic darkness, skepticism of the so-called civilizing mission in Africa, and his ability to lead others through their personal journeys of reflection.

Near the beginning, the frame narrator says, “Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzenmast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol” (3). He is described as a figure of higher knowledge, but the text provides no history or credentials explaining why he would have received this prestigious and respected label. His appearance is neither African nor European. Aside from his Buddha-like posture, the words “ascetic” and “idol” suggest a spiritual aspect. The usage of “ascetic”, meaning to practice self-denial and restraint from indulgence, puts Marlow in a unique category from the very beginning, set apart by both his appearance and his implied consciousness of the world. A few pages later, he is portrayed in similar terms: “‘Mind,’ he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower” (6). This quote again contrasts Marlow with those around him, specifically mentioning his traces of European origin while striking an Eastern pose. Several times Conrad shines a light on Marlow, hinting towards his involvement with the spiritual realm but simultaneously mentioning his ties to the Western world. However, the focus of my argument is on what Marlow has experienced in his lifetime to deem him worthy to be the Buddha as well as how this position allows him to interpret the events depicted in Heart of Darkness.

Siddhartha Gautama, the real Buddha, was born into the warrior/ruler class and was “[shielded] from experiencing any of the disappointments and disillusionments of the world” (Hawkins 37). It was only when he left the comfort of his home and family that he was exposed to human suffering and began the quest for discovery and the status of Buddha. This is similar to Marlow’s experience because, although not royalty, Marlow was privileged enough to have been born into a middle-class European family. Human suffering of that level was revealed to Marlow only once he visited Africa for himself.

A contributing factor to Marlow’s spirituality is his ability to detach himself from time and the physical world. The first quote spoken from Marlow is, “And this also, has been one of the dark places of the earth” (5), insinuating that he might know something more about their surroundings than what is perceived at first sight. Further on, he says: I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day…Light came out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes, but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker— may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. (5) In this introduction to Marlow, he removes himself from the physical world by discussing the timeline of the dynamic between Africa and the Western world as if he has been there all along and witnessed it all for himself. It seems that he has been to Africa many times, rather than just one previous time. This connects Marlow to Buddhism through the concepts of reincarnation and 68

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rebirth. Buddhist monk Ven. Master Hsing Yun defines rebirth as “the constant state of flux, renewal and metabolic change that we experience physically (birth, old age, sickness, and death) and in our minds (the forming, existing, changing, and ceasing of thoughts)” (qtd. in Peto). This relates specifically to when Marlow equates “nineteen hundred years ago” and “the other day,” and when he reiterates that “darkness was here yesterday,” as if little to no time has passed at all.

However, it is impossible for Marlow to have experienced this darkness personally unless he had been present in a previous life. Marlow reminds those around him with these peculiar statements that their awe of Africa should be humbled by what has occurred there before—even if they had not seen it for themselves—and by what is currently happening.

Marlow is suspicious of European colonization and its capitalist goals. He contributes his opinion on the matter throughout the novel, but the first glimpse of it is early on: It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. (7) Marlow’s experience with Africa made him aware of the effects of imperialism, something that was not seen firsthand by many people around the world. He has come to realize what is truly happening, rather than turning a blind eye to it as so many Europeans did. Literary critics often interpret Marlow’s position as a direct insight into—and personal distaste for—the clash between cultures on African soil; for example, Avram Alpert writes, “At an explicit level, his is the story of the tension between the ideal of colonialism and its embodied reality of horror” (16). Marlow understands the disconnect between Europeans’ intentions of acquiring Africa for capitalist gains versus the disguise of obligation to teach the natives as a justification for the Europeans’ unethical actions. Aware of not only what is taking place in Africa, Marlow also has come to realize who Europeans truly are and what horror they are capable of, including realizing this capability in himself. Various Buddhist scholars have their own definitions of the Buddha’s significance, but they agree on the idea that he is set apart from the rest of mankind in some way or another. In Foundations of Buddhism, Rupert Gethin defines a Buddha as “the one who has woken up,” while “the mass of humanity…are asleep in the sense that they pass through their lives never knowing and seeing the world ‘as it is’” (8). Similarly, Perry Schmidt-Leukel describes the Buddha as “someone who has overcome the darkness or existential ignorance and awakened from illusion or delusion” (19). This “delusion” of superiority that the Europeans have is not always easy to confront—which is why so few ever can do so—but this is what sets Marlow apart.

Marlow acknowledges this notion of European ignorance near the end of the novella when he returns to Europe once again: I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense

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because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew…I had no particular desire to enlighten them. (70) This quote addresses the elements of knowledge that Marlow is talking about: Africa, all it holds, and its ability to spark such deep self-reflection if one is willing to accept it. The last sentence seems to contradict the spirit of the Buddha, who wishes to teach those around him. However, there is another sense in which a parallel can be drawn between Marlow and Siddhartha Gautama. According to Sarah Shaw, an expert on Buddhist meditation, “After the enlightenment the Buddha is reluctant to teach others, thinking that what he has discovered is too profound and subtle for others to understand” (3). There is evidence of this in the passage above, specifically when Conrad writes, “I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew” (70).

Near the end of the novella, Kurtz whispers his famous last words: “The horror! The horror!”

(69). What follows next is darkness, Marlow’s illness, and his takeaway from Kurtz’s death: “Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets” (69). Here Marlow claims that the best outcome that can come from human life is an understanding of who you are, and to be satisfied with whoever that may be.

Although controversy surrounds what Kurtz’s final words mean, they are clearly some sort of epiphany. Kurtz, in the final moments of his life, reflected on all that he had done in his lifetime—the good and the terrible. Marlow suggests that Kurtz’s consciousness comes just too late and is not enough to save him. Kurtz, in this sense, serves as a symbol for power-hungry Europeans whose fulfilled desires will come at the cost of their demise. Marlow is distinguished from Kurtz by having a clear grasp of the consequences of his own actions and the acknowledgment of power in moderation.

Marlow and other Europeans traveled to Africa in search of capital through resources and exploitation of natives. What Marlow comes to acquire, however, is a different, more valuable capital in the form of knowledge and ultimate understanding. Through multiple taxing ventures, Marlow struggles with whether to align himself with Western ideals. On the surface, Marlow acts as a knowledgeable guide and storyteller for his crew members, but underneath he primarily functions as a spiritual medium, an overseer, and an educator to convey the reality of the clash between the Western and non-Western worlds to those who have not yet experienced it.

The images of Marlow as the Buddha and his meditation behave as bookends in Heart of Darkness, appearing on both the first and last pages. The final page of the novella says, “Marlow ceased and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time” (77). The placement of these references, their deeper meanings, and the significance of Marlow as a character support the idea that although Heart of Darkness has much to say about the development of imperialism, it is also a novella about enlightenment, realization, and reflection as a result of the changes in Africa.

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Works Cited Alpert, Avram. “Empires of Enlightenment: On Illumination and the Politics of Buddhism in Heart of Darkness.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 40, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1-21.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Edited by Paul B. Armstrong, Norton Critical Edition, 5th ed., W. W. Norton, 2017.

Gethin, Rupert. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Hawkins, Bradley K. Buddhism. Prentice Hall, 1999.

Peto, Alan. “Reincarnation and Buddhism: Here We Go Again.” Alan Peto, 7 July 2013, www.alanpeto.com/buddhism/understanding-reincarnation-rebirth/.

Schmidt-Leukel, Perry. Understanding Buddhism. Pentagon Press, 2007.

Shaw, Sarah. Buddhist Meditation: An Anthology of Texts from the Pāli Canon. Routledge, 2008.

Thero, Ven. Mediyawe P. “The Role of Buddha as a Teacher.” The Asia Pacific Journal of Business and Social Studies, vol. 3, 2017.

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The Other Sex: Intertextuality and Abjection in Faulkner and McCarthy Meagan Pusser High Point University graduate, Meagan Pusser (’20), began her research as a senior English literature and writing student.

Many avid readers and scholars are aware that Faulkner expresses his anxieties over female sexuality in his works, but Meagan found it increasingly interesting that McCarthy took this a step further by writing his sole female character as an animal. As a female writer herself, Meagan has always been interested in the underrepresentation of female authors. From here, she began her investigation of the ways females are represented in a male-dominated canon. Meagan credits her mentor, Dr. Vescio, with helping her push herself to understand new, complex theories about the social structures of the world. “I have always wanted to put my work as a writer to good use, and I believe this open-minded approach to new theories is crucial to those that want to accomplish the lofty goal of resolving larger social issues.” After graduation, Meagan will attend the Savannah College of Art and Design for her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Learning new ways of looking at the world and creating innovative solutions to pressing social issues has been rewarding for Meagan. She believes that English is greatly underestimated because it can present new solutions to old problems that have strong impacts on our social interactions.

Abstract In a male-dominated canon, females in literature have been depicted as both all-powerful creatures, capable of mercy and unyielding love and demonic beings whose sole aim is to destroy the human race. Regardless of the perspective adopted, neither type is granted an individual voice. In William Faulkner’s Light in August, Lena Grove is depicted as the ignorant single mother, while the she-wolf in Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing has been depicted as a silent huntress whose main goal is crossing critical boundaries between man and nature.

Although they have expressed two vastly different aims and personas, both females are written into complicated, non-traditional spaces that deem their stories unimportant or socially unacceptable because they do not conform to their respective author’s male-dominated perspective of society. One idea that is worth consideration in thinking about these two authors’ portrayals of femininity is literary theorist Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject, a term that describes those aspects of life that have “only one quality of the object—that of being opposed to I” which constructs society as the other characters know it (Kristeva 1). According to Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality, the intertextual relationship between these two females is a result of the stereotypes of a male-dominated society that has conditioned Faulkner and McCarthy to push females to the realm of the abject if they refuse to bend to the male will.

Keywords: literature, critical analysis, kristeva, critical theory, intertextuality, abjection 72

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F

emales in literature have been depicted in every position from all-powerful creatures capable of mercy and unyielding love to demonic beings that will bring destruction to the human race. Regardless of the perspective adopted, many works in a male-dominated canon feature voiceless female characters that have been deemed unimportant or socially unacceptable and, therefore, are pushed to the margins of society. An optimal place to examine this phenomenon is within the works of William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, two male authors whose works have commonly been discussed as sharing an intertextual relationship. In Light and August, William Faulkner expresses his thematic anxiety concerning female sexuality in the unfamiliar, unsettling character of Lena Grove, a pregnant single woman. However, Cormac McCarthy focuses on a non-human female character in The Crossing. While McCarthy chooses a non-human female in his text, the she-wolf is an equally unsettling creature for McCarthy because not only is she a pregnant, single female, but she is not even human. These two female characters, although they are different species, communicate the strange “otherness” these authors feel when confronted with a female who is powerful in her own right. According to Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality, the intertextual relationship between these two females is a result of the stereotypes of a male-dominated society that has conditioned Faulkner and McCarthy to push females to the realm of the abject if they refuse to bend to the male will.

Both of the central female characters in Light and August and The Crossing are deemed unacceptable to society because they are single mothers roaming their respective societies without male guidance. This parallel exemplifies Allen’s claim that “such explicitly intertextual forms of literature… foreground the fact that they are not original works written by unique authors” but signs of two authors that have embodied the same social institutions (Allen 50).

Building upon Bakhtin’s theory of historical influence from outside texts, French theorist Julia Kristeva argues that social institutions can create the same effect, as “an utterance…may present itself as an independent entity…yet it emerges from a complex history of previous works and addresses itself to, seeks for active response from, a complex institutional and social contest” (Allen 19). While Faulkner may represent this version of reality through a set of characters, this reality is not untouched by his own biases and beliefs because his experience is eternally tied to the one perspective he can directly access: the male perspective. This means that the realities presented by Faulkner’s and McCarthy’s works inevitably involve real-world stereotypes that constitute a large part of that version of reality. As a result of this single reality, built upon male superiority, the strong female characters in Light in August and The Crossing are depicted as the outcast “other” that resides in the realm of the abject.

The reality that male characters face in Faulkner’s and McCarthy’s fiction is far different than the reality that the she-wolf and Lena Grove face because they “can never fit easily into this discourse of desire, and they are ultimately despised…by the narratives for their failure to bend” to the patriarchal will (Mayne 6). By drawing on similar stereotypes, Faulkner and McCarthy form intertextual relationships with one another in which both men display stereotypes and values of their society, just as Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality claims. However, it is not just the presence of these female characters but their actions in their respective texts that mark them as important characters for analysis. These females are cast out of society not only because of their sex, but because they also do not conform to the expectations set by male society, and the authors cannot grant these characters normalcy of being because their existence alone “notifies us of the limits of the human universe,” thus disassembling a false reality that views women as 73

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automatically submissive in their interactions with men (Kristeva 11). Although these characters subvert their understanding of reality, Faulkner and McCarthy write defiant females into their fiction as an attempt to remedy their discomfort within a realm that they alone can control: their fiction.

The Abject Female Body Lena and the she-wolf both reside on the outskirts of society, both physically and socially, which makes them unlike the townspeople that they interact with for the duration of their respective novels. When this horror approaches, in this case, when Lena and the she-wolf enter the town, men are unsure how to handle their crumbling reality and seek various coping methods to regain their control. Faulkner represents this power struggle in Lena’s birth scene by subverting the expectation that pregnancy will make Lena into the fragile creature that men expect her to be. Instead, Lena’s experience with childbirth further proves that many women in literature maintain “brittle exteriors [which] cover an often-violent nature” (Clarke 410). During her labor, Byron describes Lena as an unrecognizable being thrashing about the bed and shouting in a foreign tongue that he cannot understand. By accessing this type of behavior, McCarthy and Faulkner draw on another Kristeva concept known as abjection, aspects of life that “has only one quality of the object—that of being opposed to I” which constructs society as the other characters know it (Kristeva 1). By acknowledging these opposing beings, Faulkner begins searching for the root of anxiety that surrounds these abject women. Lena is rejected from society because she has not conformed to the expected route to motherhood. Instead, she wanders the countryside alone and unmarried, in search of her husband. When trying to get help in the town, people feel a sense of pity but do not accept her as one of their own, as “abjection is always brought about by that which attempts to get along with trampled-down law” (Kristeva 19). When Byron brings her to stay with Mrs. Beard, the woman immediately notices that “Her eyes were not exactly cold.

But they were not warm” (Faulkner 85). This shifting between the two boundaries of the good and bad dichotomy foreshadows Lena’s status as a dangerous being in Byron’s mind as he can see that even Mrs. Beard cannot quite place her in one category or the other, exposing the fragility of this dichotomy. Lena is neither bad nor good to them; she’s just present.

Similarly, the she-wolf faces abjection because her pregnancy brings Billy to view her as a human woman, exposing “those fragile states where man strays on the territories of animal” and treats one another as such (Kristeva 12). McCarthy’s use of a non-human being as a representation of the female experience is degrading for women but does not stray far from reality in this respect. In an attempt to give the most accurate account of the female experience that he can, the male author must present it from an outsider’s perspective. As a result, the “masculine apprehensions regarding the power of women” of McCarthy’s daily life play a central role in his narratives (Mayne 6). Although this dehumanization places the central female character even farther below Billy, McCarthy denies the dainty qualities that are usually associated with the stereotypical female. Instead, the she-wolf continually displays an instinct to kill out of self-defense. Billy is repeatedly told that he will regret trying to save the wolf “when she’s done tearing you limb from limb,” but he continues his attempts to control her (McCarthy 81). Her ferocity forces Billy to readjust his perspective and Billy’s social footing begins to falter as his reality is turned upside down.

