Calvin Weaver
Ms. Gladstone
LAL 3H
22 May 2018
The American Identity: Rebellion through the Last 241 Years Newton’s First Law stipulates that an object’s static motion will only be altered by an external force. From the American Revolution, through the Civil War, and up to the Civil Rights Movement, Americans have defined themselves and their surroundings by their force of rebellion against a static environment. Believing in their independence or in their basic human and Constitutional rights, the true American is defined in times of change begotten by vehement opposition against the status quo. The Founding Fathers characterized America’s birth by their rejection of the British. Ideologically and physically fighting …show more content…
Rebelling was central to many Americans and these beliefs became the core of the United States’ founding documents. Upon separating from the British empire, the colonists worried about recreating an overbearing government (one reminiscent of that of the British), leading to the creation of an ineffectual central government under the Articles of Confederation. This failed after the government was unable to quell a rebellion, resulting in a more powerful government under the Constitution. However, a significant portion of Americans still worried of a British-esque government, prompting the ratification of the Bill of Rights. These concreted their most essential rights that protected from an over-powerful government. Among others, the third amendment protected against unsolicited quartering of troops (US Const. amend. III). While such circumstance may be foreign at present, the quartering of troops was a British practice. A year before the colonists declared their independence, British Parliament passed the Quartering Act (“Parliament Passes the Quartering Act”). Although …show more content…
In Richard Wright’s semiautobiographical novel Black Boy, he fights against a powerful societal pressure to fall in line with the stereotypical Black stereotype: unintelligent and unquestioning. Being the exact opposite of this expectation, he constantly faces this opposition from both the white community and his own family. Encapsulating white expectations, Richard summarized that “the Southern White would rather have had negroes who stole, work for them than negroes who knew…the worth of their own humanity” (Wright). For Richard Wright, rebellion was who he was and what led him to never settle for how racist America was. Despite all of the opposition he faced, he fought back and ultimately became a successful writer and contributor to the Harlem Renaissance. Similarly, Langston Hughes represented the same rebellious spirit in “I, Too,” Reminiscent of Walt Whitman's “I Hear America Singing,” the narrative poem declares in the eyes of a house servant, “Tomorrow, / I’ll be at the table / when company comes. / Nobody’ll dare / say to me. / ‘Eat in the Kitchen’” (Hughes 8-13). Hughes represented the American Identity through his rejection of the white treatment of African Americans. Earlier than these two pieces, The Awakening exemplified the rebellious American spirit through the rejection of maternal expectations. Edna Pontellier lives