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This paper investigates the absurdity of stratified Southern society through the episodes of slavery in Pudd'nhead Wilson. The analysis of a slave-holding town, Dawson's Landing, raises an important question about the superficial peace and moral consciousness of the South. And Twain attacks town people's absurd attitude by exposing their ridiculous obstinacy to violent duel and aristocratic honor. Also, the accident of switched status dramatizes a falsehood of white ideology. That is, it can be a sharp criticism to the blind faith of white blood. Therefore, the major focus of this novel is about slavery of the South. Through the relationship of Tom and Roxy, Twain reveals the disintegration of family ties and de-humanization. And the revelation of Tom's identity and the treatment of Tom and Chambers drive the criticism of slavery to its peak. Chambers becomes a white victim and his destiny means the dark destiny of Dawson's Landing. At the same time, Wilson's success is also tragic because he helps to maintain the suppressive and distorted condition of slavery. This ending reflects Twain's pessimistic view that can no longer face dismal reality with humor.

Susan Choi's The Foreign Student is a love story between Chang, a Korean student, hence "the foreign student" from an American perspective, and Katherine, an American woman. Chang is an outcast from the Korean society with the background of his father's collaboration with the Japanese colonial rule in Korea and his own collaboration with the American rule of Korea in the so called postcolonial Korea. The status of being an outcast is also true of Katherine because she is branded as a fallen woman in her community with her maintenance of an illegitimate relationship with her father's friend and the love affair with the Asian man, Chang. This situation is an apt case of Homi Bhabha's notoin of "DissemiNaiton" which explains the disruptive operation of marginal groups to the official and dominant discourse of nationalism. The space and time in which Chang and Katherine share the mutual affection coming from their common sense of being outcasts in their community can be a third space in Bhabha's term. The third space's specific location to secure their love in the future is in the Gulf Coast and their house is in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. The love between a Korean outcast and an American outcast and the location of the love at the transnational border of the first world America and the third world Mexico suggest that the transnational third space constructed by Chang and Katherine is the stake to secure their minority identities which challenge the dominant nationalist discourses.

The aim of this article is to propose a reading of Toni Morrison's Love through Jacques Lacan's theory. Love centers on the loveless relationships among Bill Cosey's family members. Bill Cosey was an influential rarity due to his wealth and benevolence.Christine and Heed are in the Imaginary order. In their minds, they belong to each other; however after Heed's marriage to Bill Cosey, Christine and Heed's love for each other turns into hatred. They violently attack each other and desire Bill Cosey competitively as the Other. Just before Heed's death, Christine and Heed enter the Symbolic order whereby they are able to resume their dialogue, analyze the past, and realize their mutual love. Bill Cosey and May have mental disorders. Bill Cosey exhibits the symptom of perversion. He has inappropriate sexual relationships with many women especially with Celestial, a prostitute, who turns out to be his real lover. His marriage to 11-year-old Heed brings about many troubles. According to Lacan's theory, Bill Cosey's hatred towards his father caused his abnormal behaviors. May has the symptom of paranoia. Her Other is also Bill Cosey, who disappoints her. She behaves pathologically to defend her hotel against imaginary enemies. L tries to prevent the Cosey women from breaking up. Recognizing that Bill Cosey intends to bequeath his whole estate to Celestial, L murders Cosey and fakes his will. In this way, L is able to let the Cosey women continue to desire Bill Cosey as the Other and reconcile before their last moments. Morrison examines L's work as love that heals and renews rather than love that seeks perfection.

In the recent trend of literary studies, Multiculturalism has emerged as an important term. As Multiculturalism advocates minor cultures and literatures, it suggests that we rediscover the voice of ethnic writers and reconsider the canons from the de-centered point of view. Based on the latter point, this paper aims to examine Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) in its relation with the American history of immigration. The time from the late 19th century to the early 1920s is a very interesting period in the American history of immigration. During this time, millions of immigrants from Europe surged into the United States, as the country needed a large workforce after the territorial expansion and the industrial development. This wave of immigration caused various reactions of Americans: some people called nativist racially discriminated the immigrants, and others tried to receive the different cultures of the immigrants into 'the melting pot' of America.The Great Gatsby reflects the social reality as such. The significant parts of the novel in this regard are the descriptions of New York as a gallery of race, Gatsby's identity, Tom's racist assertions, and Gatsby's parties. For example, Gatsby's identity is rendered in terms of ethnic Other; Tom's racist assertions show the widespread nativism of the time; Gatsby' parties serve as the setting for cultural pluralism. From this viewpoint, the novel is profoundly concerned with ethnicity and cultural pluralism.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the musical narrative strategies in Toni Morrison's Beloved. Through the American history, it is natural that Afro-American music －negro spirituals, blues, jazz, etc.－has healed their spirit suffered from the slavery experience in the past. As they sang along or played music together, they tried to give comfort to their exhausted lives. The various techniques in music are often used in a way of narration so that the text shows the interrelative characteristics between music and text. Futhermore, it provides Beloved with the key strategic devices as not only the means of comforting and cheering the slaves but the means of rememorizing the past which Afro-Americans have disfavored to confront about. Facing up to reality is the most meaningful step for Afro-Americans to move forward. Afro-American music has the powerful function that claims Afro-Americans should rememorize and retell the story of the wretched destiny as the ex-slaves. After that, Afro-Americans will completely be released and recovered from the past. For the sake of the perfect freedom, Afro-Americans should continue to sing a song of the past, the present and the future.

