Declaration Of Independence

How does one tell the story of America? Is the story based on facts from the American Revolution? Does he or she consider the immigration papers flooding Elis Island? Perhaps, one finds comfort, excitement, and truth in the films depicting the second World War. Moreover, the American story can find its home in the eccentric music, protest literature, and magnificent plays of the rebellious late twentieth century. Throughout the history of American Literature, authors have strived to share their stories with the general public on a vast number of medias with each platform targeting a different part of the American identity. However, storytelling cannot be limited to how the author relays their message to their readers; the interactive storytelling

As the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson commenced the creation of the American literary voice purely out the soil upon which this country was founded. Although the Declaration of Independence relies on political diction and a list of grievances, Jefferson dynamically establishes that America is its own entity, apart from Britain, with its own desires and its own voice. However, after sixty-five years of this radical separation, Americans still failed to truly form their own culture, for example, in literature and social norms. In this moment in time, Ralph Waldo Emerson emerges to urge the American people to look forward to their new country’s future, which is especially evident in his essay, “Self-Reliance.” Emerson contrasts the dreary Americans to a rose, saying “These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones… But man postpones or remembers…heedless of the riches that surround him” (Emmerson 11). Unlike humans, roses develop with an individual and intrinsic knowledge, constantly living in the present and acting in response to the conditions of that time. Nature knows no history and only seeks to move forward, and Emerson argues that

Z. Packer demonstrates this very notion established by Jefferson and Whitman: the power of giving a voice to the voiceless and highlighting the importance of storytelling as a sign of respect and wisdom. Throughout the entire story, causeless rebellion tempts two girls of the primary, and all African American, Brownie troop as they seek to fight the girls of Troop 909, a group of white girls with various disabilities, unbeknownst to the main character, Laurel, and her troop. At the end of the story, the girls of Laurel’s troop inaccurately accuse a member of Troop 909 of saying a racial slur, as the leader of 909 says, “That’s impossible. She doesn’t speak. She can, but she doesn’t” (Packer 23). As Packer tells the story of the Brownies, she also tells helps the character tell her story of her disability and her actions. Though the girl is able to speak, there exists something that blocks the full fruition of her voice, which parallels Laurel’s character throughout the entire story. When Laurel and her troop recline in the cramped seats of the school bus, the rowdy girls begin talking about why they and the troop of disabled girls cohabited the same camps, and they all understand that their race and health statuses create an even field for discrimination and alienation. Here, Laurel begins to tell a story about her father and the time he asked a Mennonite man to paint his house because “’it was the only time he’d have a white man on his knees