Ew,

My time on this giant blue planet as the sole member of The Great Scientific Exploratory Alliance has been the single most trying experience of my existence. These human things that populate the area known as “America” may yet prove to be the end of me. Unlike us, they each want to have their own identity. They don’t understand how much better things are when everyone looks the same and acts in the same way and believes all of the same things.  There is no doubt in my mind that this is why the inhabitants of this planet do not get along as well as we do back home on M8. As I have learned from the class I am taking with these creatures, it also appears that this individuality thing has been around for some time.

Through their literature I have learned that these “Americans,” as they call themselves, are fiercely independent, and for some reason question and resist the trends of society at large. This frustrating mindset is evident in several short stories, poems, and other works of literature written from the late nineteenth through the mid twentieth centuries. The rejection of societal pressures is a common theme in many of the popular literary movements of these periods, from regionalism to beat. Although many of these works were written years apart, the same disturbing overtones are present.

For example, I just finished reading “A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett. This short story is written in the regionalist style of the late nineteenth century as evidenced by a setting which is “remote and inaccessible” and a storyline that contains an “emphasis on nature and the limitations it imposes” (Campbell). The protagonist in this story is a young girl named Sylvia whom the author describes as “afraid of folks” (Jewett). The entire story basically revolves around this little girl’s internal struggle over whether or not to reveal the location of a bird to a hunter. The language and behavior of those around her, such as her grandmother and the hunter, make it clear that she is expected to reveal the whereabouts of the bird should she be privy to its location. At one point “the grandmother and the sportsman stand in the door together and question her” (Jewett). In the end she decides to protect the heron and remains silent when pressed about her knowledge of the nesting site. Outrageous, isn’t it? Can you imagine someone on M8 perpetrating a similar act of disobedience, and for the sake of an animal?

In another regionalism-styled short story “The Revolt of a Mother” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, human women are once again shown as acting in an independent and unexpected manner. In this tale a wife, Sarah, is so angered by her husband’s refusal to build her a house and instead erecting a new barn, that she moves all of her family’s belongings into the freshly built structure immediately upon its completion. This act is clearly in defiance of the society’s norms. In fact, after she moved her family into the barn “there was a difference of opinion with regard to her. Some held her to be insane; some, of a lawless and rebellious spirit” (Freeman 559). And yet this character is the heroine of the story!

At least these humans recognize that the authors Jewett and Freeman were symbolically attacking societal norms. My classmate Kristin Overland observed that “both Sylvia in ‘The White Heron’ and Sarah in ‘The Revolt of a Mother’ redefined the role of women in American culture” (Overland, “Sarah”). I agree. Both of these writers were trying to change society so that women would be recognized as individuals rather than just being the wives and daughters of men. Another classmate of mine, Kelsey Henry, points out explicitly in the story “The Revolt of a Mother” that “When Sarah revolts against her husband, her neighbors are astonished that she is not abiding by the laws of society” (Henry, “Kelsey Henry- Sarah”). Somehow my human classmates see this as a good thing which helped women “make their lives and the lives of their children less miserable” (Henry, “Kelsey Henry- Sarah”). If only the inhabitants of this huge blue planet knew the joys of sameness and asexual reproduction that we enjoy on M8, maybe they would reconsider their erroneous ways.

These themes of individualism and societal reform are, unfortunately, not limited to the literary movement known as regionalism or even to female characters. Poems by Allen Ginsberg which were written in the mid twentieth century as part of the beat movement also contain suggestions that society is not perfect and that blind compliance may not be the best choice. In the poem “Howl” Ginsberg recounts several acts of deviance among friends “who were expelled from academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull” (ll. 14-15).  Ginsberg believes the same people to have been “the best minds of my generation” (l. 1). As Ginsberg was glorifying insanity and antisocial behavior another beat poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was openly questioning American culture with the poem “I Am Waiting.” In it, Ferlinghetti boldly states that he is waiting “for the final withering away of all governments and…a rebirth of wonder” (ll. 22-24). Clearly this author wants things to change and governments to disappear. What a horrible thought.

As you can clearly see, things on this planet, at least in America, are awful. Due at least in part to the works of authors such as Freeman and Jewett, as well as poets such as Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, people around here seem to think that questioning authority from time to time and acting as an individual may be a good thing. Despite these authors living in different eras and writing in different genres and styles about different subject matter, all of their work seems to share this common American theme of individuality.

I truly miss our home planet of M8 where everyone is the same in every way. I cannot imagine being trapped on this planet for much longer having to endure being different from all those around me. I honestly don’t know how these humans cope.

Sincerely, Ugh