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Part I: Introduction
I.1. Rationale
I was born to a family whose members are all business people except me. My father used to be a
successful businessman who traveled all around the world from Asia, Europe, America to
Australia. After each trip, he told me about the places he had been to and about the people he
had met with vivid examples of their culture. From my father, I learnt about the beautiful
Singapore city and Copenhagen capital of Denmark whose people are very well aware of
keeping their city clean and green, about fast-food and the work-oriented and individualistic
people in California compared to the out-going and neighborly people in Texas, Louisiana and
Arkansas. My father has left in me the curiosity to learn about culture of the countries around
the world. Besides, my father and my brother were my first teachers of literature who blew in
me the wind of passion to study literature, moving my heart with the poem “Me om” by Tran
Dang Khoa, “Nguoi thay dau tien” translated from a Russian short story by a Russian writer,
“Chiec la cuoi cung“ translated from an American short story by O’Henry. These literary works
provoked in me the love for men, the understanding of the people, their culture and the social
circumstances in and about which the works were written.
I am now a teacher of English at Haiphong Foreign Language Center under Haiphong
University. For a teacher of English, having good knowledge of the culture and society of
English speaking countries is of great benefit since such experiences do help to make the
teaching and learning of the target language easier, more lively and vivid. It can not be denied
that the teaching and learning of a language would fail if the teacher does not have good cultural
and social background knowledge to explain to his or her students the situations in which the
native speakers use the language or the social circumstances in which the language is used.
Once watching the “Sao mai diem hen” and “Bai hat Viet” competitions, the favorite music
tournaments of the Vietnamese on television, listening to most competitors singing all pop
songs, which originated from the United States, it came to my question that “To what extents
has American culture penetrated the Vietnamese?” Beside pop music, we can witness the
practice of American culture by a large number of people in our country, especially, by the
young generation, through the way they sing pop, rock, Hip-hop songs, dance and dress in
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and, therefore, engage in language activities more actively.
I have always insisted that teaching literature in a foreign language is not for the sole aim, that is
to teach the language and the art of language to express the ideas, but it is for the greater aim,
that is to broaden the knowledge of the students of the target culture and society. With such
knowledge, my students would be more conscious of their cultural identity and practice the
target culture more selectively.
I.3. Scope of the research
Within the limitation of a minor thesis, I only discuss some of the most prominent aspects of the
culture and society of the mainstream American in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries such
as individualism, American informality, racial discrimination, modern American women,
generation gap and American people in the turbulent ages. These are the features of American
culture and society that arise most prominently in the short stories I luckily came across.
The literary works used for analysis are the short stories written by recognized American
authors such as William Faulkner, Jesse Stuart, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Bernard
Malamud, Grace Paley and the new generation of writers including Charles Bowden, Tom
McNeal, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bobbie Ann Mason, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Nathaniel Bellows, Julia
Alvarez, Akhil Sharma and others. Besides, I include one piece of memoir and a literary essay
which I find helpful to support my discussion.
I.4. Design and methodology
The paper is divided into three main parts:
Part I presents an overview of the whole research, providing readers with the rationale, the aims
and objectives, the scope, the design and methodology of the study.
Part II is the development of the paper, consisting of two chapters. Chapter 1 is devoted to the
literature review of the subject matter which deals with the concepts including culture and
society, literature, short stories and other genres of literature, techniques in storytelling, and
short literary works and their portrayal of culture and society. Besides, the first chapter also
provides an overview of American society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Such
overview of American society, along with the theoretical background in the previous section are
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the bases for chapter 2, which discusses the main issues concerning aspects of American culture

