Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T10:25:08.039Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Mary Antin: Progressive Optimism against The Odds

from Ethnic Modernism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Sacvan Bercovitch
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

In a short sketch called “First Aid to the Alien” and published in Outlook in 1912, Mary Antin describes a trolley-car encounter between an American botanist and the little Italian immigrant boy Tomaso Verticelli. Upset by the mess that Italian children have made in the car, and by the helplessness of the conductor who cannot get through to the immigrants because they do not understand a word he is saying, the botanist sternly lectures the little boy, “No – rubbish – on – the – floor,” adding, “That’s not American.” The Italian boy and his sister seem to understand, and, “like a pair of brown monkeys,” they clean the car thoroughly. Later, the boy’s teacher discovers that “Thomas” Verticelli strangely believes that the Star-Spangled Banner stands for “America! No rubbish on the floor!

This streetcar encounter resembles that of Stein’s “Gentle Lena” more than that of the Southern colored woman in the Independent, for it seems to show an act of kindness, of “first aid,” among strangers on an electric car. Yet Antin’s light and vaguely humorous vignette also represents the issue of “Americanization” as a problem of cleanliness, implies that it was foreign-tongued immigrants who made America dirty, and suggests that the problem could be resolved by education, and especially by teaching the English language and American patriotism. The story literally shows “dirty foreigners” (as xenophobic propaganda would vilify immigrants) but then proceeds to persuade the reader that a good-hearted, scholarly Yankee father figure can get the right message across, even to “monkey”-like little aliens.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×