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In both novels, it is the female body’s capacity for reproduction that renders female characters abject. While Lena is an outcast because she is a woman, she is also an outcast because she is an unmarried pregnant woman and stranger. Similarly, the she-wolf is an outcast because she poses a threat to the townspeople, and her swollen belly signifies the ability to bring future terror into the world when her litter is born. The fact that both men present their abject beings as not only women but pregnant women perfectly aligns with Kristeva’s notion of the abject as “a more radical alterity than the semiotic: it refers to the power of the mother’s body over the child, a power that is not perfectly brought under the control of the Symbolic or Paternal Order” (Covino 21). These pregnant characters go beyond the definition of the other as simply “woman” and enter these societies as “woman, the empowered creator.”

The Male Gaze Throughout their novels, McCarthy and Faulkner relieve their uneasy male characters by granting them the use of the male gaze, a domineering force that “has established the boundaries between what is acceptable and unacceptable” by viewing women in the context of the men around them (Visser 282). To write the female characters upon which this gaze is enacted, they must remove their perceptions as males in a patriarchal society and place themselves in the uncomfortable position of a woman who is only allowed to be “looked upon” rather than given the ability to “look at” for herself. Instead of trying to occupy a female perspective, they allow their representation to exist as it does in the real world by refusing to let these women speak.

Instead, their experience is given through the men that view them as “property afoot to be confiscated…no more than a game and not to be taken very seriously by real men” (McCarthy 380). This leads to many stereotypes in the novel, such as Billy’s romanticizing the she-wolf in the early chapters of the novel as “phantoms in the snow…of another world entire” instead of seeing her as a threat to his life (McCarthy 4). Similarly, the male gaze situates Lena in the context of a male in the first chapter of Light in August, when Armstid and Winterbottom watch her walk down the road and immediately wonder “where she got that belly,” which begs the question of which man impregnated her.

One of the main examples of the male gaze is how men speak about Lena Grove in Light in August. Although she has been cast out of society, men are still curious about her. However, they can only understand this curiosity in terms that place them at the center of reason. While thinking back on Lena’s birth scene, Byron muses about his role in this scenario: “Byron Bunch, that weeded another man’s laidby crop…the fellow that took care of another man’s whore while the other fellow was busy making a thousand dollars. And got nothing for it…Got nothing for it except permission to fetch the other fellow back to her” (Faulkner 416). Although he has realized her power in this moment of childbirth, Byron must regain control of his male power by forcing himself back to the center of the situation. Instead of thinking of the selflessness and perseverance that has gotten Lena to this moment, he instantly thinks of all the ways that he has been wronged. By helping this single mother to this position in her pregnancy, he has been manipulated and has gotten nothing in return.

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Female Voices in Male Discourse Clarke states that “the figure of an unknown language…illustrates not only the communication barriers between men and women” but “that expression, language itself, is part of the problem” (Clarke 410). Since they are animals, wolves are incapable of communicating with man. However, this does not mean that they, like women, do not attempt to communicate with man in their own ways. At the start of The Crossing, Billy dreams of wolves running across his field of vision. They, like the she-wolf he meets later in the novel, are incapable of speech but manage to capture his attention, nevertheless. This dream stays with Billy as he endures man’s struggle not only to comprehend his dreams but to comprehend beings that are unlike himself.

Through this dream of the wolf, Billy recognizes that she is both wild and beautiful, but cannot make sense of this feeling because societal norms have condemned the wolf to the realm of abjection. It is unlike himself, so he must attempt to control it. When he captures the animal, he constructs a makeshift muzzle that prevents her from both attacking and crying out. The wolf does not make a noise, knowing that she has been condemned to this silence because she does not belong; she has become the unworthy abject in this society.

However, Kristeva emphasizes the fact that “intertextuality is not simply an operation performed on and by individual texts,” but one that can transform signs and systems they operate on (Duff 63). Although they are largely silent, McCarthy and Faulkner do not allow their muted voices remain unheard. Instead, they merely give Lena Grove and the she-wolf a higher degree of power existing in “a prediscursive reality which exposes the vulnerability of discursive reality” and attempts to subvert it (Clarke 399). Without speaking a word, these women exercise a power that threatens the reality the men around them perceive. This adds an accurate depiction of what many real women choose to do to regain power and the outcomes that they face. Instead of seeking a voice, they acknowledge the strength in finding alternative ways of asserting themselves in their silence. When Billy goes to rescue the wolf, he sees that she “fought in absolute silence…buried her teeth in its throat and bit again to improve her grip” (McCarthy 114). Even without the muzzle, the wolf remains silent while protecting herself and her unborn offspring.

Forbidding human women to speak in these texts reinforces the idea of male superiority that asserts that “woman do not exist” because “language…rules as master, and that she threatens…to disrupt its order” if she speaks against the master (Porter qtd in Clarke 399). Although she does not speak in her birth scene, Lena threatens order by exercising a silent power over both Lucas and Byron. When Lucas Burch enters the shack, she does not say anything. Instead, she “enacts the female gaze by the giving and inscribing of freedom…[and] she resist[s] the urge to dominate, to control the other” because she knows that she can use this power to end her hunt for Burch without further risking her reputation (Visser 285). Realizing the threat, she poses to their reality, Lena has now come to understand that she can use her abjection to get what she wants.

Instead of crumbling into submission to either Lucas or Byron, she takes advantage of this assumption and travels around, claiming to look for the former while under the protection of the latter. This sets up a hopeful and freer end to Lena’s journey that provides a glimmer of hope for her and her child.

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Although not all of McCarthy’s women are silent, those that are allowed to speak rarely present opinions that are fully their own. The girl that Billy and Boyd meet on their journey starts as a largely silent character but begins to speak more as she grows increasingly comfortable around the boys. Eventually, she tells them about her grandmother, who “spoke to her often of men and she spoke with great earnestness and she said that harsh men were a great temptation to women and this was simply a misfortune like others and there was little that could be done to remedy it. She said that to be a woman was to live a life of difficulty and heartbreak and those who said otherwise simply had no wish to face the facts” (McCarthy 322). Repeating this opinion does not provide the girl with an individual voice but, rather, repeats what she has been told. This makes it easier for Boyd and Billy to disregard her because these unoriginal claims do not directly threaten their perceived superiority. Instead of reinforcing the idea that women have the agency to speak for themselves, this speech act only further adds to their satisfaction as men that they are dealing with a wholly compliant female character.

Throughout these novels, males find comfort in assuring themselves that they can predict and control women, whether they are members of an abjected group or not. When Armstid takes Lena to his house to meet his wife, he is sure that his wife will help her despite her disapproval of the woman's pregnancy out of wedlock. Armstid immediately doubts that both the men and the women of the area have been kind to her, thinking “womenfolks are likely to be good without being very kind. Men, now might. But it’s only a bad woman herself that is likely to be very kind to another woman that needs the kindness’…I know exactly what Martha is going to say” (Faulkner 12-13). In this scene, Armstid captures the general male view of women. Since they have incorporated them into the society that they dominate, they believe that they have the authority to lay claim to even their thoughts. Instead of believing that his wife is a genuinely kind woman, he assumes that she aims to improve her image by showing kindness to this poor, stupid creature. This thought then expands to all women as Armstid supposes “she’ll walk the public country herself without shame because she knows that folks, menfolks, will take care of her…You just let one of them get married or get into trouble without being married, and right then and there is where she secedes from the woman race …and spends the balance of her life trying to get joined up with the man race’” (Faulkner 14-5). Although she has been allowed to speak her opinion of others as wholly kind to her, Armstid believes that the woman has been fooled. Because he is a man and encompasses the male perspective that states that all women aim to trick other members of society, Armstid assumes that both women are too ignorant to realize their situation and must seek help from men to remedy their problems.

Motherhood as Subversion While pregnant female characters play upon the stereotype that women are only useful in propagating the species, these headstrong mothers-to-be represent the startling reactions that many men have when they are presented with the alien concept of pregnancy and labor and the reality that women are granted an ability that men are not. In her work, Kristeva has described the pregnant woman as “opposed to the figure of immaculate conception, the erasure of women’s sex—is a figure of the doubling of self into other, and the eventual splitting of the self into the other, a figure that bespeaks both the identification of the self with the other, and the negation of self in the other that makes the recognition of the other possible” (Covino 22). In this respect, pregnancy is viewed as a repulsive process in which the other invades what is familiar and 77

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unsettles because it is no longer part of the self. This causes panic in the male perspective because that reality is unsettled when men can no longer contextualize women as part of the masculine self and, thus, “childbirth is generally perceived as a strictly female ritual from which men feel excluded” (Clarke 400).

For Faulkner, this startling sense of inferiority is manifested in Lena’s birth scene, in which Byron realizes Lena’s power of creation, an ability that he does not have. The animalistic moment of childbirth brings Byron to realize that she is not the pure, virginal being he thought she was and is unsure of his place at this moment. As he watches her thrash in the pains of labor, he states that “it was like it was not until Mrs. Hines called me and I heard her and saw her face and knew that Byron Bunch was nothing in this world to her right then, that I found out that she is not a virgin…I’ll have to tell Lucas Burch” (Faulkner 401). Because Byron has only viewed Lena as a pregnant woman, she has represented a calm and submissive female that corresponds with his perception of women. Witnessing her anger and total control in the birth scene goes against this notion, and Byron experiences a total loss of control. Having enacted the male gaze upon her until this point, Byron has no focal point from which he can control the situation because he “cannot allow the women to signify nothing other than projections of the male imagination” (Clarke 402). Instead, he thinks of Lucas Burch, another man involved in the ordeal, and assures himself that he, too, would find this unsettling moment entirely unacceptable because he has witnessed a creative capability in women that “defies the reality which men would impose upon it” (Clarke 401).

Just before burying the wolf, Billy realizes that motherhood is “at once terrible and of a great beauty, like flowers that feed on flesh” (McCarthy 127). Although motherhood is typically portrayed as a time of careful nurturing, the wolf does not regard this state as a reason to become the victim. Instead, she grows even more malicious in the dogfight because her instincts as a mother tell her that she must protect herself and her unborn offspring at all costs. Billy watches this and is unsettled, both by the violence he witnesses and by the wolf’s refusal to conform to his idea of the mother figure as a woman that requires male protection more than any other female. Billy ends the she-wolf’s suffering by shooting her. However, McCarthy’s decision to end the she-wolf’s life at this point in the narrative suggests that he has no way of reconciling the dissonance between the reality in his head and the reality he witnesses, leaving him with no choice but to erase the troublesome female from the narrative altogether. Nevertheless, Billy’s attempt to show pity by burying the wolf reminds him once more that all females are capable of creation he can never access as he feels the unborn pups shifting in her womb. Just as putting the wolf to rest allows Billy to ignore the unsettling realization of what he has done, McCarthy allows himself to ignore the discomfort he feels when confronted with such a powerful female character.

Conclusion While Light in August and The Crossing suggest differing opinions, both serve the purpose of exposing the “gap between male and female comprehension [that] has yet to be bridged” and suggests that it “appears likely that it never will be” (Clarke 408). While Faulkner has come to accept that women may have a hidden agency they can use to their benefit against oppressive patriarchy, McCarthy is not as optimistic. Instead, McCarthy leaves his readers with the reminder 78

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that “man—as a separate and unequal member of nature—controls the animals he can and kills those animals he cannot” (Sanborn 27). Since he cannot control the wolf that has come to represent the empowered female, Billy destroys her to allow his version of reality to survive but is haunted by his decision. His later inability to show sympathy to the lame dog that wanders up to him hints at McCarthy’s belief that if man cannot treasure “the bond that exists among all living and god-made things, then how can he himself hope for any grace” (Arnold 51). With his characteristic nihilism, McCarthy suggests that the human race is incapable of viewing all living things as equal, rendering hope for change entirely pointless. Regardless of their stance on the matter, both authors have approached the abject in their society and remain apprehensive of these deviant characters.

Although the characters and events in these works are fictional, the replication of these institutions supports Kristeva’s claim that the social contexts lingering between the lines are very real. Although these authors have confronted the undesirable groups in their social context in their writing, it is up to those that have created the injustices in Light in August and The Crossing to correct them in reality. While many audiences may be uncomfortable confronting these nontraditional female characters, it is not solely because they are excruciatingly violent. Rather, it is because these texts “enter the darker places of the imagination to witness the malignity of humankind at its worst” and acknowledges the abject that we refuse to see in everyday life (Arnold 39). By accessing stereotypes of two abjected groups, unwed mothers and wild animals, that refuse to be assimilated into a society that wishes to squelch their defiance, Faulkner and McCarthy grant readers access to social contexts that they see in their own life. This ability to acknowledge similar constructs in reality proves Kristeva’s claim that “the system of representation that binds the text is also rooted in social practice” (Kristeva qtd in Harrington 142). Instead of ignoring the uncomfortable feeling that arises while reading Light in August and The Crossing, readers must locate the source of this discomfort. Once the social context plays an active role in the reader’s understanding of the text, the process of changing the injustices pressed upon women becomes much simpler. The moment that the problem is acknowledged in our socially influenced literature, society can begin to mend it in everyday life.

Works Cited Allen, Graham. “Origins: Saussure, Bakhtin, Kristeva.” Intertextuality, edited by John Drakakis, Routledge, 2001, pp. 8–60.

Arnold, Edwin T. “‘Go to Sleep’: Dreams and Visions in the Border Trilogy.” Southern Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3, 2000, pp. 34–58.

Clarke, Deborah. “Gender, Race, and Language in Light in August.” American Literature, vol.

61, no. 3, 1989, pp. 398–413. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2926827.

Covino, Deborah Caslav. “Amending the Abject Body.” Amending the Abject Body, SUNY Press, Oct. 2004, www.sunypress.edu/p-4010-amending-the-abject-body.aspx.

Duff, David. “Intertextuality versus Genre Theory: Bakhtin, Kristeva and the Question of Genre.” Paragraph, vol. 25, no. 1, 2002, pp. 54–73. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43263675.

Faulkner, William. Light in August. Vintage International, 1990.

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Friedman, Susan Stanford. “(Self)Censorship and the Making of Joyce’s Modernism.” Joyce: The Return of the Repressed, edited by Susan Stanford Friedman, Cornell University Press, ITHACA; LONDON, 1993, pp. 21–57. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt207g6p1.6.

Gilbert, Scott. “Discourse Theory in The Crossing.” The Cormac McCarthy Journal, vol. 1, no.

1, 2001, pp. 38–43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42909332.

Harrington, Thea. “The Speaking Abject in Kristeva's ‘Powers of Horror.’” Hypatia, vol. 13, no.

1, 1998, pp. 138–157. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3810610.

Kristeva, Julia. “Approaching Abjection.” Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Columbia University Press, 1982, pp. 1–31, http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/touchyfeelingsmaliciousobjects/Kristevapowersofhorrorabjectio n.pdf.

Mayne, Natasha. “As Far as The Eye Could See: Cormac McCarthy, Myth and Masculine Visions in The 'New' American West.” Australasian Journal of American Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 2001, pp. 1–12. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41053864.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Crossing. Vintage International, 1995.

