American Literature from 1870 Week One In this week’s reading, we saw how the world started to change due to the effects taking place from the Civil War. Many different authors gave us a look into their lives during this time of history. We learned the importance of the time period, looked into the lives of a few famous authors of that time, and read a few works that brought romanticism to life. The Civil War changed America and American Literature. America, before the war started, is so different from the America that appears after the war. By separating American Literature from the civil war and on you get to see a drastic change in the hearts and writings of the American people. The literature after the war shows the revolution of America …show more content…
Each of the writings have at least a hint of romanticism. Romanticism is basically defined as a way of writing that makes the readers go on an adventure through the plot and characters formed where multiple emotions felt inside the story. This makes the stories feel somewhat disconnected from real life because of how they don’t exactly reflect human nature. One of the characteristics of a good story is making the reader feel or think something that is hard to explain, just as romanticism can do. Stories like, “To a Common Prostitute”, “My Contraband”, and many of Emily Dickinson’s writings were written in this type of writing. Walt Whitman showed elements of romanticism in his poem “A Noiseless Patient Spider.” The line “And you O my soul where you stand, surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space” shows the embodiment of romanticism by creating a feeling the reader cannot fully understand but still feels connected to(p. 67). Emily Dickinson uses a lot of metaphors and similes that have a romanticized aspect to them. In her work “258” she says “When it comes, the Landscape listens, shadows, hold their breath”(p.73). Here you feel the quietness of the moment even though you understand that landscapes and shadows are animated forms only in this poem and not when it comes to reality. You can start to see the forms of romanticism in each writer at the time, but, throughout the readings, I feel Louisa May Alcott had the heaviest forms of romanticism. In her story “My Contraband”, Louisa writes more moving and intense suspense sense and draws outside the lines of society by portraying a black man as a character of passion and consequence. Alcott did an excellent job of conveying the struggles of a freed black man in the Civil War time. Her story brought me to tears over the young man’s troubles and pain. He went through many hard and unfair trials in his life and the