Journal # 13

I believe Zitkala-Sa’s story of her life when thrown into the world of palefaces in some ways is and in some ways is not a good representation of the American dream.  The American dream to me is a person using his or her skills and hard work to become successful.  It’s about not discriminating against a person in any way, and giving everyone an equal opportunity to achieve happiness.

 

                In “The School Days of an Indian Girl” Zitkala-Sa is fortunate enough to receive the opportunities she needs to become successful.  While starting off she found school very tough and frightening, she was still able to capitalize on this opportunity and go on to college and become a successful orator.  The sentence “Then there was a mad uproar in the hall, where my classmates sang and shouted my name at the top of their lungs [. . .]” really represents how Zitkala-Sa went from an Indian girl that was looked down upon by everyone to someone that was celebrated by people because of her hard work.

                Even though it is wonderful that Zitkala-Sa was given the opportunity to receive an education, it came at a price that I believe does not represent the American dream.  While learning to read and write, her culture was slowly ripped away from her.  In the sentence “I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard thme gnaw off one of my thick braids”, Zitkala-Sa is being forced to cut her hair.  Hair in her Indian culture was such an important thing and really represented who that person was. By cutting it off, the “palefaces” were essentially taking away her identity.  In this way I don’t think Zitkala-Sa was living the American dream.  All people should be allowed to be themselves and shouldn’t be forced to “fit in” with everyone else just to receive the opportunities others are getting. 

Journal # 12

"It had not entered into our hearts to believe that these friends and allies from the United States, even with all their foreign affinities, would ever go so far as to absolutely overthrow our form of government, seize our nation by the throat, and pass it over to an alien power."

I really like this sentence because I believe Queen Liliuokalani very effectively sums up how any nation feels after they have been betrayed by an ally, or how a person might feel after being betrayed by someone they thought was a close friend.  It would be unexpected and your trust for that person would be forever broken.  Using words such as “hearts” instead of something like “thoughts” makes it seem like a more personal attack from the United States.  The phrase “seize our nation by the throat” depicts what the United States did as vicious.  And the end of the sentence, “pass it over to an alien power”, makes it feels as though what the United States did was very distant, without any concern for the well-being of the Hawaiian people.  These examples all serve to really make the reader believe that what the United States was incredibly corrupt and convince the reader to take up the side of Hawaii.