Sanborn, Wallis R. “‘I Aint Heard One in Years’: Wolves as Metaphor in ‘The Crossing.’” The Cormac McCarthy Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 2003, pp. 25–37. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42909358.

Sykes, John D. “What Faulkner (Might Have) Learned from Joyce.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 3, 2005, pp. 513–528. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26476606.

Visser, Irene. “Reading pleasure: Light in august and the theory of the gendered gaze.” Journal of Gender Studies, 1997, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/09589236.1997.9960688?scroll=top&nee dAccess=true.

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Athletic Media Messaging and How Sports Fandom and Message Processing Are Associated with Attendance at Mid-Sized University Athletic Events Eric Small

master’s degree at HPU.

High Point University graduate, Eric Small (’20), was a senior strategic communication major with studies in sales, at the time of this research project. To Eric, the most fulfilling part of participating in undergraduate research was delving deeper into media messaging of collegiate athletics to expand his knowledge, becoming increasingly invested the further he went.

Eric credits his mentor, Dr. Virginia McDermott, for her continued support, motivation, and encouragement to always perform his best. As an avid sports enthusiast, Eric hopes to enter the sports industry post-graduation and plans to get his

Abstract Colleges and universities attempt to expand and grow their athletic programs in order to create a diverse and immersive environment for their students and the supporting community. It is crucial for these colleges and universities that do not have a large program to capitalize on their potential fan base by attracting students, faculty, and community members in order to continue to grow and better their programs. However, many athletic departments do not conduct research to see if their messages and advertisements are attracting fans. In this study, 141 undergraduate and graduate students at a mid-sized university were selected to participate in a survey analyzing their level of sports fandom and analytical orientation of messages to see if they were associated with their willingness to attend that universities’ athletic events. This study found that if small and mid-sized universities want to attract fans, they should target people who already identify as fans. Additionally, this study found that people who identified as having higher levels of fandom also have higher levels of analytical orientation. The results of this study showed that people tend to use minimal cognitive effort to process messages, and people who consider themselves to be high-level fans will be more likely to attend athletic events.

Keywords: athletic, media, messaging, communication, sport, fandom, processing, attendance

C

ollegiate athletics is a big business; for most schools, the athletic department is a budget buster. As of 2016, the total expenses for a Division 1 program without a football team outweighed their total revenue by almost $1 million (Fulks, 2017). The cost of facilities, coaches, trainers, insurance, travel, and, where applicable, scholarships, quickly adds up. For a few lucky schools, their sports teams, mainly men’s football and basketball, generate revenue.

As of 2016, universities with a Division 1 athletics program, including football, generated around $20 million (Fulks, 2017). With their enormous budgets, these select few programs attract 81

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talented athletes, which leads to exciting games that attract fans of all ages who are willing to spend money on tickets and apparel (Laverie, 2008). This then leads to television contracts, endorsements, licensing deals, and, of course, donations. For example, The University of Texas, with over 40 thousand undergraduates as of Fall 2018 (Facts & Figures, 2019), spent over $200 million dollars on their athletic departments, while bringing in almost $220 million in revenue (Berkowitz & Varney, 2019).

However, regardless of whether a school’s athletics result in additional revenue, universities continue to invest in athletics because of their other advantages. Creating an interesting and immersive environment is crucial for universities that want high retention rates. Vincent Tinto, a retention scholar, stated “seven constructs can influence student retention. These are: academic advising, social connectedness, student involvement, faculty and staff approachability, business procedures, learning experiences, and student support services” (Strategies for Improving Student Retention, 2014). Getting involved in something outside of in-class learning is one of the many ways students can connect with peers and scholars (Osterman, 2000). In 2017, the number of 18 to 21-year-olds enrolling in four-year undergraduate programs was 5% higher than it was in 2010 (College Enrollment Rates, 2018). However, it is very difficult to choose from the 3,026 four-year programs found in the United States (How Many Colleges are in the US? Numbers of Colleges and Educational Institutions, n.d.). This is why colleges attempt to diversify themselves through their overall size, programs, amenities, extracurriculars, and athletic programs.

Not every school has 40 thousand students; therefore, not every school has as large of a budget to spend on athletic programs. This leads smaller universities to rely more heavily on marketing and promotional efforts through social media to reach out to potential fans, which would then lead to an increase in revenue that could grow their program. In 2017, the NCAA released a report saying the Big South, as a conference of 10 mid-sized universities, averaged an attendance of 1,417 fans per game (NCAA Men’s Basketball Attendance, 2019). Effectively attracting fans would benefit the school by increasing profits and reputation, while benefitting current students by providing them an engaging environment in which to socialize that would also be attractive to prospective students. Moreover, effectively targeting your promotional materials can improve the team’s brand, identity, and ticket sales (Coyle, 2010).

Unfortunately, there is a lack of research done on the perceived effectiveness of marketing strategies focused on increasing audience attendance at the collegiate level (Martin, et al., 2011); however, researchers have found that masculinity is a strong predictor of fandom and that sport marketers should target masculine audiences regardless of anatomical sex (Wann, Waddill & Dunham, 2004). Additionally, research has been done on marketing techniques used in college athletics and determined that organizations with lower attendance had more success with print and mail advertising, while organizations with higher attendance had success promoting wins (Martin, et al., 2011). Although most athletic marketers feel confident in their strategies (Martin, et al., 2011), only 30% of universities reach out to students to test different strategies (Mullin, et al., 2007). Due to this lack of research, it is important to ask current students and faculty if the marketing strategies used by collegiate athletic programs are working to increase willingness to attend games. According to previous research, individuals prefer messages with high processing fluency (how easy it is to process information), since they have a lot to think about (Alter &

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Oppenheimer, 2009). Messages that have a higher processing fluency have been linked to individuals having more confidence and positive attitudes to the message (Reber, et al., 2004).

The purpose of this study was to explore message processing and sports fandom to see if they influence willingness to attend mid-size university athletic events. To do this, the normative message processing scale was used to assess how much or little potential fans process media, and then the sports fandom questionnaire was used to determine participantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; fandom, along with several questions developed for the study to determine if participants have a willingness to attend their collegiate athletic events.

RQ1: Is the sports fandom questionnaire related to the normative message processing scale?

H1: Males will have a higher sense of sport fandom than females.

RQ2: Is sports fandom associated with different message perceptions?

RQ3: Which combination of message processing and sports fandom lead to the highest willingness to attend?

Method Participants University students, ranging from first-year through graduate (n =141), at a medium-sized private university in the Mid-Atlantic United States, were recruited to participate in this research.

Most students who participated received no compensation, except for several students in an introductory level course who earned research credit. Participants were 51% female (n = 72) and 48% male (n = 69). The most common majors were communication (53%, n = 75) and business (31.2%, n = 44). The majority of participants were seniors (50%, n = 71) or freshmen (12.8%, n = 18). College students were the ideal participants for the research because they are the target audience of collegiate athletic messages and make up the majority of the fan base.

Procedure Students, primarily in communication and business courses, voluntarily participated and completed the three-page questionnaire. Professors of these courses allocated 15-minutes at the beginning or end of class for data collection. The questionnaire took approximately 10-minutes to complete.

Measures Demographics: Participants completed a brief questionnaire identifying their sex, year in school, and major.

Sports Fandom: The sports fandom questionnaire (Wann, 2002; see Appendix A) was used to measure the sports fandom of the participants. Using a five-point Likert-type scale, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Examples of statements used on the scale are: I consider myself to be a sports fan; My friends see me as a sports fan; and I believe that following sports is the most enjoyable form of entertainment (see appendix A for questionnaire). Higher 83

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scores indicate higher levels of fandom. Branscombe & Wann reported an internal consistency alpha = .96 (Wann, 2002). Cronbach’s alpha for this study was .95.

Analytical Orientation: Participants were measured with the normative message processing scale (Aune & Reynolds, 1994; see Appendix A), which analyzes the amount of cognitive effort one uses to process a message. The normative message processing scale uses a seven-point Likert scale, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Examples of questions used on the scale are: I know when a message makes sense because it just seems to feel right; After making a decision about someone’s argument, I usually know the thought processes that led to my decision; and The best way for me to assess a person’s argument is through careful analysis (see appendix A for questionnaire). Higher results indicate high levels of analytical message processing. Several statements indicated reverse coding. Examples of those are: My intuition plays only a weak role in my analysis of a person’s message; When developing a message, I don’t think much about the order of the specific points of the message; and I don’t need to completely understand a message to know if it makes sense. Aune & Reynolds (1994) report a scale Cronbach alpha of .77 to .83. The Cronbach alpha for the current study was .74.

Willingness to Attend: To measure participants’ willingness to attend their university athletic event, two questions were adapted from a study done by Wang, Kim, and Agrusa (2018) and combined with two questions developed for this project by using a five-point Likert scale, from 1 (strongly disagree), to 5 (strongly agree). Examples of these questions are: Willingness to attend a High Point athletic event; Willingness to recommend a High Point athletic event; and High Point Athletics look fun (See appendix A for questionnaire). Higher ratings indicate a higher willingness to go.

Results A Pearson product-movement correlation was conducted in order to evaluate research question one, which examined the relationship between Sports Fandom (as measured by the sports fandom questionnaire) and Message Processing (as measured by the normative message processing scale). Preliminary analyses were performed to ensure no violation of the assumption of normality, linearity, and homoscedasticity. As Table 1 displays, there was a small, positive relationship between the two variables, r = .26, n = 131, p < .003. These data support a relationship between Sports Fandom and Message Processing.

Table 1: Pearson Product-moment Correlations Between Measures of Fandom and Message Processing Scale

1

2

1. Sports Fandom 2. Message Processing

.260**

.260** -

An independent-samples t-test was conducted in order to evaluate hypothesis one, which hypothesized males will have a higher sense of sports fandom than females. As Table 2 displays, there was a significant difference in scores for males (M = 3.829, SD =1.248) and females (M = 2.840, SD =1.216; t (136) = 4.717, p = .000, two-tailed) in the predicted direction. The 84

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magnitude of the differences in the means (mean difference = .989, CI: .575 to 1.404) was large (eta squared = .141). These data show that males have a higher sports fandom than females.

Table 2: Independent-Samples t-test between Male and Female Sports Fandom

Sports Fandom

N

Male M

68

3.829

SD

N

Female M

1.248

70

2.840

SD

t

1.216

p

4.717 .00

d .803

A one-way between-groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore research question two, which assessed the impact of message processing on students with (a) high, (b) medium, (c) low levels of fandom. As Table 3 displays, there were significant differences between each pair of groups, with p < .05: F (2, 128) = 4.273, p = .016. The effect size, calculated using eta squared, was .063. Post-hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score for low fandom (M = 3.991, SD = .475) was statistically different from high fandom (M = 4.329, SD = .548). Medium fandom did not differ significantly from either group. These data show that people who have a higher sports fandom are more inclined to use more effort to process sportrelated messages.

Table 3: Effect of Low, Medium, and High Fandom on Message Processing Sports Fandom Message Processing

N

Low M

SD

N

24

3.991

.475

36

Medium M SD 4.164

.449

High N M

SD

F

71

.548

4.273

4.329

p 0.016

A two-way between-groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore research question three, which examined the interaction of message processing and fandom on willingness to attend. Participants were divided into two groups according to their levels of message processing (Group 1: Low; Group 2: High). The interaction effect between message processing and sports fandom was not significant, F (1, 125) = .102, p = .750. There was, however, a statistically significant main effect for sports fandom, F (2, 125) = 9.887, p = .000. The effect size was small (partial eta squared =.137). Post-hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score for low fandom (M = 1.158, SD = .221) was statistically different from medium fandom (M = 2.590, SD = .451) and high fandom (M = 4.358, SD = .467). The main effect for message processing, F (1, 125) = .054, p = .817) did not reach statistical significance. These data show that people with low levels of fandom would use little, if any, cognitive effort to process a sport-related message.

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Table 4: Interaction of Low, Medium, and High Fandom and High and Low Message Processing on Willingness to Attend Sports Fandom N Message Processing

Low M

SD

N

Medium M SD

N

High M

SD

Low

24

2.26

.913

34

3.213

.894

61

3.426

1.143

High

0

0

0

2

3.250

1.061

11

3.194

1.074

Discussion The purpose of this study was to explore an individual’s orientation toward analytical message processing and sports fandom to see if they are associated with willingness to attend mid-size university athletic events. As the results indicate, sports fandom affected participants’ willingness to attend a sporting event more than their analytical message processing orientation.

Mid-sized universities should emphasize attracting people who are already fans of sports. The majority of participants surveyed stated they used a moderate amount of effort to process messages (M = 4.22, SD = .519). In order to capture their attention, specifically to advertise sports, the message will have to interest the reader. As stated earlier, this is important because effectively targeting your promotional materials can improve the team’s brand, identity, and ticket sales (Coyle, 2010).

Analysis of the sports fandom questionnaire indicates that the level of fandom has a small, positive relationship when it comes to processing athletic media messages. Specifically, participants who indicated a medium and high level of fandom also indicated a significantly higher level of analytical message processing. This is important because people who identify as fans tend to spend more time processing messages and information.

This study indicated that there is a statistically significant difference in fandom between males and females, stating that males reported higher levels of sports fandom. This would be beneficial for athletic departments to utilize when crafting messages. In order to make the most of your messages, it would be beneficial to target males since they have higher levels of fandom than females do.

This study examined how people’s orientation toward analytical message processing, or the amount of cognitive effort one uses to understand a message, was associated with self-reported sports fandom. The analysis shows that there was a statistically significant difference between “low” and “high” levels of fandom, where “high” levels of fandom had reported higher levels of message processing. However, it is interesting to notice that none of the participants fit into the Low Fandom & Low Message Processing groups. Future research should examine this further to assess if this is a trend or simply a reflection of the limited sample.

By creating questions to observe participants Willingness to Attend, this study was able to see if sports fandom or message processing was associated with participants’ willingness to attend university athletic events. As the results show, fandom did have a significant main effect 86

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on willingness to attend, while message processing did not. This means that just because people have high levels of message processing, they still may not want to go to any athletic events. It would be better to target people who already identify as sports fans. This is important to assess because the main goal of any athletic message is to attract fans to create a cycle of growth for everyone involved.

Limitations There were several limitations with this research. There was a low number of faculty responses. The lack of faculty responses limits the sample to only students instead of the ideal population of people who have a stake in attending their universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s athletic events.

Additionally, one question from the normative message processing scale was not used in the survey due to overlooking the question while creating the survey. The one missing question in the normative message processing scale does not provide the full scale, which lowers its effectiveness. Lastly, there was confusion among the participants when it came to the last question regarding opinions of the advertisement. Many thought the survey itself was the advertisement or gave their opinions on the universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s athletics and not the attached advertisement. Therefore, the question was removed from analysis. These issues limited the analysis because the study did not accurately analyze how sports fandom and message processing are associated with a specific athletic advertisement. Instead, it was a general study about how sports fandom and message processing are associated with general a willingness to attend sporting events.

Future Research If this study were repeated, it should specify that the survey is about a specific advertisement. That way, they will have a better understanding that the survey is about how message processing and sports fandom are associated with willingness to attend that specific athletic event. This can be done by deepening the research on what messages participants are more likely to spend time processing, or by defining the level of fandom based on individual sports. Another way to expand this research is to survey faculty and community members to gather their impressions on the athletic media messages, since both groups are potential fans.

