3rd Annual Academic Symposium - David Cassady

This research investigates 19th century works of American Literature, exposing obscure commonalities between texts that document the nation’s complex racial narrative. Building from the definitive concepts of both Toni Morrison and Leslie Fiedler’s criticisms, this paper specifically examines Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and Mark Twain’s Puddn’head Wilson as unique works that similarly and covertly illuminate striking divides in American culture that exist to this day. Specifically, the paper focuses on themes and images of racial mixing, emphasizing how each novel identifies and predicts the lasting polarization of the black and white races in the wake of a past defined by slavery. Beneath the storied façade of nationalized freedom and equality, exists an irreparable conflict of race, class, and heritage, set in motion by a past steeped in hypocrisy. The focus of this research is to pinpoint these themes between the two novels; while both Poe and Twain’s works are profoundly significant in themselves, interpreting the authors’ themes through the uncommon lens of racial and societal disillusionment unlocks their common definition as works said to be truly “American.” The purpose of the research is to uncover inconvenient truths, hidden within some of America’s major literary works, that afflict the history of a nation built by slavery upon a foundation of freedom.