"The Artificial Nigger" is a story of a pedagogical journey, during which a grandfather plans to teach his grandson the lesson of wisdom and humility. The lesson may be summed up as following: "You ain't as smart as you think you are." The two main characters whose name happens to be Head, reflecting their over-blown head, undergo most excruciating ordeals during the one-day excursion into the city. The purpose of this essay is to determine the outcome of the two Heads' pedagogical journey and to answer the question: what after all have the Heads learned at the end of the journey?My answer is that the pedagogical journey is a total failure. "A character's changing," which O'Connor considered the essential for "all good stories," does not happen here, even though it does not mean that the story is not a good one. All three encounters of the Heads with the Negro do not change their smug self-pride and superior attitude toward the other race. As Mr. Head willfully shuts his eye that has seen his own abject self reflected in the miserably chipped figure of the Artificial Nigger, he denies his common bond with the fallen and suffering humanity. As the journey comes to a full circle, the moon is "restored, to its full splendor." The homecoming of the two Heads is a return to the inviolate sanctuary of self-deception aided by the "dignifying" lunar magic. The story concludes with the younger Head as a voluntary prisoner in his grandfather's narcissistic and reclusive world and the elder Head at all-time high of his pride. The two are reunited with each other in ignorance of their true selves and "true depravity." The pedagogical journey taught them nothing.

It is an all time consensus among literary critics that the U.S.A. trilogy is John Dos Passos’ magnum opus. Indeed, the trilogy is a magnum opus not only for his atypical career as a professional novelist, but also for modernism itself as a whole. Especially with its textual architectonic, which employs a variety of the artistic styles and devices of modernism such as modernist painting, imagist poetry, and cinematography, U.S.A. is designed to portray American capitalism of the first three decades of 20th century. At the same time, the trilogy also articulates the author’s message of political radicalism. With all these multidimensional aspects of the U.S.A. trilogy, this paper aims to investigate the dialectical scheme of textual architectonic, by which the novel presents successfully the whole, yet detailed aspects of American capitalism. Therefore, this paper will explore the dialectical architectonics of U.S.A. broadly by using some dialectical procedures of such thinkers as Karl Marx and Louis Althusser. Though not a traditional dialectician, G. Deleuze also gives us helping hands in understanding the dialectical politics of U.S.A. with his theory of the modern cinematography, especially his analysis on the montage techniques. K. Marx clarifies the dialectic as a way of thinking in Grundrisse that dialectical thinking moves forward from the abstract to the concrete in order to understand a whole as “a rich totality of many determinations and relations.” In terms of Louis Althusser’s dialectical logic, the dialectical practice progresses from the abstract concept, and then it reaches the concrete realities of “Generality III” with the mediation of the scientific theoretical operations. The U.S.A. trilogy follows faithfully this procedure of dialectical practice in order to present a literary portrait of American capitalism. More interestingly, the four unique narrative modes of U.S.A. interact dynamically as narrative montages, thereby forming a dialectical quartet of montage in portraying the whole yet dynamic landscape of modern American capitalism. Thus G. Deleuze’s argument on the montage practice of modern cinematography can shed light on the dialectical scheme of the U.S.A. trilogy.

This paper examines how and why Owen Wister's The Virginian has been considered to mark the beginning of the modern Western. In order to examine the validity of its status as the prototype of the Western, the paper begins with a comparative reading of two film versions, focusing on what gets changed in the films so that I may gain a clue in understanding the importance of the ending of the text. Then I explore the split of the plot in the text, and its resolution in the ending. The ending, in which not only the marriage between the Virginian and Molly but also their move to the East are depicted, symbolizes a happy union between the West and the East. By dissolving a serious historical threat in a symbolic mode of resolution, Wister creates a kind of moral fantasy about the West as a symbolic topos in which the progressive ideology of American expansion is not hampered by the closing of the frontier. This aspect of wish-fulfillment played a big part in helping this novel enthroned in the status of the Ur-Western text.