Both facets provide crucial data since students are not the only ones attending and benefitting from successful athletic events.

Conclusion This study was successful in exploring the relationship between sports fandom and message processing, and their relationship to studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; willingness to attend university athletic events.

This is important for scholars because it provides more insight into how message processing might be associated with behavior. Athletic departments can benefit from this project by considering how to better target their marketing materials to people who are already sports fans, which may increase attendance and save advertising money. This study shows that people do not use a lot of effort to understand messages, and higher-level sports fans have a higher willingness to attend athletic events. Knowing this, athletic departments can optimize their online

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advertisements and craft their messages in order to catch the attention of people who already identify as sports fans.

References Aune, R. K. & Reynolds, R. A., (1994). The empirical development of the normative message processing scale, Communication Monographs, 61(2), 135-160, doi: 10.1080/03637759409376329 Alter, A.L. & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2009). Uniting the tribes of fluency to form a metacognitive nation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13, 219-235. doi:10.1177/1088868309341564 Berkowitz, S. & Varney, J. (2019, August 12). NCAA Finances. Retrieved October 20, 2019, from http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/.

College Enrollment Rates. (2018). Retrieved October 20, 2019, from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cpb.asp.

Coyle, P. (2010). Teams active in social media build strategic advantage. Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal, 12 (35), 18. Retrieved from https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2010/01/04/Opinion/Teams-Active-InSocial-Media-Build-A-Strategic-Advantage.aspx.

Facts & Figures. (2019, September 10). Retrieved October 20, 2019, from https://www.utexas.edu/about/facts-and-figures.

Fulks, D. L. (2017). Revenues and expenses 2004-2016. National Collegiate Athletic Association. Retrieved from https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/2017RES_D1RevExp_Entire_2017_Final_20180123.pdf.

How Many Colleges are in the US? Numbers of Colleges and Educational Institutions (n.d.).

Retrieved October 20, 2019, from https://www.urbanedjournal.org/education/how-manycolleges-are-in-the-us-numbers-of-colleges-and-educationalinstitutions#:~:text=Numbers%20Of%20Colleges%20And%20Educational%20Institutions., far%20from%20an%20organized%20system.

Ioakimidis, M. (2010). Online marketing of professional sports clubs: Engaging fans on a new playing field. International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship, 11 (4),271- 282. doi:10.1108/IJSMS-11-04-2010-B002 Laverie, D.A., & Arnett, D.B. (2000). Factors affecting fan attendance: The influence of identity salience and satisfaction. Journal of Leisure Research, 32(2), 225-246. doi: 10.1080/00222216.2000.11949915.

Martin, C. L. L., Miller, L. L., Elsisi, R., Bowers, A., & Hall, S. (2011). An analysis of collegiate athletic marketing strategies and evaluation processes. Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, 4(1), 42-54. Retrieved from http://csrijiia.org/old/documents/publications/research_articles/2011/JIIA_2011_4_3_42_54_Analysis _of_Collegiate_Athletic_Marketing.pdf.

Mullin, B., Hardy, S. & Sutton, W. (2007). Sport marketing, 3rd ed. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

NCAA Men’s Basketball Attendance. (2019, July 25). Retrieved November 6, 2019, from http://www.ncaa.org/championships/statistics/ncaa-mens-basketball-attendance.

Osterman, K. (2000). Students’ need for belonging in the school community. Review of Educational Research, 70 (3), 323-367. doi: 10.3102/00346543070003323.

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Reber, R., Schwarz, N., & Winkielman, P. (2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s processing experience? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8 (4), 364-382. doi: 10.1207/s15327957pspr0804_3.

Strategies for improving student retention. (2014). Hanover Research, 1-30. Retrieved from https://www.hanoverresearch.com/media/Strategies-for-Improving-Student-Retention.pdf.

Wann, D. L. (2002). Preliminary validation of a measure for assessing identification as a sport fan: The sport fandom questionnaire. International Journal of Sport Management, 3, 103115.

Wann, D. L., Waddill, P. J., & Dunham, M. D. (2004). Using sex and gender role orientation to predict level of sport fandom. Journal of Sport Behavior, 27(4), 367-377.

Wang S., Kim S., & Agrusa J. (2018) A comparative study of perceptions of destination advertising according to message appeal and endorsement type, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 23(1), 24-41, doi:10.1080/10941665.2017.1394336.

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APPENDIX A Assessing Collegiate Athletics Media Processing and Fandom Status Thank you for participating in my survey on Athletic Media Message Processing and Fandom Status.

There is no right or wrong way to respond to the questions below, so please answer truthfully. Your response will be anonymous.

Sex: __________________ Year in School:

Freshman

Major: __________________ Sophomore

Junior

Senior Graduate Student Faculty

First- Please consider how you feel toward sports

1) I consider myself to be a sports fan.

2) My friends see me as a sports fan.

3) I believe that following sports is the most enjoyable form of entertainment.

4) My life would be less enjoyable if I were not able to follow sports.

5) Being a sports fan is very important to me.

Strongly Disagree

Strongly Agree

Neutral

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

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1

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Second- Please consider how you feel toward the athletic messages from HPU. Strongly Disagree

Strongly Agree

Neutral

6) I know when a message makes sense because it just seems to feel right.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

7) After making a decision about someone’s argument, I usually know the thought processes that led to my decision.

1

2

3

4

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6

7

8) The best way for me to assess a person’s argument is through careful analysis.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

9) I analyze each point of a message one at a time and very carefully.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

10) My intuition plays only a weak role in my analysis of a person’s message.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Strongly Disagree

Neutral

Strongly Agree

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11) When developing a message, I don’t think much about the order of the specific points of the message.

12) I don’t need to completely understand a message to know if it makes sense.

13) When I read or listen to a message, I pay close attention to each point that is made and decide whether it is a good point or not.

14) Hunches and intuitions are not primary tools for assessing persuasive messages.

15) When I’m listening to an explanation about something, I stop everything else so that I can pay close attention to what is being said.

16) My best decisions about a message come from careful analysis and reflection about the content of a message.

17) To confirm you are reading, please circle 3 18) It takes me a while to understand an argument because I carefully think about each point presented.

19) When assessing the validity of an argument, I rank each point in order of importance and then consider whether it makes sense.

20) I don’t like to rely on my hunches about the validity of people’s arguments.

21) When assessing the validity of a person’s argument, I rely a lot on my feelings and intuitions.

22) When assessing a persuasive argument, I try to remain objective and analyze the content of the message.

23) I don’t usually have hunches or intuitions about messages.

24) When I listen to a speaker, I concentrate on the content of the message and don’t let myself get distracted by anything else.

25) I don’t usually go with my first impressions when making an important decision; I prefer to take my time.

26) I’m not very careful or deliberate when I’m listening to a message.

2020

1

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7

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7

Strongly Disagree

Strongly Agree

Neutral

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1

2

3

4

5

6

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27) I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always know what leads me to believe or reject an argument; it just happens.

28) I assess a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s argument by evaluating each point, one at a time.

2020

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7

1

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Last- Please consider how you feel toward High Point sports and refer to the advertisement on the front.

Strongly Disagree

Strongly Agree

Neutral

29) Willingness to attend a High Point athletic event.

30) Willingness to recommend a High Point athletic event.

31) High Point Athletics look fun.

1

2

3

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5

1

2

3

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5

1

2

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5

32) I would want to go to this event with my friends.

1

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5

33) What part of this advertisement on the first page stood out to you the most?

Thank You!

Advertisement from the front page: PLEASE REMOVE BEFORE BEGINNING

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Not-So-Minor Characters: The Christian Examples in Bleak House Raegan Thomas High Point University graduate, Raegan Thomas (’20), was a senior English literature major, with double minors in creative writing and religion, at the time of her research.

While reading the works of Charles Dickens, Raegan decided to merge both her academic interests of literature and religion by researching and analyzing the novel, Bleak House, through a Christian lens. For Raegan, the most fulfilling aspect of her undergraduate research experience was the opportunity to share her work with the larger research community, an opportunity she had experienced once before when one of her previous works was published in Innovation. Raegan credits her mentor, Dr. Virginia Leclercq, for her encouragement to keep going, especially at times when she nearly gave up. Post-graduation, Raegan continues writing creatively, serving her community at faith-based non-profits, and resume her position as Quality Manager at Thomas Machine Products, Inc. Abstract In Charles Dickens’s novel, Bleak House, the religious hypocrite characters satirize the public presentation of Christianity; however, Dickens offers an alternate view of what Christianity should look like through other minor characters. Mrs. Bagnet, George Rouncewell, and Allan Woodcourt play significant roles in the story because they symbolize Christian examples but are not considered to be major characters since they do not receive the page count number as Esther the narrator. Instead of quoting Scripture directly, Dickens uses fragments of Scripture and parallels to the model Proverbs 31 woman, the Prodigal Son, and the Good Samaritan to present a positive portrayal of Christianity and offer a solution to the social injustices within the novel.

These characters are rewarded for their deeds because they do not broadcast their Christian examples but instead, undertake their good works subtly and discretely. All three of these “not so minor” characters are rewarded by God, or more accurately, a god-like character, such as John Jarndyce and Sir Leicester Dedlock. With their respective rewards and acknowledgment of Mrs. Bagnet as the Proverbs 31 woman, Allan Woodcourt as the Good Samaritan, and George Rouncewell as the Prodigal Son, the ending of the novel does not “resort to fantasy” as Alex Zwerdling, the author of “Esther Summerson Rehabilitated” claims. Instead, the Christian characters are indeed rewarded at the end which suggests that their solution is the same as that which Dickens suggests for other social problems: Christianity.

Keywords: religion, christianity, close reading, literature, bleak house, dickens

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A

ccording to the Rambler review of Bleak House, because Charles Dickens was “ignorant of the very elements of a religious faith, it is natural that he should fail in drawing religious hypocrites” (778). On the contrary, the review not only misunderstood the religious hypocrites of Dickens’s novel, but also failed to realize the allusions to biblical stories he provides throughout, thus proving he was not ignorant of “the very elements of a religious faith.” But not all the reviews concurred with The Rambler’s analysis. For example, The Illustrated London News understood Dickens’s use of Mr. Chadband’s character by acknowledging that “his false eloquence and still falser religion, will avail his class no more” (774). While the religious hypocrites of Bleak House satirize the public presentation of Christianity, Dickens offers a more subtle view of what Christianity should look like through other minor characters. Mrs. Bagnet, George Rouncewell, and Allan Woodcourt play significant roles in the story because they symbolize Christian examples; but they are not considered major characters since they do not receive as much page space as figures like Esther the narrator, whose biblical parallel is more obvious because of her association with the book of Esther. For the minor characters, the biblical parallels in Bleak House are not always explicit. Instead of quoting Scripture directly, Dickens uses fragments of Scripture and glimpses of the model Proverbs 31 woman, the Prodigal Son, and the Good Samaritan to present a positive portrayal of Christianity. By revising the biblical allusions and attaching them to minor characters like Mrs. Bagnet, George Rouncewell, and Allan Woodcourt, Dickens offers a solution to social injustices.

These characters are rewarded for their deeds because they do not broadcast their Christian examples but instead, undertake their good works subtly and discreetly. All three of these “not so minor” characters are rewarded by God, or more accurately, a god-like character, such as John Jarndyce and Sir Leicester Dedlock. Like God, both characters see what these minor characters are doing in secret. According to Matthew 6:2-4: Therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. (King James’ Version) Contrary to Alex Zwerdling, who interprets the novel’s ending as “fantasy,” the acknowledgment of Mrs. Bagnet as the Proverbs 31 woman, George Rouncewell as the Prodigal Son, and Allan Woodcourt as the Good Samaritan, along with their respective rewards, aligns with Matthew 6:2-4 (438). Since these minor characters are symbols of proverbial and parabolical Biblical characters, they are rewarded immanently in Dickens’s narrative. Also, it is important to note that while Matthew 6:2-4 possibly refers to transcendent rewards in the afterlife, the immanent rewards in the narrative symbolize the Matthew 6:2-4 reward because the god-like characters, whom are the only ones who notice the Christian examples’ unboastful actions, gift them. Instead, that the Christian characters are indeed rewarded at the end suggests their solution is the same as that which Dickens suggests for other social problems: genuine Christianity founded on biblical example.

Through dialogue between other characters, Mrs. Bagnet is labeled the “Proverbs 31 woman.” Mr. Bagnet says to George, “Why not? Because the old girl’s metal is far more precious—than the preciousest metal. And she’s all metal!” (441). The book of Proverbs lists 94

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advice for what a man should look for in a godly wife, hence the “Proverbs 31 woman” term: “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil” (Proverbs 31:10-11). The difference between the Scripture and the quote from Bleak House is the item used for comparison to the woman. Precious metal and rubies are different; however, they are similar because both are used to make jewelry. Dickens disguises the scripture reference by switching the word ruby with metal, but the switch deviates very little from the original scripture passage.

Charles Dickens would have been familiar with the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

However, the English Standard Version, which uses the same translation theory as the King James Version that matches grammar and sentence structure from the original Hebrew text, uses the phrase “far more precious” instead of “price is far above rubies.” Its translation of Proverbs 31:10-11 reads, “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.” The English Standard Version alerts modern-day readers that Mrs. Bagnet is associated with the Proverbs 31 woman because her husband exclaims, she is “far more precious.” One could argue that the phrase “far more precious,” which is very similar to the King James version, could have been a coincidence, but Mr. Bagnet continues his praise of his wife by saying, “For she’s loyal!” (442). The word “loyal” is similar to the word trust, highlighting another connection to the Proverbs verse. The slight change from ruby/jewel to metal, and “far more precious,” to the word loyal all suggest the Proverbs 31 woman. Later in the narrative, Jarndyce notices Mrs. Bagnet’s worth and tells her “you are a jewel of a woman,” further reiterating that she is a Proverbs 31 woman by explicitly comparing her to a jewel instead of metal (622). Without the comparison of the text beside the Scripture, readers could easily miss the similarity, but with Dickens, each word holds importance.

While the dialogue highlights Mrs. Bagnet as Dickens’s realization of the Proverbs 31 woman, the most significant fact is that Mrs. Bagnet does not see it. Her husband reveals the praise to George, out of earshot of his wife. To sum up his praise, Mr. Bagnet says, “But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained” (442). Mr. Bagnet repeats the phrase in chapter 52 (623). Since Mrs. Bagnet does not receive this praise, her Christian example aligns with Matthew 6:2-4. She is not like the hypocrites since she is not praised by others directly, with the exception of Jarndyce. Much evidence points to Jarndyce as a god-like character with his interactions with major characters, but in his relation to Mrs. Bagnet and Woodcourt, he is the one giving them their rewards. Since Jarndyce is a god-like character, it is appropriate for Mrs. Bagnet to receive praise from him instead of hearing similar praise from other characters, such as her husband. By Jarndyce praising her openly, he fulfills the promise of God rewarding His faithful followers.

Mrs. Bagnet’s reward does indeed arrive, in the form of praise from Jarndyce and her family’s salvation from financial ruin. Mrs. Bagnet is once again absent when George and Mr. Bagnet go to fix the financial debt problem. George saves the family by allowing himself to be blackmailed: “But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife and family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them through this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any other consideration, what you wanted of me the other day” (446). Since Mrs. Bagnet is a Christian example, she goes on to help someone else in need even after receiving her reward, or happy ending. She returns the favor to George Rouncewell by reuniting him with his mother.

