America's Influence

America’s influence on our own as well as foreign culture is a theme prevalent in “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles”, “A Bedtime Story” and “A Father”. The three works use major U.S. metropolises as a setting. The writers of the entitled pieces introduce the audience to characters who are struggling with American culture. In the end of each piece, this drastic change of culture is proven to be a detriment to the speaker and or protagonist.

Joy Harjo’s, “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles” is a poem about finding yourself amongst the modernization of America. The speaker has lost their individuality within a sea of people and commercialization, which is better known as Los Angeles. The speaker mentioned how attractive the city can be during the day as well as the nighttime. However, Harjo contradicts the beauty of Los Angeles with, “This city named for the angels appears naked and stripped of anything…” (Harjo 3). Even though this metropolis is beautiful, American culture and society has tainted this “city of angels”. The speaker stated that people, “…can’t easily see that starry road from the perspective of the crossing of / boulevards, can’t hear it in the whine of civilization or taste the minerals / of planets in hamburgers” (Harjo 13-15). Americans cannot enjoy the simple things in life without being blinded by the glitz and glamour of our everyday changing culture. At the end of the poem, the speaker talked to a crow. The crow is symbolized as a swindler and one who laughs at American culture. “Crow just laughs and says wait, wait, and see and I am waiting and not seeing / anything, not just yet” (Harjo 26-27). The crow has been waiting for society to change and realize the real beauty that Los Angeles can offer without commercialization, but it has yet to happen. Individually, we cannot find or change ourselves, unless our culture changes first.

“A Bedtime Story” was a poem that dealt with foreign culture. There is a Papa and a child living in the city of Seattle. The child, who is the speaker of the poem, is being told “an old Japanese legend” (Yamada 2). The legend is of an old woman who is nomadic. The next three stanzas deal with the child telling the audience the old legend. There is not climax to the legend and the final stanza of the poem is concluded by the speaker saying “‘That’s the end?’” (Yamada 45). The story is very simple and is not a large production. The child is not impressed by an old legend of his culture. The legend has a simple message but it did not woo the youngster. Americanization has yet again been an antagonist in this poem. The child might be use to dramatic tales found in movies or on television. Therefore, the story told by his Papa was a disappointment. The permeation of American culture into foreign culture can taint or ruin a family’s heritage.

Bharati Mukherjee’s story, “A Father” was a depressing and disturbing tale about the Bhowmick family. The main character, Mr. Bhowmick, is very unhappy with his life in Detroit. The Bhowmicks have an unhappy marriage, a pretentious daughter, and their new American culture is interfering with their old Indian beliefs. “The women in his family were smarter than him. They were cheerful, outgoing, more American somehow” (Mukherjee 660). Mr. Bhowmick had a monotonous job at General Motors and is averse to giving up his Indian customs. “After that he showered…he recited prayers in Sanskrit to Kali” (Mukherjee 659). Mr. Bhowmick does not want to fall into this new western way of life. The controversial part of the story came when Mr. Bhowmick discovered that his daughter, Babli, was pregnant. The daughter was keeping her pregnancy a secret from her parents. Pregnancy outside of marriage was dishonorable according to Indian customs. “Babli would abort, of course. He knew his Babli. It was the only possible option if she didn’t want to bring shame to the Bhowmick family” (Mukherjee 662). It was not until the end of the story that Babli’s secret came out. Babli had no real husband and therefore the father to her child was a mystery. “The father of my baby is a bottle and a syringe” (Mukherjee 665). This Americanized act of artificial insemination did not sit well with the Bhowmicks. Babli wanted to continue on with the pregnancy, which was against her parent’s wishes. Babli was becoming more American and less Indian in the eyes of her parents. Mr. Bhowmick tried to abort the pregnancy himself by striking his daughter’s stomach with a rolling pin. Mr. Bhowmick was against immigrating to America in the first place, and he sure was not going to be the grandfather to an American child. The Bhowmick family was another victim to the evil known as American culture.

All three pieces of literature opened my eyes to how powerful culture can be. Whether it is adapting to a new lifestyle or conforming to present standards, culture can be positive or negative. The three works showed the negative side of American culture. Americans today are even more egotistical and possessive than ever before. Changing the way we individually act and present ourselves can better society as more importantly, change the way outsiders view American culture.