Documenting United States History

388 ChApTEr 17 | ChaLLenGes to the statUs QUo | period seven 1890 –1945

greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have

held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic con-

templation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in

history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s

wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had

come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that

he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him,

somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of

the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes

before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster,

stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 143–144.

p rACTICINg historical Thinking

Identify: What role is played by the Dutch sailors at the beginning of this passage?

Analyze: Does the speaker see his own goals as consistent with the goals of

the Dutch sailors? Are Gatsby’s goals consistent with those of the Dutch sailors?

Explain.

Evaluate: Does the final line indict the modern America of its times? Explain.

Document 17.6 ZoRa NEalE HURSToN, “How it Feels to

Be Colored Me”

1928

One of the most emblematic writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston

(1891–1960) brought African American culture to a wider audience. Rediscovered in

the latter half of the twentieth century, Hurston today is widely recognized as a writer

whose anthropological interests enabled her to express the values and complexities of

her own culture.

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of

slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past.

The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The ter-

rible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said “On the

TopIC I | modernity 389

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