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The reunion not only promotes happiness between the mother and son but for Mrs. Bagnet as well, since she genuinely cares for George as a devoted friend. Dickens shows her response at the reunion instead of simply saying she is happy: “they speak in such touching language, that Mrs. Bagnet’s eyes brim up with tears, and they run glistening down her sun-browned face” (651).

As Mrs. Bagnet’s story closes, George Rouncewell’s biblical allusion begins. George Rouncewell resembles the Prodigal Son parable from Luke 15:11-32 when he reunites with his mother, Mrs. Rouncewell: “The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries” (651). In repenting to his mother, George mirrors the Prodigal Son when he tells his father, “Father I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and no more worthy to be called thy son” (Luke 15:21). Mrs. Rouncewell forgives her youngest son immediately when he asks for her forgiveness, just like the father in the parable. Although Dickens tweaked the parable allusion in his novel to be a mother instead of the father to fit his narrative purpose, he kept the older brother role the same.

George’s reunion with his older brother strengthens the parallel. Upon reuniting with his brother, George asks how he can be scratched out of his mother’s will (729). The Prodigal Son feels unworthy to be called a son since he left and squandered away his money and wishes to be a hired as a servant. When he ultimately returns, George becomes a type of servant to Sir Leicester. George too wants to be scratched out of the will because he feels guilty about going off in the first place. George tells his older brother “I couldn’t be guilty of the meanness of coming back without it. I should never be safe not to be off again. I have not sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of your rights. I, who forfeited mine long ago!” (730).

He wishes to be scratched out because he forfeited his rights as a son, which resembles the Prodigal Son’s feelings of unworthiness as a son after turning his back on his family.

Moreover, George refers to himself as a vagabond throughout the novel, like the Prodigal Son who also wandered around the country, having no settled place of his own. The Prodigal Son returned home because he was starving and had no place left to go, and George does the same.

He returns to Chesney Wold following his bankruptcy and imprisonment to be with his mother while serving Sir Leicester as a body-servant (731). When George returns to Chesney Wold and to his mother, he finally has a home again. Upon George’s return, Sir Leicester tells George, “you have been a soldier, and a faithful one” (686). The word soldier does not only refer to George’s military service but to a soldier of God. The added phrase, “a faithful one,” has a double meaning. George resembles a faithful servant of Christ, and then physically becomes a servant to Sir Leicester, the god-figure in George’s story line. Sir Leicester commenting that George is a faithful soldier can be read as a god-like figure telling a Christian servant he has been faithful in his deeds. Matthew 25:21 reads: “His lord said unto him, well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” When Sir Leicester tells George he has been faithful, he implicitly points toward Matthew 25:21. The verse also resembles Matthew 6:4 by promising a reward. Furthermore, Ephesians 6:9 refers to the Lord as a Master, and as George’s employer and owner of Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester becomes George’s master. Also, since Matthew 6:4 says the Father will reward the faithful servant, Sir Leicester offering George a position and 96

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home equals a reward for George’s Christian deeds. A possible reason as to why Dickens chose to switch the father for a mother in George’s Prodigal Son parallel is because the father is actually Sir Leicester. God is often referred to as a “Father” in the Bible, and if Sir Leicester is the god-like figure giving George his reward, then he can also be seen as George’s Father.

George’s reward/ happy ending for his faithful service in helping the Bagnet family is forgiveness from his mother and brother, a new job, and home at Chesney Wold.

In his providing a place for Jo per Allan Woodcourt’s request, George Rouncewell’s story intertwines with yet another biblical allusion. Allan Woodcourt, who resembles the Good Samaritan, does not directly align with every facet of the parable; however, there are striking similarities between the two. Luke 10:30-33 reads: A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him.

It is significant that Woodcourt is the one to help Jo just as a Samaritan stopped to help a Jew instead of the priest or the Levite. Samaritans and Jews were enemies, and yet the only person who “had compassion” to help the beaten Jew was a Samaritan (Luke 10:33). Though Jo and Woodcourt are not enemies, Dickens mirrors the relational tension from the parable when Woodcourt discovers Jo is the one who gave Esther smallpox, forever disfiguring her face: “He turns away, and stands for a while looking out at the covered passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure; except that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very remarkable, that it absorbs the woman’s attention” (561). Woodcourt does not pass Jo by like the priest and the Levite but decides to “contend against an avoidance” to help. Allan tells Jo: “Come with me, and I will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in” (563). In comparison, the parable of the Good Samaritan reads: “And went to him, and bound up his wounds…and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him…when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said…‘Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee’” (Luke 10:34-35). Dr. Woodcourt takes Jo to a safe place where he can tend to the boy’s sickness. He also tells George he will pay anyone who would allow Jo a safe place to stay, but George, showing his good Christian example, offers to let Jo stay with him and replies “no charge made, except for ration” (567). Woodcourt’s actions could appear to be only those of a doctor fulfilling his oath, but the parallel to the Good Samaritan parable suggests that he is not only a good doctor, but an example of a faithful servant displaying Christian love. In Luke 10:27, a man recites how you can obtain eternal life, including to love “thy neighbor as thyself,” and Woodcourt exhibits that love by caring for Jo, the boy who gave smallpox to Esther, with medicine, financial aid, and his skills as a physician.

By not boasting about his true Christian action, Woodcourt fulfills Matthew 6:2-4. He does not do it for praise by others on earth; therefore, God will reward him. Moreover, Woodcourt must keep his kindness a secret because Jo is scared of retaliation from Inspector Bucket.

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Woodcourt tells Jo, “if I take one side of the way and you the other, to avoid observation, you will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise” (563). Traveling on opposite sides of the road draws another connection to the Good Samaritan parable, although not identical since the Good Samaritan and Jew start on opposite sides of the road. Woodcourt and Jo leave the street on opposite sides instead of together as the parable suggests, but the difference helps to fulfill Matthew 6:2-4. Not only does this quote resemble the Good Samaritan story by the Jew and Samaritan being on opposite sides of the road, but it also reveals that Woodcourt is helping Jo without observation from the public. For Jo’s safety, Woodcourt must help him in secret.

Woodcourt’s reward coincides with Esther’s reward, which is John Jarndyce’s most obvious god-like figure moment. Jarndyce gives Esther to Woodcourt as a bride, and he provides a home for them, labeling it the “New Bleak House.” Jarndyce even tells Esther: “I am your guardian and your father now. Rest confidently here” (736). By referring to himself as a father and offering rest, Jarndyce invokes Scripture passages about the Lord, such as Matthew 11:28, “Come unto me, all ye who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” While Esther’s reward is more apparent due to her responsibility as one of the two narrators, her husband’s happy ending reiterates the fact that Dickens provided other Christian examples subtly throughout Bleak House.

Other scholars may argue that instead of divine providence, the author is the reason for the happy ending Jarndyce provides Esther and Woodcourt. In her critical essay “The Battle of the Biblical Books in Esther’s Narrative,” Janet Larson argues, “romance triumphs in her final chapter—with what seems to many readers an engineered concurrence of providences that prove not God’s care but the author’s need for happy closure” (160). However, the evidence provided in this essay suggests the “happy closure” is a reward from God, which Dickens did not write lightly due to the carefully constructed minor characters and their connection to positive Christian examples in the Bible. In the same essay, Larson claims, “Dickens’s actual literary intentions and personal state of religious belief discerned from Esther’s voice are impossible to prove from the novel alone” (141). While it is impossible to determine Dickens’s motives or his religious beliefs in Bleak House alone, it is apparent he was not ignorant of the elements of Christianity due to the examples of Mrs. Bagnet, Allan Woodcourt, and George Rouncewell. The Scripture and biblical story allusions for each are embedded into their narratives, much like the implications of God in the book of Esther. Larson and Robert Butterworth offer explanations of why Dickens would twist Scripture or include parallels to the Bible in the first place. Larson claims that “as ‘a writer so much attuned to his time,’ Dickens could only be expected to ‘revise, not merely receive, his Bible at a time of needful revision and even radical rewriting’…Dickens has not abandoned Christianity, but is acting on a sense of inadequacy” (qtd. in Butterworth 21).

Butterworth states, “Far from being inadequate to dealing with the problems of Victorian society, he [Dickens] thinks Christianity is the only answer to them” (25).

Although Zwerdling dismisses the novel’s ending as “fantasy” because Dickens needed “an escape from the world he satirizes,” the examples of Mrs. Bagnet, Woodcourt, and George prove that the “happy ending” of Bleak House is not just escapism (438). Their happy endings suggest they are the examples readers should be following. The “happy ending” is a precedent with other characters and completed with fewer pages. Mrs. Bagnet serves as the model Christian wife, the Proverbs 31 woman, and displays her faithful servitude in loyalty. Disguised as a doctor, Allan Woodcourt goes beyond his job description as the Good Samaritan. By saving the Bagnet family 98

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and assisting Woodcourt in looking after Jo, George’s character alludes to the Prodigal Son and demonstrates another Christian example. These three characters “have not transformed society by the end of the novel with their Christian attitudes and service. What they have done, is make a start towards the amelioration and civilizing of society; everyone else needs to follow suit” (Butterworth 94). Dickens’s minor characters offer hope that social ills can be cured by selfless Christian love.

Works Cited Butterworth, Robert. Dickens, Religion & Society. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Edited by Patricia Ingham, Broadview Press, 2011.

The Holy Bible. English Standard Version, Crossway, 2001.

The Holy Bible. King James Version, Holman Bible Publishers, 1998.

Larson, Janet T. “The Battle of Biblical Books in Esther’s Narrative.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 38, no. 2, September 1983, pp. 131-60. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3044787.

Review of Bleak House by Charles Dickens. The Rambler. January 1854. Bleak House, edited by Patricia Ingham, Broadview Press, 2011, pp. 776-78.

Review of Bleak House by Charles Dickens. The Illustrated London News. 24 September 1853.

Bleak House, edited by Patricia Ingham, Broadview Press, 2011, pp. 773-74.

Zwerdling, Alex. “Esther Summerson Rehabilitated.” PMLA, vol. 88, no. 3, May 1973, pp. 42939. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/461523.

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An Unsung Literary Father: How Buchan’s Scottish Identity is Key to the Modern Spy Genre Christine Watt High Point University graduate, Christine Watt (’20), was an English literature and theatre performance double major. She began researching the topic of Scottish identity and its influence within literature for the "Literary Scotland" study abroad course she took. For Christine, the most fulfilling part of doing undergraduate research has been taking a seed of an idea from class and expanding on it for over a year. She feels like she has gained a greater appreciation for the depth and breadth of the topic. She also finds it exciting to discover new facets of research to explore every time she refines her manuscript.

Whether presenting at conferences or submitting for publication, her work has taken on a life that she never anticipated. Christine’s mentor, Dr. Carlson, has been absolutely invaluable to her learning while here at HPU. In a large way, he has influenced her courses of study and inspired her plans after graduation. She wishes to thank him for his guidance and support over the past three years. Christine plans to work in theatre as a dramaturg and actor, and she hopes to move to Chicago to pursue a job in the field.

Abstract “Between Kipling and Fleming stands John Buchan, the father of the modern spy thriller,” Christopher Hitchens claims in a 2004 article from The Atlantic. This paper explores how Richard Hannay, Buchan’s famous gentleman hero, sets the stage for the stories of characters like James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Ethan Hunt. While many have drawn comparisons between Hannay and his modern compatriots in stories of breakneck pace, exciting twists, and dangerous escapades, there is also a deeper, more subtle connection. An examination of The Thirty-Nine Steps and John Buchan’s personal life highlights the subtle introduction of Scottish duality and duplicity into the world of espionage. Indeed, today’s great tropes of the spy genre—deceit and disguises—can be traced back to Buchan and his novels. Hannay displays all the swagger of the classic spy hero but is also caught in a world of multiple identities, a bored Scotsman forced to live as an Englishman. As events spiral out of control, the duplicity of his life expands, and he dons mask after mask while fleeing from antagonists on both sides of the law. Duality is not just limited to Buchan’s novel, however. Although raised in Fife, Buchan spent much of his life traveling and working all around the globe, grappling with an identity thoroughly divided.

Through this division, we find in both Buchan and Hannay (and consequently, Bond and his contemporaries) an identity that is thoroughly Scottish.

Keywords: john buchan, literature, scottish literature

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“B

etween Kipling and Fleming stands John Buchan, the father of the modern spy thriller,” Christopher Hitchens writes in a 2004 article from The Atlantic. This claim might raise some eyebrows, as Buchan is not frequently recognized in literary circles or by fans of the spy thriller genre. Still, it is well-founded. Buchan’s page-turning thrillers, beginning with The Thirty-Nine Steps in 1915, paved the way for one of the most commercially successful genres today. In an introductory note to the 2010 edition, editor Alan Weissman explains, “[Buchan] found the exact recipe for an emerging genre and with it created a perfect instance of the type. Such very different novelists of espionage, suspense, and international intrigue as Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming, and John Le Carré all owe a debt to this book” (iii). Drawing on the adventure and mystery genres, Buchan’s work started a wave. Today, some literary scholars credit Buchan for the fast pacing associated with espionage, the suspense that comes with surprising twists, the threat of both domestic and international authorities, and the various escapades spies always encounter along the way. His contribution goes beyond mere form, however; Buchan was Scottish, and it is his very Scottishness, though in ways both subtle and easily overlooked, that informs the modern spy thriller to this day.

To summarize with a generalization, the whole of Scottish identity is to use the word “duality.” The Scottish people are marked by a unique tension between multiple aspects of themselves, pushing and pulling against each other. This duality is seen within the landscape of Highland and Lowland, between the geography of Edinburgh’s Old Town and New Town. It is marked in a peculiar attitude towards nationalism and unification, British and Scottish, modern and historic, and any number of additional things. G. Gregory Smith coined the term “Caledonian antisyzygy” to describe this duality in the context of literature, and today, it is used quite broadly to mean Scottish duality as a whole. For many Scots, duality is so ingrained as to not be worth mentioning. Yet John Buchan considered antisyzygy a great part of his identity, and it informed nearly every aspect of his life.

In his dedication to The Thirty-Nine Steps, Buchan writes that “the wildest fictions are so much less improbable than the facts” (v). With a biography as exciting as his novels, this rings true: Buchan lived a life of wild and varied interests. At times a lawyer, a politician, a scholar, and a soldier, he lived in Scotland, England, Africa, and Canada. He married three times, wrote propaganda for the British military, and was named 1st Baron of Tweedsmuir and Governor General of Canada. Throughout all of his many accomplishments, he never stopped writing and is said to have penned over one hundred creative works. His grandson, James Buchan, describes him as having overcome the division of labor so prevalent in the age of economic expediency, saying, “He fascinated his age and its successors. How was it that a Scotsman…could nevertheless engross all the male professions of a prosperous and stagnant society, as well as most of its games?” (18). For some, his multiple hats were considered a power grab; for others, random flights of fancy. But for Buchan, they might simply have been an extension of personal duality.

