26 pages • 52 minutes read
Anzia YezierskaAmerica and I
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1922A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Dialect
Throughout her first-person writing, author Yezierska uses colloquialisms to make her words distinctive, often peppering the dialogue with exclamations such as “Ach” and “Gottuniu” (“Dear God” in Russian), along with variations on “Oi weh” (a Yiddish expression and variation of “Oy vey”). This type of interjection emphasizes her otherness in multiple languages with a varied background, stressing her identity as a foreigner who is not fully assimilated into American culture. It also adds emotional intensity and heightens the immersive effect, helping contemporary readers better understand the world she comes from.
Dramatic Language/Style
It is worth nothing here that critics have found Yezierska’s language to be sentimental and perhaps emotionally exaggerated; however, others have pointed out that Jewish women were traditionally expected to act that way, and the overwrought language may have been deliberately used to highlight the attitudes of white Americans who thought of immigrants as inferior and undisciplined people. In any case, she certainly uses an emotionally expressive tone throughout her writing, which can be seen in phrases such as “I was so choked no words came to my lips” (37) and “I flamed up with all that was choking in me like a house on fire” (93). The dramatic language serves to draw readers into the young woman’s melodramatic existence, allowing them to sympathize with her plight and gain a greater understanding of her feelings about her ghetto existence and about assimilation.
Metaphors and Similes
Anzia Yezierska uses metaphors, especially similes, liberally in her writing. This figurative language enhances the dramatic flavor of her writing, punctuating her emotions in an imaginative and lyrical way. These descriptive comparisons can help make the words more meaningful to those who have not experienced the situations that the author is envisioning. For example, the author makes this comparison: “Like a prisoner in his last night in prison, counting the seconds that will free him from his chains, I trembled breathlessly for the minute I’d get the wages in my hand” (Paragraph 22). In fact, she compares her situation to that of a prison numerous times. A few paragraphs after that she likes herself to a hungry cat wanting meat from its owner (Paragraph 26). Later, she compares her fear of ever working for another “American” family to that of a fear of wild wolves (Paragraph 40), her sweatshop employer to “huge greedy maw” (Paragraph 49), and likens herself to “a thing following blindly after something far off in the dark!” (Paragraph 47). She also talks about her wants being “like the hunger in the heart that never gets food” (Paragraph 59), and when talking to a vocational guidance counselor, “flamed up with all that was choking in me like a house on fire” (Paragraph 93). When she leaves that conversation, she says, “My feet dragged after me like dead wood” (Paragraph 97). She also uses the metaphor of “a rosy veil of hope” (Paragraph 98), noting that “reality had hit me on the head as with a club” (Paragraph 99), and that she was losing herself “in a vast sea of sand” (Paragraph 100). As she has her epiphany about the nature of America, however, she “began to build a bridge of understanding” (Paragraph 108) even while her work hurts “like a secret guilt” (Paragraph 109) because so many share her desires and cannot share her bounty.
