Blue Winds Dancing by author Tom Whitecloud, is narrated by the story’s unnamed main character. The young Indian man’s persona is brought to life through his own recollection and spoken words. We recognize the turmoil this character faces as he is away from “his people,” attending college in White man’s society. He doubts his place in either world, believes he must choose between them, and realizes finally that being an Indian is only one part of who he is. Through his thoughts, actions and words we gain understanding of this character’s attitudes of confusion and inferiority in his struggle to define his niche in society.
The character’s feelings of not belonging are represented in his own words, “We just don’t seem to fit in anywhere – certainly not among the whites, and not among the older people”(121). Later in the story, as he stands outside the lodge door, he questions if his friends and neighbors will remember him. “Am I Indian, or am I white?”(122). He does not know if living with the whites will cause his people to catego…
Twenty Years at Hull-House
Twenty Years at Hull-House
Two Works Cited Victoria Bissell Brown’s introduction to Twenty Years at Hull-House explains the life of Jane Addams and her commitment to insight social change to problems that existed during the turn of the 20th century. As a reaction to the hardships of a changing industrial society, Addams decided to establish a settlement house in the West side of Chicago to help individuals who had suffered from the cruelties of industrialization. Rejecting the philosophies that stemmed from the Gilded Age, such as social Darwinism and the belief that human affairs were determined by natural law, Addams was a progressive who wanted government to be more responsive to the people.
As a progressive, Jane Addams committed herself as a social servant to the community in an attempt to fulfill the promise of democracy to everyone rather than a small elite group. Addams’s dedication to communitarian purposes as opposed to individualist gains can be attributed to her upbringing and her remarkable respect for her father, John Huy Addams. Although John Addams was extremely wealthy, his neighbors appreciated and respected him because of the benefits he brought to their community, such as a reliable mill, a railroad, a bank, and an insurance company (5). Remembering the respect her father earned from their community, Jane Addams did not see her father “as an overbearing capitalist dictator from the Gilded Age but as a self-made steward from an era when leaders put the community’s interest alongside their own” (5). Jane Addams’s father did, in fact, influence her way of thinking, regarding the devotion to community service. She looked to her father for guidanc…
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…re as limited in their social effectiveness as people who knew only about daily survival” (21). In her view, a democratic society could only succeed if a balance was struck between education and real life experiences. Along with the balance of education and survival, Addams felt a democracy could only maintain its legitimacy if it required participation by all of its citizens. To me, I thought Jane Addams’s crusade in establishing Hull-House was an attempt to fulfill the Democratic promise to a wider audience.
Works Cited
Brown, Victoria Bissel, ed. Introduction. Twenty Years at Hull-House. 1910. By Jane Addams. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1999. 1-38.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” 1892. Ed. Dale M. Bauer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998.