The idea of Buchan’s duality was reaffirmed by James, who wrote that he was “a wanderer between two worlds, romantic and puritan, scholar and gypsy, Cromwell and Montrose, contemplative and man of action” (18). Like Walter Scott before him, Buchan fought for acceptance among the English elite, desiring a level of success and recognition not typically awarded to a lowly Scot. Yet such achievements came at a cost. To rise in prominence, he set his 101

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much-beloved Scottishness aside, studying at Oxford, traveling widely, and accepting an identity constantly at war with itself. Rather than allow this tension to cripple him, however, Buchan seemed happy to embrace it, and James asserts that it was “the spring of [Buchan’s] cheerful and energetic life” (18). Through Buchan, then, we see a side of antisyzygy frequently unmentioned by the larger literary community: its benefits to the working or social-climbing Scot.

Given the multiplicity of his interests, it is unsurprising that Buchan added writing into the mix, yet his ultimate goal as an author was never completely clear. Some have called Hannay a type of wish-fulfillment—the successful gentleman and wartime hero Buchan longed to be.

Historian David Cannadine explains that despite his talents and efforts, Buchan never earned the success he desired. “His life,” Cannadine asserts, “was a long anticlimax, as the heady expectations he had aroused in his golden youth, both in himself and in other people, were unfulfilled in his more pedestrian maturity” (87). In this we see another duality: apparent success versus unmet expectations. By writing a character of similar talents but greater success, Buchan could reclaim some of the glory he felt was due and assuage the pull of antisyzygy.

This interpretation is not immediately obvious, for Buchan never seemed overly enthralled with his stories. His dedication at the start of The Thirty-Nine Steps is notable for a Burnsian flair for the humble, as he writes: Dear Tommy: You and I have long cherished an affection for that elementary type of tale which Americans call the “dime novel,” and which we know as the “shocker” – the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible…During an illness last winter, I exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for myself. (v) Signing off “J.B.,” he practically begs the reader not to take anything too seriously or with much consideration for merit. He seems to avow that he is better off spending time on his more serious pursuits. Still, such thoughts did not stop him from churning out one shocker after another. They were hugely popular, and by the time Hitchcock had secured the rights to the first Hannay adventure, Buchan had amassed a global general readership. Through this popularity, Buchan crafted the landscape of the modern spy genre.

Within the spy genre, antisyzygy is continually at play. Buchan’s gentleman spy deals with antisyzygy throughout each of his adventures, and due to Buchan’s influence, is closely connected to the modern spy. The rest of this paper seeks to analyze a few of these connections through some of the most popular spies in media today. Before looking at James Bond, Ethan Hunt, and Jason Bourne, however, it is necessary to gain an understanding of the man who went before them: Richard Hannay.

Richard Hannay never meant to be a spy. After amassing a comfortable sum through his work in South Africa, his plan was rest and relaxation. “England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days” (1), he explains in the opening lines of The Thirty-Nine Steps. However, a knife delivered to his flat via the back of a body changes

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everything. At that moment, The Thirty-Nine Steps introduces Hannay to the world of espionage, and when it does, his gaze immediately turns to Scotland.

Born in Scotland but raised primarily in Africa, Hannay is from the first resistant to English life. As he explains it, “The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn’t get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as sodawater that had been standing in the sun” (1). In London, his planned respite seems terribly mundane, and he gladly welcomes “The Man Who Died’s” grotesque interruption. Compare this to his very first taste of Scotland: It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as clear as a cut amethyst. The air had the queer, rooty smell of bogs, but it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits. I actually felt light-hearted. I might have been a boy out for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirty-seven very much wanted by the police. (17) These words, optimistic and buoyant, reveal a Romantic view of the world, in which nature heals even the most profound boredom. This is not merely a Wordsworthian reflection, however.

Hannay’s connection is to Scotland, not nature, and the more time he spends in the land of his youth, the more whole he becomes.

Meanwhile, his life is being ripped apart. As he pursues the truth, he is pursued by both the police and the members of a secret criminal organization known only as the “Black Stone.” In unfamiliar land and without a friend in sight, he wears disguises and steals getaway cars.

Although Hannay considers himself to be “a very ordinary fellow” (67), he can handle intense pressure and adventure with quick thinking and a knack for survival. Even under the hawk-eyed gaze of the mastermind of Black Stone, he maintains his cool and escapes, inflicting damage on his enemies all the while. It is quite clear: Richard Hannay was born to be a spy, whether he realizes it or not. Within Hannay’s fraught identity lies the foundation of his antisyzygy, and unsurprisingly, it aligns clearly with the historical period Hannay was born into.

The Thirty-Nine Steps was published in 1915, a time when Scotland itself was undergoing major identity transformation. Before the Great War, Scotland knew and flourished in its place within the British Empire. World War I changed all of that, ushering in what Scottish historian Richard Finlay refers to as a “period of profound social, cultural, economic and political dislocation” (242). This period necessitated a reimagination of identity, and Scotland floundered in its own sort of amnesia, full of history but with no sense of who it really was. What followed was the Scottish Renaissance, but unease still remained. “The problems of national identity and national self-perception,” Finlay explains, “were compounded by the fact that the major dislocations experienced by Scottish society in the inter-war era were never satisfactorily resolved, and this added an air of uncertainty which did much to damage national selfconfidence” (243). “Damaged self-confidence” is hardly the description most would use for Scots, often stereotyped as braggadocious, swaggering fellows, but that just exacerbates such identity tension.

With this context, and through the dual lenses of John Buchan’s identity and Richard Hannay’s adventures, the whole world of modern espionage now comes into focus. The surface 103

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connections are obvious. We have Buchan and his love of snappy adventure shockers to thank for the quick-cutting action of the cinematic genre today, it is true. But deeper still is Caledonian antisyzygy, sharp and driving the action. Although this connection is subtle, it informs everything from the overall plot to small details of character, and its influence is clearly seen in modern spy adventures and Hannay’s famous successors: James Bond, Ethan Hunt, and Jason Bourne.

When it comes to discussions of modern espionage, one spy stands above them all. Mr. Bond, first introduced in 1953, has had an unprecedented global reach, with thirty-nine books and twenty-six movies to his name. Due to the sheer number of stories, if there is a spy trope alive, Bond has probably fulfilled it. Although there are Bond’s key characteristics – the suave womanizer, the quick one-liners – his identity, like Hannay’s, is multifarious. Each new actor brings a slight variant to the standard set by Sean Connery, and film critics often qualify a distinct difference in the character between “Classic Bond” (the films from 1963 to 2002) and “Modern Bond” (2006-present). This malleability is also prevalent within Bond’s fictional world. In one story arc, he suffers amnesia and lives as a Japanese fisherman for several months.

He never stays with one woman long. He frequently disguises himself, using pseudonyms and costumes. He even has two names, 007 and James Bond: agent, assassin, and anything else he needs to be.

James Bond is also Scottish. Although Sean Connery, with his easily identifiable brogue, is the only Scot to have played Bond, his portrayal was so iconic that Ian Fleming wrote a Scottish ancestry into the novels. Of course, most audiences still consider Bond to be the quintessential Englishman. He set the precedent for how modern British characters are portrayed, and it is never explicitly stated whether or not he connects to his Scottish roots at all. Yet such dissonance between audience perception and character background only further exemplifies his connection to Hannay. That readers recognize him as being fully English despite his Scottish heritage demonstrates precisely the fragile nature of Scottish identity; it also illustrates how both real and fictional Scots like John Buchan and James Bond have had to make their way as successful British citizens by mimicking English mannerisms and sometimes downplaying their Scottishness. Bond perfectly embodies a now recognizable icon, the gentleman (read: English) spy, in a manner similar to Buchan’s own attempts at identity transformation.

Hannay, too, attempts to become more like his English compatriots, recognizing his inferiority as a Scotsman of no impressive rank. However, where Bond glides smoothly along, Hannay struggles to be seen. “I was out of the game now,” Hannay admits near the end of the novel. “It was not likely that Cabinet Ministers and Admiralty Lords and Generals would admit me to their councils” (66). Although by this point Hannay has proven his competence in espionage many times over, he never believes he matches the Bond-like Englishmen around him.

The key difference is simply a level of self-assurance that Hannay has not yet achieved.

Despite his presumed Britishness, Bond grew up mostly abroad, and through his travels has become a skilled linguist, fluent in German, French, Italian, Russian, and with at least conversational Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Greek. These skills, together with the malleability of actor and identity, showcase Bond as truly a citizen of the world, regardless of audience perceptions. His multilingual, traveled character is a recognizable mirror of Buchan’s 104

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own life, but Hannay also has a global background. Deciding where to hide, he says, “I had half an idea at first to be a German tourist, for my father had German partners, and I had been brought up to speak the tongue pretty fluently” (13). Though born in Scotland, Hannay has connections to South Africa, Germany, and England. Regardless, Hannay returns to Scotland, while Bond, in the recent film, Skyfall, goes as far as to blow up his childhood home in the Scottish Highlands in favor of his work as a spy. Although Bond’s identity is fluid, he has clearly chosen his allegiances. Hannay, on the other hand, still struggles to determine who he is, and to which country he belongs.

In contrast, Ethan Hunt knows exactly who he is and who he works for. A highly trained agent of the Impossible Mission Force, his many skills include deception, quick thinking, combat, and stylish car chases. Still, he is often forced to question his decisions and his assumed identity. When he falls in love and marries Julia, he hides his work from her, afraid of the danger it might cause. After she is almost killed, he brings her into the fold but eventually realizes that his life with her and his life as a secret agent are incompatible. In a tender moment at the end of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, he and Julia exchange a look from across the harbor, and Hunt’s choice becomes clear: he has left his relationship behind, and with it, one half of his identity. Going forward, he is a member of the IMF only.

By leaving Julia, he abandons a duality of spy and husband, but antisyzygy is still present in his life, for Hunt also uses disguises. Indeed, no Mission Impossible adventure would be complete without at least one impressive disguise, and the IMF even uses advanced technology to change faces entirely. Though this may seem an obvious trope in spy movies, it highlights an important note: antisyzygy necessitates having multiple identities.

The very first thing Hannay does in order to escape from London is disguise himself. First, he becomes a milkman, then a Scotsman, then a Free Trader, and another time a roadman. His success comes from remembering some advice a friend once gave him, saying “the secret of playing a part was to think yourself into it. You could never keep it up…unless you could manage to convince yourself that you were it” (38). This is simple enough for Hannay, who plays each part as naturally as if it were his own. Such identity change is made easier by an already tenuous Scottish identity. The constant reimagining of oneself allows for a fluidity of personhood not found in those of strong, singular identity. This creates space for individual plurality, as is seen through famous Scottish characters like Jekyll and Hyde or Deacon Brodie, and even though Buchan’s own array of occupations and identities. By placing a digital reconstruction of someone else’s face on top of his own, Ethan Hunt is continuing the longstanding Scottish tradition of disguise and duality.

So far, Scottish duality has been viewed through the lens of concrete tensions warring for supremacy. In terms of the overall plot, however, American spy Jason Bourne shares one of the tightest, though most abstract, links to antisyzygy in modern spy movies: the loss of identity.

Bourne represents the most extreme version of identity loss, for unlike Bond and Hunt, who must choose who they are out of many options, Bourne has nothing to begin with. Part one of his trilogy has Bourne washing ashore with two bullet holes in his back and no recollection of who he is. Despite this amnesia, he discovers that he is highly skilled in linguistics and combat, as

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well as many other seemingly random and specific skills. In an innocuous café, he is on red alert, telling his acquaintance: I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not know who I am?

(Bourne Identity) This lack of identity unnerves Bourne more than anything else, a feeling shared by both Hannay and the Scottish people during the height of Buchan’s career.

Hannay first grapples with identity loss in the fashion of a true gentleman – he shrugs it off with wit, dry commentary, and a careful nonchalance. Throughout his adventures, he grows more self-assured, only to be reminded of his position when he comes face-to-face with a pureblooded Englishman. “The sight of him—so respectable and established and secure, the embodiment of law and government and all the conventions—took me aback and made me feel an interloper,” Hannay recounts (60). Bourne has a similar moment of crisis when he learns that he is the perpetrator, not the victim, of many crimes. Confronted with his past existence as a killing machine, he demands that “Jason Bourne is dead, you hear me?” Even then, he cannot fully escape his fluctuating identity, and three movies later he remains engulfed in government intrigue. Identity tension, a core part of the Scottish psyche, follows him with every step.

Through these three modern spies, we see the direct influence of identity struggles and Caledonian antisyzygy within the spy genre. James Bond must choose his identity and Ethan Hunt has to leave half of his behind, but for Jason Bourne, identity is so loose that is has to be artificially created altogether. For Buchan, Hannay, and many Scots, Bourne’s existential crisis of identity might be closest to the truth.

Of course, it cannot be said that Buchan speaks for all of Scotland, or that antisyzygy is the lifeblood of every single element of modern espionage. Nevertheless, the tension and flux of identity that is key to every good spy is also key to much of Scottish literature. Promulgated by Buchan, then, Scottish identity has found a comfortable home within the spy genre. Indeed, loss of identity in both concrete and abstract forms are just the tip of the iceberg, and many more pages could cite greater specifics of antisyzygy within each story. The spy thriller is a world of duality, darkness, and danger, and Scotland opens her arms to it.

Works Cited Bourne Identity. Directed by Doug Liman, performance by Matt Damon, Universal Pictures, 2002.

Buchan, James. “The First Hundred Years.” London Review of Books, vol. 17, no. 16, 1995, p.

18.

Buchan, John. The Thirty-Nine Steps. Dover, 2010.

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Cannadine, David. “John Buchan: A Life at the Margins.” The American Scholar, vol. 67, no. 3, 1998, pp. 85-95.

Finlay, Richard J. “National Identity in Crisis: Politicians, Intellectuals and the 'End of Scotland', 1920-1939.” History, vol. 79, no. 256, 1994, pp. 242-59.

Hitchens, Christopher. “Great Scot: Between Kipling and Fleming Stands John Buchan, the Father of the Modern Spy Thriller.” The Atlantic, March 2004, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/03/great-scot/302897/. Accessed 18 April 2019.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Directed by Brad Bird, performance by Tom Cruise, Paramount Pictures, 2011.

Skyfall. Directed by Sam Mendes, performance by Daniel Craig, Sony Pictures, 2012.

Smith, Gregory G. Scottish Literature: Character and Influence. London, Macmillan, 1919.

Weissman, Alan. Introduction. The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan, Dover, 2010, p. iii.

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A Rebel’s Lullaby: A Comparative History of Punk Rock Music from the 1970s vs the 2000s Revival Emily Yacuzzo High Point University graduate, Emily Yacuzzo (‘20), was a double major in political science and history. Beyond her academic pursuits, Emily is very interested in music—particularly the Punk Rock genre. Her research project ties these interests together in a unique way as she delves into the genre’s origins, admiring the selfconfidence of Punk Rock artists and their seemingly careless disregard of public opinion. She hopes that her historical research will connect the past with the present and speak to current societal issues. Emily credits her mentor Dr. Amanda Allen—along with other professors from the history department—for assisting her research by sharing thoughtful perspectives and providing the necessary guidance to create a paper that maintained formality while exploring a creative and unconventional subject matter that strayed from the typical history curriculum.