and we do. As M. Thomas Inge and Dennis Hall pointed out in their book The Greenwood
Guide to American Popular Culture, “Man’s culture is the complex of all he knows, all he
possesses, and all he does.” (2002, xix) “All he knows” can be his knowledge and ideas of life,
science and his explanation of the relationship among people, their customs, religion or so. “All
he possesses” includes all his material property, his family, his relationship with other people,
his belief and values, his personality as well as his talent. And “all he does” is concerned with
either his material or spiritual activities. In the same light, Michael Kammen in his book
“American culture, American tastes, social change and the 20
th
century” identifies culture as
“the way of life of particular people living together in one place. That culture is made visible in
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their arts, in their social system, in their habits and customs, in their religion…” (1999, p.8)
What Kammen meant by the “particular people living together in one place” is what we call
society. In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, society is defined as “people in general,
living together in communities” or “a particular community of people who share the same
customs, laws, etc.” Such customs, laws and etc make up a culture. Culture and society are
closely related. We do not have two different societies with exactly the same culture or one
society with completely different culture. Let consider American society and Vietnamese
society. The two communities live in different parts of the world on different continents. With
different geographical features and history, each community develops their economy in different
ways, therefore, each country has a distinguished culture. With its origin in water-rice
agriculture, the culture of Vietnam is often regarded as community-based culture whereas the
American tend to develop their individualistic culture owing to their hunting, and farming origin
supported by developed industry. Within the American society, there are many races such as
white, black or African-American, American Indian or Alaska native, Asian, native Hawaiian,
other Pacific Islander and ethnic groups due to immigrations from all around the world.
However, when all these races live together in one united society, they share the mainstream
culture such as fast pace of life, individualism, informality, modernity although their practice of
these criteria varies in terms of degree.

readers with pleasure but also helps to improve their critical thinking of their own ways of life,
their belief, their religion, which means their culture and “the world in which ” they live in,
which is the society . In the same light, Norman N. Holland also stressed the roles of literature in
providing readers with knowledge of the world and, moreover, with approaches to their
understanding that world. He insisted that “Literature is not things but a way to comprehend
things.” (as cited in Beaty, Booth, Hunter & Mays, 2002, p. xxviii) What Holland meant by
“things” here is everything in the world around us including culture and society. Literature is not
only concerned with problems of a culture and society but also reveals how the writer deals with
such problems. The writer approaches the subject matters in one way and the reader may
approach them in a different way but the thing is, the writer brings about his experiences and
views of life for the reader to expose to, to compare with and to sharpen his owns.
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II.1.2.2. Short stories, memoirs, essays and other genres of literature
The classification of literary genres or types of literature is often based on many categories
including theme, form, technique, tone, length and others. Regarding the form, literature is
traditionally divided into three main genres including prose, poetry and drama. Prose is
distinguished from the other genres in the way the ideas are organized in paragraphs made up of
complete sentences. Short story is a sub-genre of prose. Regarding the technique whether to use
real or imaginary materials, literature comprises of fiction and non-fiction As defined in Oxford
Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, fiction is “a type of literature that describe imaginary people
and events, not real ones”. The characters and events are invented to promote the writer’s point
of view or ideology about life. However, there is still some real in fiction. As I have said in the
definition of literature, a piece of literary works is made up from the “raw materials of life”.
Therefore, there must be something true in the work. The “something” here can be either the
social context or the features of the characters which resemble ones in the real life. This genre
comprises short stories, novels, poetry, dramas and others.
On the contrary, non-fiction, the broadest “category” of literature is a type of writing about real
subjects although the characters or events can be imaginative or invented. “Under this umbrella
term come autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, essays, speeches,
travelogues, news articles and many more types of writing.” (as cited in Chin, et al, 2002, p.

of one character in the story.)
- Theme is the message of the story that the author wants to send to readers. The message
is often about human behavior and relationship, human nature, conflicts in the society
and the solution and so on. The theme can be explicitly stated or implicitly presented,
which encourages readers to consider all the elements of the story in order to infer the
message.
- Plot is the sequences of related events which help conveying the theme and the point of
view. A plot is often developed in five stages: exposition, which provides introductory
information for the setting, the characters and the conflict; rising action, which develops
and complicates the conflicts, which then leads to the climax – the highest emotional or
turning point of the story; falling action – the action that the characters do after the
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climax, which brings about the resolution which deals with how the conflicts are
resolved.
Let consider an example with the short - short story “Snow” by Julia Alvarez, a recognized
Dominican - American fiction writer (as cited in Chin. et al, 2002, p. 1032)
As seen from the diagram, the climax is drawn from a number of rising actions and after the
climax come a falling action which perform a lead to the resolution, which indicates the theme -
the message the writer wishes to present to readers, that is the value of life, which should be
highly considered. The climax of this short story, which is the extreme anxiety of the young
immigrated girl when mistaking snow for bomb, was not only the suffering of a single character
in the story but of a number of real American people during the nuclear age in the 1960s.
Although their characters, actions and dialogues can be invented, short stories often portray real
cultural and social subject matters.
II.1.2.2.2. Essays
“I” watched the
snow and found
each snowflake
irreplaceable
and beautiful,

