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The Transformative Power of Memory in Mary Antin’s The Promised Land (English 317)

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The Transformative Power of Memory in Mary Antin’s The Promised Land (English 317)

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Mary Antin’s memoir The Promised Land utilizes memory not only as a storytelling device but also as a standalone, transformative motif. By using writing and history, she explores her own memory in order to release her “from the folds of my clinging past” (3). Seemingly oxymoronically, Antin uses memory in order to forget; she makes the parts of her life defined by immigration into an almost biblical mythology, stories that are fundamental to her identity but not concrete in her everyday life. For Antin, memory is not rooted in her own experiences but rather the histories and stories that affect her understanding of life: “I began life in the Middle Ages, as I shall prove, and here am I still, your contemporary in the twentieth century” (3).  Her memoir relies on memory but her memory is being affected by her memoir. This relationship between the two brings the motif of memory to forefront in The Promised Land.

As a memoir, The Promised Land relies on memory to be able to accurately tell a story. Antin is forced to revisit the early years of her life in order to write a book about it. Her journey takes her from Polotzk through Europe and across the Atlantic to various areas surrounding Boston. Each stage of memory is treated differently but all are remembered in accordance to her ability to write. Life in Europe is remembered faintly — she is a child when she leaves. These memories are by no means positive. Antin recounts the pressures of living under an oppressive government and the balm of religion: “Harassed on every side, thwarted in every normal effort, pent up within narrow limits, all but dehumanized, the Russian Jew fell back upon the only thing that never failed him, — his hereditary faith in God” (26). Although religion is a pathway for peace, Antin does not treat religion as a simple positive in Europe. Antin remembers it as a salvation for men only: “It was not much to be a girl, you see. Girls could not be scholars and rabbonim” (29). She remembers her life in Europe not as a romanticized childhood but as a time of her life defined by gendered disadvantages. The disadvantages Mary remembers are her limited access to writing. Writing is so crucial to Mary’s identity and memory. During periods of her life when she cannot write, adult Antin’s memories are filled with that disadvantage.

The passage itself from her small town in Russia to the shores of America only receives a chapter in Antin’s memoir. She feels the story is accurate because she detailed the passage at the time: “Memory may take a rest while I copy from a contemporaneous document the story of the great voyage. In accordance with my promise to my uncle, I wrote, during my first months in America, a detailed account of our adventures between Polotzk and Boston” (134). From these multiple letters to her uncle, one could assume Antin had plenty of details to give a long account. Rather, when Antin does not need to rely on memory alone she allots only one chapter. However, this chapter “The Exodus” utilizes the exact language of her letter heavily. In the passage from Europe to Boston Antin once again remembers writing clearly. She does relate the exacts of the trip but all of those details are framed by her writing. Like she will in America, Antin takes great pride in the exact language of various texts she has written.

Much of Antin’s memories in her memoir about America center around the recognition of and ability to use her writing. Memoirs are, one could argue, memories in print. She is able to recognize this connection of writing and memory: she explains she “had even learned to give an account” of her experience but “had very little perspective, and my observations and comparisons were superficial” (143). Here, Antin captures the relationship between memory and writing. Of course her writing relies on her memory, but her writing affects how she thinks about her memory. Being a writer is an identity that Antin holds dear. In describing her school days, Antin’s memories are characterized by her writings. Two of the defining moments for Antin in America are being recognized for her writing. Antin makes a point to provide the original pieces. The paper “Snow” changed the entire way she viewed herself:

My whole consciousness was suddenly transformed. I suppose that was the moment when I became a writer. I always loved to write … Why, it meant that I could write again, and see my writing printed for people to read! I could write many, many, many things: I could write a book! The idea was so huge, so bewildering, that my mind scarcely could accommodate it. (168)

Writing is the skill, hobby, and, eventually, career that Antin holds dearest. Her first publication caused a paradigm shift for the 12-year-old. She transformed from an immigrant girl who wrote letters to a real American writer, a master of the English language with endless possibilities. This identity is so fundamental that it monopolizes Antin’s memory.

If writing is an important identity for Antin, history is an important lense for Antin to see the world. Like writing, history has a reciprocal relationship with memory. Antin’s memories are filled with the histories she has been interested in, which is understandable. Her interest in history prompts her to historicize her own memory, transformed into something different. Antin remembers different histories at different time of her life. As a child in Europe she is not interested in the history of Russia or her town but rather her Jewish history: “What did it matter to us, on a Sabbath or festival, when our life was centred in the synagogue, what czar sat on the throne, what evil counsellors whispered in his ear?” (26). Entwined with her views on writing at the time, the study of the Torah “was the most honored of all occupations” in Polotzk (27). Jewish history and mythology (which are intimately connected for Antin) loom large in the memory of not just Antin, but of her entire town as well.

