Enrollment in American Literary Traditions is my first comparative investigation of American literature. I have found the works of: Twain, Morrison, Melville, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Art Spiegelman compliment one another in a way to provide a shared understanding of both distinctive and unique American themes. The distinct genealogy of these authors grants an incredible diversity. The cross-section of American life, represented by this distinctive ingredient to the canon amplifies the peculiar communality of tradgedy that meets with the main characters of the books. We witness several characters in the aftermath of terribly traumatic events. As a result, grief stuns each character and ripples through many aspects of the book. This is especially evident in the writing style each author chooses to express these events. The variety of styles that our American authors have used to facilitate the true meaning of the book, that which he or she intended the reader to extract, will be the primary focus of this page and its external links.

Based on our readings and discussions this semester I feel it is valid to describe "tragedy" as a distinctive but not quite a unique American theme. The convergance of cross-cultural and multi-generational tragedy creates an urgency in many writters to protect the past and to present the feelings that accompany it with extreme detail. Although each author provides more than adequate proof that these events of the past impact the rest of their characters lives, Art Spiegelman may have best addressed this phenomenon through intricate descriptions of his father. Vladek's seemingly psychotic actions, in the present (for example, the obsessive and compulsive scene with the Special K ) make it obvious that his experience with the Holocaust determined his personality, particulary by molding his fears.

Perhaps the results of the tragedy are best described as something to large to be restrict from objective discussion. The inability of the author's character to disassociate these events from the time period they occured in to the present reflects a paralleling theme of impenetrable borders that must be dealt with. Sarah Toner's essay, "Boundaries in American Literature: Transcendable Divisions vs. Fixed Barriers" explicates several of these cultural and psychological borders. My belief in a universal medium of the narrative character who, by the author's hand facilitates the flow of information between author and reader provides a comprehensive contrast of the of the origins of the narrative conflict.