"THe American" by Henry James - the fight between stereotype and love

Telling about collisions between two or more norms is a very graceful subject, which is particularly strong in the work of American writer Henry James. For the European reader, his manner of opposition between the New and the Old World would at first glance sound incomprehensible or even startling. But the challenge for a European to read Henry James is much more than an adventure; it is rethinking situations and reassessing circumstances. Although American in origin, James spends most of his life in Europe. What should he have seen there to channel his impressions the way they are expressed in "The American" (and in a number of other novels, the most famous of which is "Portrait of a Lady")? Perhaps he really considered Parisian higher society as a system of counterfeit, overexposed and closed to outsiders system of false relationships and dirty hypocrisy. But if he was not well in France, he felt so much at home in the UK that he subsequently accepted British citizenship. In any case, his personal disappointment with the coldness of the stiff aristocracy and his unwillingness to accept in his society a hard-working middle-class American is clearly evident, especially in the work of the same name. In this book, however, the private case is extrapolated to the heights of a universal and born with the birth of humanity problem - that of the good man, who is done wrong (in the book "a wronged man"). As one of the key figures for the development and evolution of realism in literature, Henry James portrays his characters within reality rather than among the stories of romantic idealism from the early nineteenth century. In the case of the American, however, it is a fierce confrontation between the two categories - on one side is (the self) expression of the man born in the passionate, idealistic vision of the future, and on the other - the cynical reality of the actual intentions, masked with decency and readiness for compromise.

As for the story of the book, it is wonderful - it has everything in it, and the characters are particularly dense and spiritual (though some lack morality and self-esteem). All of them are connected in one way or another to each other - either through direct relationships or by the similarities and contrasts between them, the latter of which are present up to the last sentence of the novel. In some places, the dynamics of the narrative is slowed down by the descriptions of the current psychological and emotional state of the protagonist, Rich Multimillionaire Newman. But this in no way undermines the narrative, on the contrary - in a subtle way emphasizes the basic suggestion. This suggestion is rooted in the struggle between stereotype and true cost, between progressiveness and stagnation, between the good intentions of the honest man and the filthy fornications of the aristocrats of ancestry but criminals of character.

The conflict is particularly acute and manifests itself in all the storylines in the narrative. Part of the heroes are really criminals - cold-blooded murderers, but also suicides who have been destroyed in the name of their distorted notions of how they yearn to long to live their lives. On the other hand, some of the protagonists are extremely positive and good, they deserve to be happy and cause immediate concern and sympathy. Some of the characters are revealed entirely in the course of the novel - the turns are serious and unexpected; but all the actors in the book are exceptionally well-represented - the mastery of James in this sense is incomparable. In terms of expressiveness, his style is very pleasant, varied, but without too much strain (for example, in Virginia Woolf's "Night and Day" heroes fall into multi-purpose, costly self-reflections on several pages). Ultimately, the right of two people from different worlds to love, propels the whole narrative, builds his characters, perhaps even determines the actions of everyone - America meets Europe, the middle class - the aristocracy, and whether Newman will meet his countess? Meanwhile, Miss Noemi and Valentine are also looking for their love; but the clash is different, and Europe is more lenient than ever. Henry James's "American" is a wonderful and complete novel that provides the reader with a stressful narrative - from the beginning to the end it is not clear what will happen, and the hopes for everyone to get what it deserves grow with each subsequent page. The end is really surprising, but it also causes profound reflections - for the good man who has done evil for the bad, morally spoiled people, the selfish and those who love them, the pseudo-poetry and the moral purity of the honest, open and courageous character . "The American" is one of those books in which, reading the last sentence, the reader staggered, "Oh my God! I can't believe it!"