illustrate
the dusty
fallout that
would kill
them
“I” shrieked
“Bomb!
Bomb!” seeing
the sky dotted
with snow
The
teacher
told “I”
that it is
snow, not
bomb
Exposition Rising actions Falling action
Climax
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As our common knowledge, essay, one of the most common types of non – fiction, is a short
piece of writing dealt with a chosen topic which can be of social or cultural issues, personal
conflicts and perception of the world, interpersonal relation and many other subjects.
There are two main kinds of essay: narrative and informative. Narrative essays are short
writings devoted to true stories told from either the first person or the third person point of view.
While a short story has to do with unreal people and things, a narrative essay focuses on real
people and events. However, in some essays, writer employs some imaginary and creative
elements to promote a true story. Informative essays are divided into two main kinds:
expository essay which describes a single issue such as discrimination, American fashion,
American women and persuasive essay or argumentative essay which supports an opinion.
The main objective is to persuade readers to share a common point of view with the writer by

so that the writer can convey the theme and the manipulating of the language in order to express
the ideas of the writer in the most effective way. Hereby, I take into consideration some of the
most popular techniques which have been used so far:
- Flash-back or “replay” of scenes or events. As Beverly Ann Chin defines it, “Flash-
back is a portion of a story that interrupts the chronological sequences of events to
describe what happened earlier.” (Chin, et al., 2002, p. 813). This technique provides
readers with the background of a setting, an event or a character.
- Foreshadowing is considered opposite with flash-back as it “gives hints or clues that
suggest or prepare the reader for events that occur later in a work.” (Gordon &
Kuehner, 1999, p. 5). However, the writer must be careful when employing this
technique because too apparent hints or clues may result in boredom for the readers as
they can speculate exactly the ending of the story in early stages.
- Coincidence is the arrangement of time and place for two characters to meet or two
events to take place at the same time. As Gordon and Kuehner point out coincidence is
“the chance occurrence of two things at the same time or place to denote the working of
Fate in a person’s life.” (Gordon & Kuehner, 1999, p. 6)
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- Indirect characterization is a technique utilized to develop a character. The writer does
not present the personalities of the character in a direct way but readers can learn what
kind of personalities the character is through the words or actions of the character
himself or herself, or through what the narrator or the other characters say about him or
her.
- Foil is a character used to contrast with a second character in order to highlight the
qualities of the second character. (Chin, et al., 2002, p. 872) This is an effective
technique as it helps readers identify the main character more easily.
- Sarcasm, known as satire or irony is a kind of humor in storytelling that uses bitter or
“caustic” language for the portrayal of a negative character.
All the techniques employed are to generate the curiosity –the desire to know what is happening
and what is going to happen next or, moreover, the suspense of readers – a type of involvement
of the readers in doubting and speculating the coming events of the story.