Antin’s arrival to America marks a change in her understanding of history. Jewish history falls in importance to American history. American history is something that is a point of pride for school age Antin. For Americans it is “the story of the growth of your country” and for immigrants it is “for it is a rehearsal of your own experience, the thrill and wonder of which your own hearts have felt” (175). Here she makes a direct connection of history and memory. The two are intertwined for her. History, even centuries old American history, still feels like an actual memory “which your own hearts have felt.” Once again, history and writing work together in Antin’s memory of her poem for George Washington. This poem demonstrates the importance of US history for young Antin and the pride in her new country. History becomes memory as the story and history of America becomes Antin’s own.

If Jewish history felt like myth to Antin, American history was concrete: “But the story of the Exodus was not history to me in the sense that the story of the American Revolution was. It was more like a glorious myth, a belief in which had the effect of cutting me off from the actual world, by linking me with a world of phantoms” (178). History changes for Antin as she immigrates across the Atlantic. National history that was once overshadowed by Jewish history comes to the forefront in a new country with a new history, leaving her religious history on unsteady footing. Her once omnipresent and dear religious history becomes “the supernatural legends and hazy associations of Bible lore” (179). In America, Jewish history falls in power because of the distant nature of it and because of its emotional weight, too. The “heavy garment” is exhausting and burdensome, to shed it aids survival. To survive in America, Antin sheds Jewish history to wholly embrace American history.

The history Antin is interested in (whether it be religious or American) changes how she views her life. Her immersion in Jewish history in Europe along with being a child makes her memory distant. Antin remembers life as based in Jewish history. In America, Antin views life as being defined by being physically located within America. Consequently, Antin eventually belongs into the American shared memory where she thinks and remembers the story of America not as myth but as history. These lenses affect her life so much that she divides her life according to them. Life as a true American in her memory starts at the end of her memoir; this is the concrete history of the author. Antin’s life in Europe and the journey to becoming American is, like Jewish history, myth to her — it is the “weighty past to carry in memory” (285) from which the author hopes to move on from herself. Her memoir is created from her memory that is now myth to her and she defines this by using religious names for her chapter titles. She is explicitly drawing the connection between her own early life and bible stories that she deems distant. Her Jewish history is distant but painful, it is the memory of her abused people. Similarly, her early life as an immigrant is painful but important to memorialize: “I can never forget, for I bear the scars. But I want to forget” (3). Antin’s mind can hold seemingly contradictory understandings of memory together. Antin can forget by remembering; she can understand the importance of remembrance and want to forget.

For a genre that depends on it, memory is complicated by Antin in The Promised Land. Her memory has been shaped by her writing and her understanding of history. Her memoir has been shaped by that self conscious understanding of memory. Her historical understanding of her life as myth and fact is transformed by her passion for writing into this memoir that itself acts on memory. The complicated relationships she builds around memory create a living, breathing entity that exists outside of herself and her memoir. Her memory can only be contained by the entire myth and history of Judaism and America: “The endless ages have indeed throbbed through my blood” (285). Although the part of her life associated with myth is longed to be forgotten, it is no less fundamental to her memory and understanding of self than the American history.  Rather, the two histories work together as Mary Antin eventually reaches The Promised Land.

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The Promised Land Outline: How Memory Performs

Introduction: Mary Antin’s memoir utilizes memory not just to tell her own story but as a standalone topic that changes her. By using writing and history she explores her own memory in order to release her “from the folds of my clinging past” (3). Surprisingly, Antin uses memory in order to forget; she makes the parts of her life defined by immigration into an almost biblical mythology. Memory acts on various levels for Antin, and she uses all of them.

Just like jewish stories are mythology, she is making her life story a sort of mythology itself (she’s using the langauge of jewish stories to even tell her story). Real life history starts for her in America

Using memory to forget memory

Not just how memory performs but how WRITING performs

Writing, which is so important to her for all of her life, allows her to remember things

What She Remembers?

Why such little time given to boat ride? Why so much to her struggle with geography?

Childhood

In Europe: It’s not romanticized, she is actually pretty critical of life in Europe (ie. gender and not being able to go to school, having to marry young, etc.)

In America: Romanticized indeed

Writing as Memory

Her poem “Snow” and the George Washington poem recieved so much time

Being acknowledged for her skill, intelligence, maturity

History as Memory

American history seems much more real than the mythology of Judaism (pg 179)

Natural History

Being with grownups made a big impression, being acknowledged for

Her memoir is written in the terms of BIBLICAL HISTORY

CONCLUSION

Writing and history WORK TOGETHER to affect memory in order create a MEMOIR

History as the mythology

Writing as the physical thing to make this memoir

“Well I knew that Polotzk was not my country. It was goluth-exile.”

