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For many people, America is a place of hope and refuge. Many people from other countries long for the chance to experience freedom and the many opportunities America has to offer. When a person or group of people leave the homeland they are use to, it can be scary or even challenging. I believe that once they are settled in America they look back from where they came and think that it was worth it to have made it to the “Promised Land.” Often times immigrants are not aware that America has many flaws. They are shocked to see how we interact with one another and with them for that matter. I think they finally realize that no place is perfect, not even the “Promised Land.” Americans struggle with issues of poverty and many things the immigrants suffered in their homeland, but in a different context. Once they are here they have to adjust and learn the ways of American life. They sometimes have to abandon their values or put them on the back burners of their minds in order to fit in with an American society. Mary Antin saw America as the ideal place to live. America was the place where her family would come and receive a better way of life and also where she would get her education. Education was extremely important to her. Antin had a hunger for knowledge that you do not often see in children, but the fact that she was denied it made her want it more. Mary would work very hard while in America to widen her knowledge base and excel in her studies. In this paper I will discuss Mary Antin’s life in the Pale, Antin’s life in America, and her transition and assimilation into American Society. To live in Polotzk, commonly known as The Pale, was to live in oppression. Mary Antin and her family were Jewish and they were discriminated by the Gentiles. The Gentiles treated them unfairly and after awhile the Jews began to accept this treatment as being normal. The Gentiles believed that the Jews killed their God and this was the cause of many of the actions, that the Gentiles took against the Jews. The Jews saw their religion as their strength; and they were very serious about their religion. The Gentiles did not respect the Jews’ choice to practice their religion and they wanted to convert Jews to Christians. A Jew would rather die than be baptized. “ The Gentiles used to wonder at us because we cared so much about religious things,- about food, and Sabbath, and teaching the children Hebrew. They were angry with us for our obstinacy, as they called it, and mocked us and ridiculed the most sacred things”(p.19). Even the children were spiteful and disrespectful. Mary experienced mistreatment even as a child. Vanka a Gentile child named , basically terrorized Mary and degraded her, because she was a Jew.
Approximate Word count = 1928
Approximate Pages = 7.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
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