Abstract This research paper studies the history of punk rock music in America. It compares the original emergence of the genre with its more modern 2000s revival; it looks at the political and social climates surrounding each time period to determine if the genre has changed, and whether the revival carries the same meaning and intentions of the original politically-driven music. The intention is to learn about what political and cultural events spurned the genre’s popularity— popularity which will be examined through analysis of music charts and social and critical reception—and see the connection and trends between music and society. The paper also addresses the debate of whether the 2000s revival of punk rock music is true to the genre, if it is more “radio music” as it has been called and therefore not true to itself, or if it has simply changed over time and kept its original purpose. Primary sources for this paper include interviews of pioneering bands from both time periods, music charts for singles and albums, and critic reviews. Interviews show the musicians’ personal motivations and interpretation of punk rock music, charts show the reception of the music and whether the timing of its popularity coincides with major political events, and critic reviews comment on the political nature of the music itself.

Keywords: history, cultural history, music history, american history

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usic, from its very conception, has been a form of expression. This irrefutable fact holds true no matter the genre or artist. When people are unhappy and angry, they will, find a way to express their feelings. This is how punk rock was formed. When we hear the words “punk rock,” we may imagine black clothes, mohawks, and anti-everything messages. While these stereotypes are not entirely untrue, one has to wonder where they came from, and by extension, where are these people and trends now? Certainly, anti-establishment 108

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sentiments did not just fade away; this would never happen while corruption in society and government still exist. The 1970s saw the original arrival of punk rockers who went against the grain of everything popular, while 30 years later, common trends of political lyrics and rebellion could once again be heard in music. This paper examines the origin of the American punk rock movement in the 1970s and compares it to what can be called a revival of the movement in the early 2000s. By looking at the political and social climates of both time periods, as well as their commercial successes and influence in the music scene, this paper highlights why these differences exist and what they mean for the genre as a whole.

To analyze the history of a musical genre, personal experience with the music and familiarity with the genre’s forerunners and notable artists was important. A selection of artists and their albums from both time periods were considered for analysis. This by no means encompassed the entire genre, nor did the selected artists speak for, or represent, the entire history of the music. They were merely chosen as stand-out artists that had some level of impact on the musical scene,were influenced by society, and who could be used for comparing the two focus time periods. Outside accounts were taken into consideration, such as interviews with other musical artists who cited early and later punk bands as inspiration. The main body of research largely included primary sources, such as songs and lyrics, interviews with focus bands, reviews of albums, and media reception including music charts and awards. Secondary sources included other written histories of each time period, such as summaries of the political events in each era.

This paper focuses on two rough decades; the mid 1970s through the early 1980s and the early 2000s. The punk rock revival of the 90s was not included due to existing histories that have already been written about it. Additional reading on the 90s punk rock movement can be found in the book Smash!: Green Day, the Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX, and the 90s Punk Explosion by Ian Winwood, which encompasses the history of punk rock through interviews with prominent bands and other members of the punk community. In addition to the 90s, punk rock from the United Kingdom is not discussed at length as it does not grant any insight into the political and social climates of American youth. It can be noted, however, that UK punk rock bands such as The Sex Pistols and The Who helped the rise in popularity of punk bands in the US. The Britannica dictionary describes punk rock music as, “An aggressive form of rock music that coalesced into an international movement in 1975–80…Often politicized and full of vital energy beneath a sarcastic, hostile facade, punk spread as an ideology and an aesthetic approach, becoming an archetype of teen rebellion and alienation.” This fairly loose definition was a good starting point for defining the genre for academic research. To set a strict sweeping definition of “punk” is to discredit nearly everything it stands for. 57 The emergence of punk rock was not a planned movement or even a sweeping movement at all in either decade. Nearly every area of the movement developed independently but, eventually, each influenced one another; the success of certain bands was able to pave the way for others. Nothing particularly unified these artists save for the goal to truly be oneself and not to conform to society’s expectations. The unification

Al Burian, No Apocalypse: Punk, Politics, and the Great American Weirdness (Portland: Microcosm Publishing, 2019).

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of the genre is found within the spirit of the movement, rather than in a single identifiable catalyst.

It can safely be said that non-conformity is what created the genre in the first place. This is why placing a definition and boundaries may be a sensitive topic, as a strict definition could make the concept itself not punk just by that merit of conformity. A genre for misfits and outliers should not have rules and judgements that alienate those trying to get in. The music did not receive its name from members within its own community. The name “punk” was not an intentional self-naming, rather it was a label stuck onto the bands performing their raw and original music that did not quite fit in to any other genre. This made the start of the movement so unique. It was music full of misfits who did not care about labels, where everyone at a venue could look entirely unique from one another ranging in style from all leather-studs to drag. Then came the media’s first reporting of other bands. A veteran of the Bay Area punk movement commented, “…it was the first report of the Sex Pistols…this new thing called ‘punk rock.’ It was…the first place where people learned how to dress punk. The next day…everything changed.” 58 The aesthetic of punk rock was one method of unification, but neither this aesthetic nor a singular type of sound existed during the early roots of the punk rock movement.

It was truly the mindset of punk-rockers in the 1970s that provided the outline for defining punk as a genre. For teens and young adults who were disillusioned with the world they lived in, many began adopting a “question everything attitude” to challenge the norms and expectations they were surrounded by. These young adults developed a negative view of the world that they perceived to be on a “no future” decline that made them figure, “what’s the point?” and choose to live in the moment, acting recklessly and creating music that expressed these feelings. 59 On top of this, punks tended to lean into a Do-It-Yourself lifestyle, often piecing together their outfits and usually completely teaching themselves how to play instruments and record music.

This was very reflective of a unifying punk mindset: you should not rely on anyone else, and especially not figures of authority. There was also a sense of pride and individualism that came with creating things by oneself. But the most important thing that the DIY punk attitude signified was a rebellion against the way that the music industry was headed in the 1970s. Major labels stifled creativity in artists, so members of the punk scene would simply create their own labels where they could create the music that they wanted to. 60 The industry was making the process of creating music inaccessible for those who were not rich and who were not willing to sacrifice their creative liberties in order to gain fame, which was not by any means the goal of punk music creators in the first place. In short, punk was nonconformity from the popular way of doing things in a statement of individuality.

Despite the original punk movement being non-conformist by nature, some definition needed to be set in order to classify the music for analysis. It turns out, however, that this nonconformity helped to define the genre. The musical content needed to rebel against some norm or

Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day (London: Michael Joseph, 2010).

59 Ross Haenfler, Goths, Gamers, and Grrrls: Deviance and Youth Subcultures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

60 Ross Haenfler, Goths, Gamers, and Grrrls.

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societal expectation, whether it be politically focused or introspective. Issues in society needed to be discussed, as well as personal issues, while maintaining a rebellious nature. As its name suggests, punk rock is a subgenre of the rock genre. This distinction set boundaries for instrumentation, as it used a basic band structure of electric guitars, drums, and vocals, though some exceptions could be made where other instruments were experimented with. Perhaps it can be said that other genres had elements of what could be called punk, but could not be considered punk rock music specifically, such as some branches of hip-hop and protest music. If this was set as a working definition of punk rock music, an analysis could be conducted of bands that aligned more easily with each other and could safely be considered the same genre. This could potentially cause a conflict, however, when the 2000s punk movement is looked at later, as the genre twists into more of what is now known as “pop-punk,” with other subsets such as hardcore, straight-edge, and “emo.” The topic of branching off the genre was also addressed.

With the knowledge that “punk rock” was defined as rebellious and opposed to the mainstream music of its time, it should be noted what exactly these musicians were rebelling against. The late 1970s were a hotspot for the genres of disco, glam-rock, and pop. These genres were what was popular with the American public at the time, with people flocking to concerts and club venues for music of these types. The artists at the forefront of punk rock rejected this wave of music on the notion that it was becoming soulless and only for monetary gain. 61 Punk rock emerged as a counter-culture to those popular trends, and the artists in the genre were intentionally creating music that was more personal than the previous large stadium-rock that came before.

The origin of American punk rock was traced back to a multitude of bands that were popular in the east coast—The Ramones—and the west coast—The Dead Kennedys. The Ramones are often accredited as the most influential and successful American punk band of the 1970s, and while this accreditation is slightly overexaggerated, they did have a significant impact on the growth of the punk scene. This band hailed from New York and had fairly simple roots. They were a group of middle-class school friends who wanted to start a band together. Music was an emotional outlet to express the discontentment they had with the New York society in which they lived. The Ramones were not the only spark which incited punk rock in general, as it did form independently, but they were the band that popularized it in places where it hadn’t already taken root naturally. “Wherever they went, punk sprouted, and that included LA…everywhere they go, they’re planting seeds and new bands are popping up.” 62 The debut self-titled album from The Ramones was punk rock at its inception and was the start of punk rock getting close to mainstream. Blitzkrieg Bop was arguably the band’s most widely popular song as its success transcended decades and generations, with lyrics referring to teenagers “losin’ their minds” and causing trouble. This song was a good example of one written to incite the reaction that its lyrics talked about—people at the show were meant to “go crazy,” so to speak, when it was played; it is very simple, straightforward, and blunt. 63 This song is still used in the present day as a common song for bands new and old to cover, as its high energy Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, Gimme Something Better.

Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, Gimme Something Better.

63 The Ramones, The Ramones, Sire Records, 1976, cassette tape.

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rhythm can appeal to anyone at any show. For example, in Las Vegas, there is a cover band who plays on Fremont Street for the audience of tourists, and Blitzkrieg Bop is nearly always one of the songs on their setlist. 64 It has also been used in a number of movies and other media over the decades since its initial release, such as National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) and Spider-Man: Homecoming (2019). Despite the long-term popularity of the song and its positive critical reception, it cannot be found on any popular music charts—like the Billboard Music charts— from its release in 1976 to present day.

Also occurring in the New York Area in the mid-1970s, a young woman named Patti Smith was getting her start in the punk rock music scene as well. Equipped with an artistic upbringing from her parents, she formed the Patti Smith Group in 1974 and began writing music that documented her experience as an impoverished, low-class factory worker. She was affectionately nicknamed “the punk laureate” for her unique blend of the raw punk rock sound and spokenword vocals. The group was only active for five years in the 1970s, but their music provided a unique spin on the rock genre. The band’s most popular and critically well-received album, Easter, landed in the fifteenth spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1978. 65 Most notably, however, was that Patti Smith—a strong female musician—was never seen as a detriment or an obstacle to the band’s success. 66 While the Patti Smith group was not hindered by gender roles, the punk scene was not always inclusive nor safe for women. Punk began to be an increasingly male-dominated scene, and the space was not immune to toxic ideas of masculinity and femininity. Girls who were involved in punk rock began creating their own spaces where they could make music and draw attention to issues that were unique to women, such as slut-shaming and body-shaming. This culture began to be known as the Riot Grrrl subset of punk rock, which came about through the blending of punk and feminism. The Riot Grrrl scene raised awareness of sexism within the scene and used the phrase “personal is political” to further their resistance. 67 Riot Grrrls served as an example of how punk rock was extremely political, as politics affected every aspect of everyday life. Riot Grrrls explored ideas of gender expression and challenged mainstream ideas of femininity, once again showing the punk spirit of non-conformity. This movement gave girls a platform to express their anger at the world from a uniquely female perspective. Intersectionality formed subgroups within cultural groups due to differing needs and issues, and women within the punk rock scene were no exception.

At the same time that the Ramones and Patti Smith were first picking up their instruments in the northeastern United States, on the west coast, the Bay Area was experiencing a new phenomenon at local music venues, with bands who hardly knew how to work their instruments playing loud, raw, aggressive music that was almost offensive to the audience’s ears. Prior to the Ramones, these bands—including the Dead Kennedys and Bad Religion—were already making music and resisting authority with their bold displays of youthful angst, but the Ramones and

The Fremont Street Experience Website, live streams from Alter Ego. Patti Smith Group, Easter, Arista Records, 1978, cassette tape.

66 Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (New York: Grove Press, 1996).

67 Ross Haenfler, Goths, Gamers, and Grrrls.

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their success provided an example of the heights they could reach. Members of local Bay Area bands who hadn’t thought about the idea of widespread success began to aim higher, thinking, “These guys are from New York, and they’re doing it, too.” 68 Small venues that started out with audiences of twenty people, turned into packed scenes as local punk bands rose in popularity.

After the Ramones were able to take their music on tour around the country, the path was set for newcomers on the scene to follow their lead. The Patti Smith Group partly owed their touring success to the trailblazing Ramones.

As time passed, the genre began to establish itself further. Punk rock began to branch into other genres, such as hardcore and straight edge. Bands came about who started to rebel against the norms established in the punk community, such as Minor Threat, who helped to introduce the straight-edge movement in the 1980s. Given punk rock’s dangerous relationship with drugs and alcohol, being straight-edge was a bold move. In the song Straight Edge, the band called out other members of the scene, “I'm a person just like you | but I’ve got better things to do | than sit around and fuck my head | hang out with living dead |” 69 This post-punk hardcore music saw popularity in the D.C. area, even coining a unique name as “D.C. punk.” It would not be a stretch to claim that the straight-edge movement was punk rock by simply going against the grain of what was popular in the genre itself. One of the popular trends the group rebelled against was the prevalent drug culture of the time. These bands admired the “question everything” rebellious mindset but did not agree with the cynicism that led to heavy drinking and drug use. 70 It was enough for them to vent their problems and gripes with the world while still valuing a healthy lifestyle.

One thing that did not change with the growth was the inclusivity of the scene. Social hierarchy was strongly opposed in punk scenes, and the only limitation to whether someone could be a part of the scene was whether or not they were a “poser.” This inclusivity was a strong and rebellious statement and in and of itself, given the tense social climate of the 1970s. This decade saw movements for equal rights such as women’s marches and the early roots of the LGBT+ movement which the punk rock scene was never afraid to embrace. The Equal Rights Amendment was a heated topic of debate and controversy due to its failure to get ratified in 1972, meaning that women’s rights and the open support of them was a big deal in the public eye. Feminism could be seen in Riot Grrrls, who formed the path for women to be more prominent in punk rock and to voice their opinions.

That is not to say, however, that every person at a punk rock show was a progressive liberal, as a group called “skin heads” were sometimes in attendance. “Skin heads” were generally talked about with a disdainful tone by veterans of the scene and it was not uncommon for fights to break out due to their differing viewpoints. 71 But, being punk meant that outcasts were welcome, as this was a genre created by and for outcasts of society. Bands normalized outlandish acts on stage, such as dressing in drag or other choice of costume. In fact, theatrics became a selling

Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, Gimme Something Better.

Minor Threat, Minor Threat Compilation Album, Dischord Records, 1984, vinyl record.

70 Ross Haenfler, Goths, Gamers, and Grrrls.

71 Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, Gimme Something Better.

68 69

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point for some bands in the 1970s, drawing bigger crowds who would show up just to see the spectacle in person. 72 Young adults and teens were restless and in desperate need of an outlet. At punk rock shows, people could act however they wanted, which was not always for the best. One of the members of NOFX remembers fights easily breaking out at shows in the LA area, and people getting so badly injured that they had to be rushed to the hospital. 73 Punk rock shows, as opposed to major stadium concerts, were places for artists to create chaos which reflected how they viewed the world. Audiences at these shows faced no physical barriers around the stage, furthering the idea that the bands should not be “put on a pedestal,” and that anyone had the potential to be the people on stage. The chaos at shows was the place to vent one’s anger. Being idle was a dangerous thing, and the tension in the outcast teens was growing until they decided to pick up instruments and find like-minded people to vent their frustrations with. There was less of a direct political influence or event, and more of a general disenchantment with life and society.