writes “”Accomplice” grew out of my efforts to understand how a well-conceived assignment
managed to go awry. How could such involved, wordly, educated parents accept as real a
teacher’s report that was so obviously false? It was only by imagining Ms. Hempel’s
relationship with her father that I began to grasp what it might feel like, as a parent, to be the
only one who recognizes your child’s talent and greatness, and how hungrily you might
welcome the news that you are not alone...” (Bynum, as cited in Morre, 2004, p. 435) This note
is to show that a literary work is the fruit of the ponderation of the writer for the understanding
of different aspects of life. For Ms. Bynum, it was the ponderation of a teacher herself finding a
way to make a true school-report to the prideful parents as well as activate the students in their
study and their self-responsibilities by doing self-assessment. The story reflects serious
innermost conflicts of an individual school teacher, which many teachers of the time might
experience.
In whichever genre of literature either fiction or non-fiction, with whichever technique
employed, the sole aim of the writer is to portray real life, to express his or her own viewpoints
of real life and to suggest a solution for problems in society. In each literary work, the writer
uses a particular technique which helps to achieve his or her ultimate purposes. For example, as
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flash-back technique is employed in fictional A Rose for Emily with constant shifts of past and
present events, William Faulkner brings to readers the suspense in their attempt to interpret the
plot and, therefore, creates more curiosity and interest of the readers when discovering changes
in the attitude of the town people toward the protagonist, Miss Emily as well as the changes in
the South of the U.S where the story sets. Along with flash-back, Faulkner also utilizes other
techniques such as irony in his description of the women, Miss Emily’s people and the other
people in town, and, indirect characterization technique, which employs the third limited
narrator to present an objective voice for the story and stimulate the analysis and interpretation
of the readers. All of the techniques used in the story are to contribute to the success of the
writer in achieving his ultimate goal, that is, as a common interpretation says, to portray the
extreme racial discrimination in the Southern white society of the time which causes a prideful
white, Miss Emily to kill her colored lover in order to keep him for herself forever.
From the discussion above, we see that literature in general and short stories in particular do not

status in the society marked by sex revolution. Entertainment was booming with new genres of
music such as rap or hip-hop, cable televisions, MTV and so on. The following 1990s, though
witnessing the U.S involvement in the Gulf War, escalating terrorism, school shooting and sex
scandals, the American enjoyed a booming economy which led to low unemployment and
flowering consumption. However the beginning of the twenty-first century was welcomed by
the American great anxiety and fear after the suicide attack by the Islamic extremist’s
organization named Al-Qaeda on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
which caused 2,974 fatalities excluding the 19 hijackers and billions of dollar for economic
recovery (retrieved Mar 10, 2009 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_attacks). Along with the tense of terrorism,
the American, at the beginning of the twenty-first century once again have been suffering
another global economic recession with the unemployment rate reached to 8.1% in February
2009, equivalent to 12.5 million people out of work. (retrieved on March 11, 2009 from
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.html)
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Such mosaics of American culture and society provides a background for our understandings of
the more specific cultural and social aspects of the American in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries later discussed in this research.
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Chapter 2 : some Aspects of American culture and society in
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through short
literary works
II.2.1. American informality
The American are very well-known for their informality. I remember seeing an American man
in the U.S embassy when I was reading a book, I looked up and caught his eyes. He smiled and
said “Hi” to me to my surprise since we had never met before. The other day, when I was
climbing the staircase up to my friend’s room in the dormitory of the University of Technology
in Hanoi, some American guys went past me and greeted “Hi” to me in a very casual way. This
informality is not a common practice among the Vietnamese when we meet strangers as for
Vietnamese people, we only greet those who are well-known to us or those who are older.

contrary, is very casual. He brought with him something to eat because he was so hungry after
“all day in a rush” (As cited in Chin. et al, 2002, p. 880) and ate in front of Leo without offering
him. “…first must come back my strength”, he said and “took out of the leather case an oily
paper bag, from which he extracted a hard, seeded roll and a small, smoked fish. With a quick
motion of his hand stripped the fish out of its skin and began ravenously to chew.” (as cited in
Chin. et al, 2002, p. 879-880). Salzman felt like home and he made himself at home. Host and
guest are friends so there is no need to conceal one’s hunger. In Vietnamese situation, it is not
common to bring food to other people’s house and enjoy the food there. The Vietnamese often
try not to tell the host that he or she is hungry for the question of saving face. Only among those
who are very close to each other such as among close friends or relatives do people do so.
However, for the American, it is quite normal for the guest to say how he feels or what he wants
to eat or drink. For example, when Salzman felt for some tomato, or some tea, he asked Leo
right away, though a bit hesitantly and humbly due to the serious attitude Leo created “A sliced
tomato you have maybe?” and “A glass tea you got, rabbi?” (2002, p. 880). These evidences,
though indicate rather extreme casualty for the purpose of the author to draw a picture of a real
awkward salesman, more or less reveal the informality of the American as the guests. For an
American, it is not uncommon to bring food to other people’s house, especially to their friends’
for a party. And the thing they often bring along is often a drink, such as beer, a bottle of