Baray's Analysis of Cultural Miscommunication Term Paper

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He blames Oscar's rigid, German character and personal defects for his inability to succeed in America. This shows how even someone with a religious affinity with Oscar cannot necessarily connect with Oscar's experience. Although both men are Jews, the American assumes that with gumption and hard work, someone can find a home in America, after an initial rocky start. The individual, never the culture is at fault -- a very American, individualistic assumption. Perhaps this reflects both men's anxiety with 'the other' -- with America Oscar's part and with the sight of a foreign Jew on the part of the American.

This sense of miscommunication and frustration when the 'other' is not happy to become a part of a new culture is hardly exclusive to clashes of national perspective, however. In "Diary of an Indian Girl," the American "palefaces" cannot understand, in Chapter One of the narrative, why the American Indian girl is not delighted to leave her supposedly primitive culture, because they assume they would feel the same way: "I had arrived in the wonderful land of rosy skies, but I was not happy, as I had thought I should be. My long travel and the bewildering sights had exhausted me. I fell asleep, heaving deep, tired sobs. My tears were left to dry themselves in streaks, because neither my aunt nor my mother was near to wipe them away." (Sa, p.186) Not only is the language foreign to the Indian girl, sent to be educated by Whites in a White school, but the stiff clothes and the ways of moving seem to injure her: "The annoying clatter of shoes on bare floors gave us no peace. The constant clash of harsh noises, with an undercurrent of many voices murmuring an unknown tongue, made a bedlam within which I was securely tied. And though my spirit tore itself in struggling for its lost freedom, all was useless.

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" (Sa, p.186)

The girl's hair is cut, and her teachers try to transform her ways of movement and dressing. She regards these white women, understandably, as her captors because they have removed her from her home. The body language she is forced to assume as well as the verbal language is alien to this Indian girl in her new environment. Pure linguistic understanding does not bring peace: "Within a year I was able to express myself somewhat in broken English. As soon as I comprehended a part of what was said and done, a mischievous spirit of revenge possessed me." (Sa, p.188)

The Indians are seen through the guise of White stereotypes, not as they really are, because the assumptions of this enforced education is that Indian culture is inferior. The children are judged only by their willingness to obey their teachers, and to adopt white ways -- these decisions make them either bad or good, in the stark judgment of the teachers. "Then she stopped to say something. Judewin said it was this: 'Are you going to obey my word the next time?'" (Sa, p.188) To live in an alien environment, where she is seen as someone in need of cultural reform, with nothing good to give back to the culture is to live in a state of: "actively testing the chains which tightly bound my individuality like a mummy for burial." (Sa, "Iron Routine)

Simply because there is a point of common connection, through Jewishness or through Americanness, cannot create an automatic, perfect cultural translation or erasure of stereotypes. Although "The German Refugee" and Zitkala-Sa's "The School Days of an Indian Girl" are tales of extreme situations, these sorts of misunderstandings can take place on an everyday basis, and must be guarded against, as Barna counsels.

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