Punk rock saw most of its popularity with the American working class because it was simply more relatable to this audience. Music that was personal and didn’t shy away from issues such as equal rights, corruption in government, and workers’ rights, was appealing to a generation that was experiencing the side effects of all of these things.

The punk rock scene at the height of its popularity lasted from about 1975 to 1985. After that, the music began to dissipate into other similar genres, such as hardcore music. Some members of the punk rock scene commented that this was likely for the best, as “punk rock music deserved to die” 74 if it was going to become a cycle of new musicians simply imitating old ones, rather than bringing something new to the scene.

Although the music of the Ramones was met with very positive critical reviews, with Rolling Stone praising it for bringing back an intensity that rock music had not seen in many years, 75 very early punk songs did not see any radio play or extreme commercial success, with the exception of Blitzkrieg Bop. The album was not a commercial success, only reaching rank 111 on the Billboard Top 200 albums for 1976. Even Blitzkrieg Bop did not chart in the year of its release but was retroactively appreciated for its role in the genre. It ranked 92 on The Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. 76 It was a very self-contained cult movement for its 1970s run but the influence on the genre, and on rock music as a whole, spoke volumes more than the commercial success. Fame was never the goal, so not achieving it during their run in the music industry was not viewed as a failure.

While the Patti Smith Group’s Easter album saw great success, that success is not necessarily a signal of how popular punk rock was at the time. The band’s previous albums only saw moderate success, even less than that of the Ramones. Most mainstream success could be credited to the driving single, Because the Night, written by Bruce Springsteen, an preJack Boulware and Silke Tudor, Gimme Something Better.

Ian Winwood, Smash!: Green Day, the Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX, and the 90s Punk Explosion (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2018).

74 Burian, Al, No Apocalypse: Punk, Politics, and the Great American Weirdness.

75 Paul Nelson. "Album Reviews: Ramones: Ramones," Rolling Stone. July 1976.

76 The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The Rolling Stone. 2004.

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established and highly successful artist. He gave the song to Patti Smith to record and was credited as a co-writer on all publications of the song. 77 The popularity of the album may have skewed the appearance of the popularity of the genre as a whole. The album was not popular for its punk rock nature; rather, it was popular for a single song that was not even completely written by the band. This serves as an example of what it may have taken for punk bands to break into the 1970s mainstream.

Early punk bands tended to have a very bare-bones structure—a raw electric guitar and vocals accompanied by a bass line and heavy drumming rhythm. The music was very rhythmic and loud, and songs were very short. The longest song on The Ramones was just over two minutes long, which was significantly shorter than any popular radio music at the time. Artists tended to not have any musical background, and it was apparent that they were not very familiar with their instruments. People showed up to shows not for musical prowess, but for the scene and the experience.

The 1970s punk movement sparked a cult following that saw waves of revival up through the 2000s. Bands such as Green Day, The Offspring, and NOFX cited early punk bands as their inspiration. Through the 90s, punk changed and gave way to new sub genres, including but not limited to hardcore, grunge, emo, and eventually what became known as “pop-punk” in the 2000s. It also became more mainstream; people started to question whether it was actually punk.

According to the opinions of some of the forerunners of punk rock, there was no set answer to the question, as there should not be a singular confined definition of what it meant to be punk rock, lest the genre become stuck in that cycle of new bands imitating the old ones. If a new musician were to follow punk rock as some type of trend, they would be doing exactly what it is that punk rock artists looked down upon: conforming. 78 The early 2000s were, according the music that emerged at the time, a nightmare for underprivileged youth due to the chaotic state of current affairs. The Bush administration was unpopular for initiating the war in Iraq and for legislation such as the Patriot Act. The 9/11 attack in 2001 gave people a new sense of fear and unrest and the handling of the situation by the government seemed to only add to the fires of anger at the state of the nation. The start of the Iraq war infuriated people and received major backlash from all sides as the years passed and the United States maintained its involvement in the war, while hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers on both sides lost their lives as a result. 79 Several bands in the punk scene either returned to making music or got started as a result of this turbulent time in the country. These bands include Green Day, My Chemical Romance, and Sum 41. This era represented a turning point for the United States, as no one went unaffected by the attacks and the war.

With the ever-changing genre of punk came the seemingly oxymoronic idea of pop-punk, as well as the term “emo.” This music carried the same sentiments as its predecessors, but with more upbeat rhythms, full length songs, and a lighter sound overall. More introspective lyrics were also common. Musical genres will always change over time. For instance, it would not be Hillary Hughes, “Patti Smith on 'Because the Night' at 40,” Billboard, June 2018.

Al Burian. No Apocalypse.

79 Bob Burnett. “2000-2009: America’s Lost Decade.” The Huffington Post. web. 2011.

77 78

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untrue to say that punk rock in the 1970s would not have come about without the classic and glam rock that came before it, albeit in a very rebellious way. Pop-punk bands such as Good Charlotte, The All-American Rejects, and All Time Low bear songs that share in the rebellious nature of punk rock and subverted what was expected of them by society. However, the main distinction comes in the overall sound of the music. Pop-punk, as it is typically defined, utilizes more melodic harmonies and structure seen in standard pop music, which is what set it apart from the traditionally harsher sounding punk rock music. A general consensus on pop-punk by the artists involved, however, was that putting labels on the music was ultimately pointless. In the punk rock spirit of being open to anyone, these bands are generally still respected in the music field as being adjacent to punk rock music.

For the lyrical content of early 2000s music, direct reference to political events and people was not uncommon. Lyrics in these songs had the intention of expressing how the artists felt about politics and their perspective on the world, while making a statement that they will not sit quietly and allow things to continue this way. Influenced by the turbulent political climate of 2000-2004, many songs can be cited for giving listeners insight into the public reaction to big events. For example, “everybody do the propaganda | and sing along to the age of paranoia” from American Idiot signals the fear that people lived with in the wake of 9/11 and the war. During these times it was easy for the government and media to influence the masses with propaganda.

Later, in Holiday, the band refers to “hollow lies” being told by authority figures, which further presses the idea of the US government withholding information. 80 In Against Me!’s Baby, I’m an Anarchist!, lead singer Laura Jane Grace not only named presidents Reagan and Bush directly, but the entire song was an aggressive commentary on how she believed that anarchy, rather than political activism, was the only way to make any change. “Cause baby, I’m an anarchist | you’re a spineless liberal |…| but when it came time to throw bricks | Through that Starbucks window | You left me all alone.” 81 A more extreme take on political activism in music, this album served as an example of how some punk artists didn’t just want reform, they wanted to tear the entire system down and start anew.

As for the musical structures and the musicians themselves, these bands were still not classically trained musicians, but had better access to resources to learn their instruments. Some bands even held auditions to find new band members with talent. Typical 2000s punk songs were fast, aggressive, but not usually violent, and did not tend to go on for excessively long amounts of time. Two to four minutes was the average length of a 2000s punk song, save for the outliers on American Idiot. For example, the shortest song on Against Me!’s album Reinventing Axl Rose was two minutes and eight seconds, while the longest song was four. 82 The commercial success of early 2000s punk rock was something that no one, not even the artists who created the music, expected. American Idiot’s release broke the boundaries of punk rock, and for the first time in years, the term “punk rock” was used again. The 2004 was met with high praise and the band made TV appearances from late night talk shows to Good Morning America. It also debuted at the top of the charts and stayed there for a few weeks, which is Green Day, American Idiot, Reprise Records, 2004, compact disc.

Against Me!, Reinventing Axl Rose, No Idea Records, 2002, compact disc.

82 Against Me!, Reinventing Axl Rose.

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something that no punk album of the 1970s was able to achieve. The album received recognition at the American Music Awards, MTV Music Awards, as well as winning Best Rock Album at the Grammys. 83 In conclusion, the 2000s punk rock movement appeared to share both similarities and differences with its 1970s roots. Important points of comparison include the overall sound and musical composition, approach to creating the music, ideologies, lyrical content, and critical and public reception. The punk of the 2000s followed the same instrumentation of electric guitar, drums, bass, and vocals, with occasional experimentation with other instruments and sounds. The artists of the 2000s tended to be more trained in their art, whether they were self-taught or professionally trained. This likely had to do with the fact that record labels, even small independent ones, looked for musical skill and talent in regard to choosing what bands to sign.

The songs were longer and matched the length of typical songs on the radio (around 3 minutes).

2000s punk songs, especially in the area of pop-punk, were more likely to follow a “traditional” set up of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge, with harmonies and common melodic structures.

This music was somewhat more palatable to the common public, as it bore similarities to what people were accustomed to hearing on the radio. Although, it is worth noting that radio play was the least of any 2000s punk band’s concerns, as no punk band that was respected in the field would intentionally change their music to follow pop melodic structures. The shift in writing style seemed to merely be a result of the influences brought about by musicians of the 1990s.

The difference in musical composition and sound quality was directly correlated not only with advances in music technology, but also with the willingness of popular bands to sign on to major record labels rather than to self-produce. In the 1970s, punk was almost entirely selfadvertised and self-published, which gave prevalence to the DIY idea that bands should be selfmade. This mostly stemmed from the lack of access to recording materials and the rejection from the mainstream record labels. That being said, not being DIY wasn’t inherently non-punk; bands had to survive somehow, and self-publishing was not feasible for success in the early 2000. As it had been established that rules should not be applied to punk rock, there were no rules binding new bands to only specific forms of publishing. The band Rise Against faced backlash for signing on to a major record label and leaving behind their independent label in 2004 for their album Siren Song of the Counter Culture. Their response to the backlash was one of defiant lack of concern. The band posted a blog statement regarding their decision: Dreamworks approached us and let us know that they like what we do and they want to put their resources behind it...Their faith in what we do and the fact that they cared about stuff we cared about was an eye-opener…. We spent the summer on Warped Tour with many friends of ours who have aligned their bands with major labels in the last year or so… It was then that we realized that some of these labels were not there to change anyone or steal bands from their fanbases, but to give them a chance to realize their visions more completely. 84

83 84

Ian Winwood. Smash From Rise Against’s blog, 2003

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The general message here was that as long as the record label provided support and creative liberty from the band, signing on with them was not a necessarily evil thing to do.

One thing that remained the same was the all-inclusive ideology that anyone who wanted to make music could and should be able to. There had never been a barrier preventing new artists from getting involved and creating music, and that idea holds true into the twenty-first century.

There had been no dramatic shift in where new punk bands spawn from; they do not all hail from the Los Angeles area where it is supposedly “easier” to get famous. However, the Bay Area of California remained a strong hotspot for new punk rock artists, as the 924 Gilman St venue remains a popular site. Any band, no matter how new to their instruments, had the opportunity to play at the club. Former owner Larry Livermore and Green Day lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong, a veteran of the venue, discussed in an interview how the club has been handed down to the new generation of punk rockers: These kids have taken over and are now running the place better than we ever did. Before then, people who ran Gilman were following the traditions…But these kids were doing twenty-first-century music using the mechanisms we had created and left for them. 85 Lyrical content between the 1970s and 2000s was very similar in terms of venting feelings of angst and unhappiness. Some critics described the content of all punk rock music, no matter the decade, as being “anti-everything.” One key difference that should be noted is the very directly political nature of some 2000s music, and how the newer artists dared to care about issues and make a difference. Inferred from interviews with figures from the early punk scene, the general attitude shared by many bands was that of uncaring and just wanting to have a good time. Shows were a form of escapism, and no one really cared about making an impact. Some older artists made the statement that, “it was cool to not care.” 86 This exact sentiment is rebelled against in 2000s music. One of the last songs off of American Idiot asks the audience the question, “does anyone care if nobody cares?” 87 By a landslide, 2000s punk and pop-punk saw more commercial success. For example, American Idiot went multi-platinum and placed on the charts (a common occurrence for this band). Although popularity was never the goal, fame seemed to find early 2000s artists much more easily than the retroactive fame experienced by punk artists of the 1970s. While some may claim that the popularity should be rejected and that bands are selling out, others believe that the truth behind the music is what matters the most. Music producer Rob Cavallo, who is a veteran in the punk scene, commented on this matter: It doesn’t matter what your music might have earned you. You live a real punk rock lifestyle and that’s who you are. You want your fans to know how you feel, so you’ve got to write about whatever it is you’re feeling. As long as it’s real and its true, I think people are gonna respect it. 88 Ian Winwood. Smash!

Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, Gimme Something Better.

87 Ian Winwood. Smash!

88 Ian Winwood. Smash!

85 86

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Reviews from either decade praised the music for being bold by going against the grain; however, in the 2000s, people more widely accepted this. This was tied to the political climate, as younger generations had legitimate reasons to be angry at the state of the world. 9/11 and the Iraq war affected everyone in America, as opposed to teenaged angst only afflicting small groups in the 1970s. It is also possible that increased recording quality and a less harsh and violent overall sound helped the music receive positive feedback. While it can be accused of watering down the content, a more palatable sound for audiences not accustomed to hardcore music was certainly a contributor to its success.

Additionally, the punk boom of the 1990s broke into the mainstream, so the music of the 2000s did not have as much work to do as audiences were generally more used to it. The political content was what shocked audiences, especially in an era in which media was censored for fear of alarming the post-9/11 world. Many artists changed titles of songs and toned down their lyrical content in the name of being politically sensitive, while punk rock artists such as Green Day and Rise Against chose to do the opposite in the years following, and to not restrain themselves from making a statement about the attacks and the war in Iraq, also known as the war on terror. 89 It may have seemed that the forerunners of 2000s punk rock were undeniably true to their genre; however, this was not the common consensus. American Idiot, and Green Day as a band, was accused of not being true punk rock music due to its explosive success in the mainstream.

Bands that wanted to survive weren’t inherently seeking fame, but they were not likely to turn it down if it came their way. Musical artists needed support in order to survive and wanted their message to be heard by wider audiences, so the idea of “selling out” meant nothing until a band stopped being true to themselves in the name of making money or gaining popularity. “Popular music” simply represented the popular feelings of the public. If politically charged music was “in,” then that could be a reflection of widespread anger at society. A band could only be considered a sell-out if they were riding the wave of popularity, not if they were the one that started it in the first place.

Punk music from its conception had always been about doing the unexpected and subverting society’s expectations. Punk bands and their music could be called anti-government, anticapitalism, anti-corporations, anti-homophobic, anti-anything. If it was popular and mainstream, there was a high probability that a punk band had made a song about why it is bad at some point in time. In a time when glam rock bands were selling out stadium shows and becoming even further disconnected with their audiences, a genre built upon small venues with intimate crowds and lyrics full of relatable angst and hatred for everything popular, was born.

Though no punk rock bands in America in the 1970s reached levels of commercial success, this was not the point nor the goal of the music, and the impact of punk rock bands such as the Ramones would be felt for generations of artists to come. These influences can be seen in the early 2000s revival of the punk rock movement, which is ironically where it became even more mainstream. In the era of heightened political turmoil blamed on the Bush administration and the Iraq war, the general American public was more ready for the politically charged lyrics and 89

Reebee Garofolo. Pop Goes to War.

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aggressive sentiments than ever before, which is reflected in the commercial success seen by bands such as Green Day. The punk rock genre branched out into new denominations of music, and it is still going strong. As of 2020, almost every band from the early 2000s continues to make music and branch out. The current administration and highly charged political climate has led to many artists from all genres creating music with punk elements, further expanding the scope of influence for punk rock. It would not be incorrect to assume that punk music will always be around, as it will always be at the center of the intersection between politics and music.

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