American literature overview and analysis

American Literature

A Blend of Tradition and Progressivism in Literature After 1945

From the very earliest poems written in the oral tradition to the newest contemporary novel, the relationship between parents and children has been a subject of great literature throughout history. In the modern era, however, the literature regarding this theme has given readers new insight. As the parent-child relationship changes as women claim their rights to life outside the home and men begin to wholeheartedly embrace their fatherly duties, literature has presented the relationships between parents as a mixture of progressiveness and tradition.

Nothing better captures this characterization than Grace Paley's "A Conversation with My Father." In this story, an ailing father pressures his daughter, a writer, to compose a tale in the traditional sense, something that she does to appease him but that she chafes under. At the end, the father and the daughter have an embittered conversation where the father insists that hope is not possible, while the daughter continues to argue that change can happen for the subject of her story, a neighbor who had become addicted to drugs in order to remain close to her son before being abandoned by him. Her father replies to this with the statement, Tragedy! You too. When will you look it in the face" (Paley)! Thus, the story is an example of a newfound hope colliding with a parent's traditional concept of hopelessness and tragedy.

In Sylvia Plath's "Child," however, the sentiment is quite the opposite. In this poem, the parent wants to give a new kind of hope to a child, a hope that the parent implies she did not feel herself. In the poem, the speaker says that she wishes to fill the child's eye with "color and ducks," and calls the child a "stalk without wrinkle" (Plath). These hopes that the parent has for her child, however, sharply contrast with the images of the "troublous / Wringing of hands, this dark / Ceiling without a star" (Plath). Thus, in this poem, the theme of tradition and progression is again emphasized. The speaker of the poem describes her troubling reality and her hope that she is able to give her child joy, instilling in their relationship a progressivism that she did not have in her life.

But the parent whose voice is heard in Clifton's "Wishes for Sons" does not wish a progressively hopeful parenting relationship on her sons. Instead, she wishes for them the pains of womanhood. Thus, Clifton shows how the parenting relationship is a mixture of traditions and progressivism in a different way. In this poem, Clifton comically says that she wishes her sons "one week early wearing a white skirt," although she adds a seriousness to her poem when she writes: "let them think they have accepted / arrogance in the universe, / then bring them to gynecologists / not unlike themselves" (Plath). When reading this last line, readers can understand that Clifton's wish for her sons is a sort of gift, a new kin of progressivism. Instead of raising them the way she was raised, she wants them to understand woman and women's plight in order to bring about a new era of equality.