Reflection+on+American+Revelry

Reflection on American Revelry
The exact character of Americans celebration is a manner of some debate. The works on this wall endeavor to present some of the many ways in which American revels have been depicted, and shed some light on exactly how Americans enjoy themselves. Nathaniel Hawthorne states in his novel //The Scarlet Letter//, that the descendants of American Puritans have not been able to reacquire the ability to celebrate and enjoy themselves in the manner of their English ancestors. While I am in some ways inclined to agree with him on this point, there can be no doubt that the most popular manners of public amusement have changed significantly since the days Winthrop and Mather. One has only to look at the provided scene from Puritan New England and compare it with the depiction of raucous American college students unwinding on their spring break. The behavior in this scene is perhaps not so far removed from the type of party described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the accompanying extract from his novel //The Great Gatsby//, nor with the unruly and semi-barbarous manner in which fans of the Rutgers University football team display their pleasure at having defeated a rival. But, as evidenced by the wistful melancholy of Robinson's "Mr. Flood's Party, American revels are not always the noisy and lawless affairs they might appear to be.  It is perhaps only when reduced to the bare minimum of the individual that the American celebratory urge reveals itself.