David’s Outline

David Stevens

Professor Dimock

ENGL 012: Literary Cities

Short Paper Outline

 

Conformity and the Insufficiencies of the American Dream in The Jungle and The Age of Innocence

Intro:

At first glance, the societies presented to the reader in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence seem worlds apart: in one, the back-breaking, futile labors of the heaving masses of the Chicago stockyards are presented; in the other, the high society of “old New York,” in which no character has ever had to work. What is it that ties these stories of the American city together?

Answer:

  • Rigid conformity:
    • Jungle: machinery of industry, cogs, animals
    • Age of innocence: rigid expectations of high society, lack of true intellectual outlets
  • In both, conformity corrupts American Dream
    • Jungle: honest work gets you nowhere, cycle of poverty
      • Corruption, social Darwinism only ways out
    • Age of Innocence: society incomplete without intellectual pursuits
      • Tribal society, “hieroglyphic world”
      • Dilettante-ism valued over actual engagement

 

Thesis:

Society in both The Jungle and The Age of Innocence enforce rigid, suffocating conformity, ultimately leading to the corruption of the American Dream and the detriment of the characters therein.

Body:

  1. Conformity and rebellion in The Jungle
    1. Imagery of Durham meatpacking industry
      1. Man small and powerless, THE MACHINE rules
      2. “No one gets ahead by honest work”
  • selfishness of capitalism, social darwinism, the American Dream
  1. humans as animals
    1. conformity à dehumanization, efficiency
    2. cows and calves, men and children too
  2. Examples of escape from the “rat race”
    1. Hoboing in the countryside
    2. Criminal life with Jack Duane
    3. Working in the graft machine
  1. Conformity and rebellion in The Age of Innocence
    1. Society as “heaven”
      1. Keeping out unpleasantness for the sake of preserving the social balance
      2. Intellectual pursuits could add to lives of old New Yorkers, but too “bohemian” and risky
      3. Socially constructed innocence of May and others; “veil”
      4. Innocence or ignorance? Naïveté or true purity?
  1. Unintellectual society with intellectual façade
    1. Ned Winsett: “Pure man of letters, untimely born in an era in no need of letters.” –Ch. 14
    2. Irony: society in great need of letters
    3. Illusion of intellectualism: “Travel, horticulture, and the best fiction.” Represents small portion of society, read nothing controversial, shallow.
      1. Opera Scene!
  1. “dilettante, taking more pleasure in the anticipation of the thing than the thing itself
  1. Conformity: “it’s not the thing to ______.”
    1. Cog in machine, just like Jurgis
  2. Irony of New York today: cultural capital, defines city
  3. Rebellion(?) of Ned Winsett and/or Professor Sillerton

 

  1. Corruption of American Dream in both
    1. Jungle
      1. “I’ll work harder,” Jurgis’s perpetual manifesto destroyed by harsh reality.
      2. No place for traditions in American machinery – wedding
  • Relationship to Wharton – no value in working hard
  1. Age of Innocence
    1. Have all the trappings of the American Dream from a materialistic point: houses, Fifth Avenue, family
    2. Ultimate insufficiency of society, American Dream
      1. Lack of intellectualism leads to husk of civilization

 

This is a very rough outline with a lot of loose ends, and very possibly too many ideas for a succinct, focused short paper. I look forward to hearing the comments my classmates have.

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