Chicken George's Role In Achieving The American Dream

Charles Baudelaire, a literary author during Romanticism once stated this: "To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts"(Baudelaire). Chicken George was born into slavery in 1806 in Caswell North Carolina to Kizzy and Massa Tom Lea. He was conceived after his mother Kizzy was repeatedly raped by Tom Lea. In his youth he becomes a game cocker. He married Matilda and together they had six children. George starts to save up his earnings from winning in the cock fights. But one day he looses a fight and therefore loosed all his Massa's money. This causes him to be sent to England for twenty years. He returns and finds his family sold, though he is able to obtain his

George lived during the Romantic Era. In this era the role of the individual in achieving the American Dream was interaction with nature. In America: there was a huge population increase which caused people to move west, slavery was officially banned in the north, the Underground Railroad was established and used, and factories were inroduced. In this era major inventions were invented such as The Transcontinental Railroad, Cotton Gin, Telegraph, and Sewing Machine. The beliefs and values were: the Emphasis on the important of the individual, Belief in the supernatural , Close association with nature, Focus turns away from God and focuses on humanism, and they Valued art. The literary characteristics were: Feelings, Emotions, and Imagination take priority over logic and facts, Heroic individualism; emphasis on the outsider, Nostalgia for the past, Common man as a hero, Incorporated abstract setting and symbolism, The gothic: intense emotions and complex psychology, and Elevated language. Chicken George embodied the Romanic Era because of his close association with nature, emphasis on the importance of the individual, and common man as