NOT THAT EASY

THE TWO WORK TOGETHER AND SHE HAS REACHED THE PROMISED LAND BC BOTH ARE STILL IMPORTANT, REGARDLESS OF HER UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY

Could be important even if distant/myth: this still is MEMORY just acting differently

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Tenth-century cannonness Hroswitha insults the Muslims in Iberia by describing them in non-religious terms in order to paint them as a more menacing threat to her Christian audience. Paganism is the antithesis of Christianity for Hroswitha. She understands the Muslim government in Cordoba not in religious terms but in secular ones. Indeed, even when demonstrating her religious knowledge, she refuses to use religious language; “king of kings” is her description of a caliph (133). She never talks about Islamic belief at all. Rather, she describes a “race” that inhabits Cordoba in ethnic terms. The Muslims are a “treacherous tribe of the savage Saracens” (129). By pairing these ethnic terms with negative adjectives, Hroswitha equates the race as being fundamentally uncivilized and thus fundamentally un-Christian. Hroswitha’s focus on the secular is not out of religious tolerance; she does not respectfully distance religion from her criticism but rather attacks Islam directly by not recognizing it. She dismisses this ethnic tribe as being antithetical to Christianity. These kings devise new practices out of convenience for themselves, as opposed to ancient Christian customs (131). Paganism is the defining feature of these people; they even follow of the devil (135). Hroswitha writes stories for Ottonian nuns and this martyr story needs an enemy. The antithesis of her Christian audience isn’t Islam but paganism. Portraying the enemy as a religious group would make them identifiable to Hroswitha and her audience. Thus, by portraying the Islamic rulers in her piece in ethnic terms, she draws on a tradition of paganism acting as the main threat in martyr stories.

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Growing Up with the Ghost in the Graveyard (English 315)

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Growing Up with the Ghost in the Graveyard (English 315)

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Nancy S.’s house was the place to be for students in my elementary school. I spent countless hours of my most important developmental years around her house tie dying, holding cooking competitions, or jumping on her trampoline. Her house became the place where I grew up and learned about being a girl. With two older brothers, I was forever impacted by the important female friendships I forged at Nancy’s house. Her house holds a place of tenderness in my heart and something more ominous, as well. In the dark, her house becomes the haunted house of my childhood.

Nancy’s cul de sac was in the middle of the rural part of our school district and was surrounded by cornfields on one side and woods on the other; when it was dark, it was deep-dark. The scary moments of her house all blend together in my mind. The main portion of my friendship with Nancy was over a decade ago and the memories are confused together. I do not know the chronology of the events. I am sure my memory distorts them and confuses them, but that doesn’t matter to me. I remember these scary images in almost a dream sequence, something that recurs in my mind but is never quite the same. These are the images of horror at Nancy’s house I identify with growing up: a large, unidentifiable animal disappearing when we approached; walking into a fog filled garage on Halloween; Nancy forbidding us to go outside during the “Witching Hour” between three and four in the morning.

But the most impactful, scary memories of Nancy’s house came when she would hold sleepovers for all of the girls in our class. They were outrageous affairs where we would glutton ourselves, gossip, and chat about the new freedom that sixth grade would have to offer us that coming September. Then, when it was dark enough and her parents were asleep, we would go outside and our big group of young girls would play Ghost in the Graveyard.

The ghost would hide somewhere within the neighborhood and the other girls would stalk around to find her. When she was spotted, the neighborhood would echo with the cry of a young girl screaming “GHOST IN THE GRAVEYARD!” We would run for our lives back home, only safe once on Nancy’s trampoline. Ghost in the Graveyard put me as a child into a horror movie. I had to remove myself from my safe place to locate a monster only to try to avoid the monster. And when the monster found me, I turned into the monster. Ghost in the Graveyard, I now realize, is a horror game. It placed us as young girls into the role of victim and monster. The game brought out my most fundamental urge to run away from something that is trying to get me. Just like the reader of a horror text, I became a participant in the horror rather than an audience member. It was not a game to me, but a very real fear.

This fear was only amplified by the real anxieties of being a girl alone at night. We would giggle at our game but there were real implications in our play. For the game we would hide in ditches, drainage pipes, and of course, the cornfield. We played with horror when we were on the cusp of adolescence. We were entering into a part of our lives that seemed horrific. A time when we were allowed, for the first time, to go out in public by ourselves. A time when our parents told us strangers were a very real threat to us, especially as girls.

In a time of real anxieties about being taken advantage of, my friends and I defied that fear. We embraced it by making a game out of it. At my childhood haunted house, I battled new horrors by chasing ghosts.