THE UGLY AMERICAN
PART ONE OF A THREE-PART SERIES EXAMINING FAILURE IN LITERATURE
by Julie Stesney

Some writers write to sell books. Others write to communicate an idea. What if, as an author, you sold lots of books but ultimately failed to communicate your idea? What if your story and its characters proved to be popular, yet entirely misunderstood? In this short series of articles, Failure examines "The Ugly American," "Uncle Tom" and "Pollyanna"—three commercially successful books that have been misinterpreted by the reading public.

Part one of our series concerns the 1956 classic, "The Ugly American," by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick. Today, the term "ugly American" is used to describe Americans traveling or working abroad who are loud, arrogant and ignorant of the language and customs of the country they are visiting.

In the book, a Burmese journalist, U Maung Swe describes this phenomenon: "For some reason, the people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They're loud and ostentatious. Perhaps they're frightened and defensive, or maybe they're not properly trained and make mistakes out of ignorance." Lederer and Burdick apply this description to the foreign service and other American government workers—the people who frequent Embassy parties and choice restaurants. They zip around in fancy cars and work on the problems they like to solve—the high profile expensive projects—ignoring the problems of the local people.

Ironically, the book's "ugly American" is a hero. He is the physically ugly engineer Homer Atkins, brought to the fictional country of Sarkhan in southeast Asia to advise the American aid people on the placement of dams and roads. In contrast to today's meaning of "ugly American" he travels over the land and talks to people in their own language. He lives among the native people. He identifies the greatest need of the Sarkhanese—not dams or roads, but a way to get the water up on the hillsides to irrigate rice. The American aid people ignore him, so he quits the project and designs a bicycle-based water pump that can be built from plentiful, local materials. When he has his design, he enlists the help of a Sarkhanese mechanic, Jeepo, to refine the design and help set up a factory to build and sell the pump. He treats Jeepo like the equal that he is.

Why did the authors make both Atkins and Jeepo physically ugly, when there are several other heroes in the book who are not? It was to emphasize the fact that American policy at that time (as well as now) was centered on looking good. The authors wanted to convey that it's the work, and not the image that counts.

The point they were making was lost somewhere between the book's commercial success and the public's subsequent interpretation. Ugly is synonymous with bad, so for us the ugly American is the bad guy. Their message on how to deal with the problems of Communism got lost as well, and we waged the Vietnam War, a conflict that, incidentally, took the exact course predicted by the book. But that is another failure story.

POLLYANNA
PART TWO OF A THREE-PART SERIES EXAMINING FAILURE IN LITERATURE
by Julie Stesney

In part two of our series examining failure in literature we examine "Pollyanna" by Eleanor Porter. As with "The Ugly American," the book was a commercial success, but the main character has entered our language as something other than the author intended.

My relationship with "Pollyanna" is a very personal one, because Pollyanna got me through my childhood. I identified with Porter’s character because she understood reality—the ugly kind. As a kid, my parents were quite unhappy with each other. My mother was forever saying, "I’m going to leave him." The ‘I’ in that sentence made me worry. My father was always saying, "I should never have married and had a child" and he rarely paid any attention to me. I was afraid of being abandoned because I didn’t know they didn’t mean what they said. Then I read "Pollyanna."

For those who missed the book or movie, she was a missionary minister’s daughter. Her mother died when she was very young, so her father raised her. Of course, they were very poor because missionaries were not well paid. For her eighth Christmas she wanted a doll, but since her father could not afford one, they hoped that the Christmas mission barrel (sent by a well-meaning Ladies Aid Society) would have one. When all they had were crutches Pollyanna cried and her father invented ‘the glad game’ to console her. Look for something to be glad about, no matter how grim the reality is. It took awhile, but she finally decided she was glad she didn’t need crutches.

What made me identify with Pollyanna was that she overcame what I feared—abandonment. As a child, I didn’t realize it was fiction. She was sent to live with her maternal aunt, who did not approve of her sister’s marriage to an improvident minister rather than a wealthy suitor. Aunt Polly took the child and stuck her in a third floor attic in the heat of summer with no ventilation since the window could not be opened until screens were installed. Pollyanna recognized the ugliness of the situation and cried, but she played the game. She concentrated her attention on the view from her window and slept on the roof to stay cool. This is not ignoring reality, it’s taking whatever good can be found and concentrating on improving it. Then she taught others to do it too.

I was nine years old when I read "Pollyanna" and I realized that I could do the same thing. Not that it works all the time, but it’s a tool that has served me well throughout my life. Of course, many people think of Pollyanna as a saccharine person that went around pretending everything was hunky-dory. Few books have influenced my life as much, and it pains me to have Pollyanna denigrated and misrepresented as a silly person who doesn’t understand reality. Eleanor Porter’s eight-year-old heroine chose to affect her environment instead—like so many—of being effected by it.

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
PART THREE OF A THREE-PART SERIES EXAMINING FAILURE IN LITERATURE
by Julie Stesney

This third book in our series is probably the most controversial of the three books that have been covered. The term "Uncle Tom" is widely used today to represent a coward, someone who caves in to “the man,” someone who is less than a man.

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about a very different kind of person, based on a real black preacher, Josiah Henson, who was proud to be called “Uncle Tom.” Her fictional character allowed Simon Legree to beat him to death rather than reveal the whereabouts of two female slaves who had run away. He did not run away with them, although they wanted him to, because of his principles. He was a preacher and the Bible told him that slaves should respect their masters and that all men should forgive those who persecute them.

Perhaps the reason that Uncle Tom has come to have such a negative meaning is that people do not accept those biblical principles by which he lived. Actually, neither did Stowe. Far from arguing that slavery was acceptable, her book pointed out its evils. Both the two women slaves and another young couple, George and Eliza, escape successfully from slavery. George and Eliza were also based on a real couple, who fled to Canada, but returned to Ohio because Canadians would not let Negroes in school with whites, and Ohio would.

Stowe offered a character of saint-like demeanor. But that type of saint, one who does not fight for his rights, is an unacceptable image in today’s society. So people have made Uncle Tom the symbol for a spineless, go-along-to-get-along person. Stowe made him so saintly to make an undeniable case that people should be judged on character, not skin color, and that very characteristic ruined the message. Funny, that’s what Dr. King said too.