1
Harrison, Katherine
English 11B
Prohibition
People used to make their own alcohol and it was not legal at one time. The same has
happened with marijuana and now they are both legal in California. Prohibition was the ban of
alcohol sales in the United States. Prohibition has come a long way from stopping people from
doing things in this country. There were a lot of historical events that lead us to where we are
today, including a change in American Literature.
People lost jobs, people were upset, they started selling alcohol illegally and people were
put into jail because of it. The change in government is what changed the law. “A law was made
to stop alcohol sales. It caused the United States to lose money and people lost jobs. Prohibition
caused people to lose their jobs, it made people upset as the government changed the laws of
alcohol sales in the United States. With the country mired in the Great Depression by 1932,
creating jobs and revenue by legalizing the liquor industry had an undeniable appeal. Democrat
Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for president that year on a platform calling for Prohibition’s appeal,
and easily won victory over the incumbent President Herbert Hoover. FDR’s victory meant the
end for Prohibition, and in February 1933 Congress adopted a resolution proposing a 21st
Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 18th. The amendment was submitted to the
states, and in December 1933 Utah provided the 36th and final necessary vote for ratification.
2
Though a few states continued to prohibit alcohol after Prohibition’s end, all had abandoned the
ban by 1966” (Editors, History.com, 2009).
People seem to believe that there was importance in the events leading up to and after the
banning of alcohol in the United States. Reverend Lyman Beecher preaches against the evils of
alcohol. In 1812, Beecher took a stand against alcohol. He preached to the people in his area and
wrote out 6 sermons on “intemperance” and they were translated into other languages and people
heard his message around the world. Maine was the first state to prohibit the manufacture and
sale of liquor in 1851. Thousands of signatures were gathered on a petition demanding the state
legislature enact a law. Eliza Thompson led women in 1873 to sing hymns against alcohol in
Visitation Bands to protest saloons and petition drug stores that filled prescriptions. People
across the United States were banning together to stop alcohol sales because they were causing
people to act badly and they were creating a mean society.
Attempts to outlaw the use of alcohol in American history had not worked as planned.
People started to lie about the sales of alcohol; it caused more harm than good. People were
finding ways to make their own, leading to deaths. People were breaking more laws to find ways
to get and make alcohol. There was no real benefit to the banning of alcohol sales in the United
States; it caused more harm than good. "Then Prohibition came along, and that basically gave
them an American Express black card," Kane said. "It subsidized criminal activity in this
country" and “Yet there is a major difference between Capone's henchmen and the Mexican
cartels: "The violence is not to the scale of what's going on in Mexico," Peck said” (McLaughlin,
Eliott C., 2012).
3
The war on alcohol united people in ways that caused more problems in the United
States. The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, banning “the manufacture,
sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” National prohibition. The temperance movement
brought religion into the mix. People got their way, but it wasn’t right for everyone. Laws were
put into effect, but they didn’t really work for everyone, everywhere.
All things come to an end. In this case, prohibition also had to end. For marijuana it was
the legalization that made it change for people, jails and the states government. Laws are put in
place, but they are broken. Not enough room in the jails to house these minor infractions. There
are many things that worked in the past, but they aren’t working today. There are new laws, new
people, and a new way of life. What is the real cause of the problem? What can people do to
make things better?
In my research, I found it interesting that people were making their own alcohol and it
was not legal at one time. The same has happened with marijuana and it is now legal in a lot of
states. According to Pro Con.org, medical marijuana is legal in 33 states and for recreational use
in 10 other states. People have taken steps to legalize marijuana. There are places today you can
buy marijuana legally in many states in the United States. This seems to be profitable for states
that are allowing the legalization of marijuana. States are benefiting from the legalization of
marijuana as they did from the legalization of alcohol.
People all over the country decided they had more thoughts and more feelings when they
drank. They became more ambitious when they drank, they used this time to go out and dance
4
and have fun. They also used this time to write stories. In the book “Spirit of Defiance”, the
author writes about this, “Drowne examines a wide range of American literature including works
by William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Claude McKay,
Sinclair Lewis, Zora Neale Hurston, and Upton Sinclair. Grounding her study in social, cultural,
and literary history, she investigates how these and other authors’ politically charged accounts of
life during the “Dry Decade” reflected the many ways Americans responded to the legal, social,
and cultural changes wrought by National Prohibition” (Hmm, 2019). “By making alcohol
forbidden, Prohibition increased its appeal for American writers. Writers are outlaws”
(Flavorwire, 2015). This author talks about the reason why American Literature changed and
what caused it in her book. It shows that writers were affected by prohibition, it changed the way
they wrote, and it changed what they wrote. It seems like authors felt like they had more freedom
in their writing. It is like they were using their writing to tell people all over what was going on.
They used this as a way to express themselves and to get things out in the open for other people
to know about.
Prohibition has come a long way from stopping people from doing things in this country.
There is a long history of events that lead us to where we are today. People did not benefit from
the legalization of alcohol. If things got so bad, I don’t understand why drugs or alcohol would
be legal. I think there are a lot of things we could have done differently to change the outcome of
the legalization of alcohol, marijuana and peoples spiritual defiance in literature.
5
Works Cited
1. Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. “Prohibition.” Encyclopedia Britannica,
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 3 Aug. 2018,
www.britannica.com/event/Prohibition-United-States-history-1920-1933.
2. Editors, History.com. “Prohibition.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009,
www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/prohibition.
3. Sandbrook, Dominic. “How Prohibition Backfired and Gave America an Era of Gangsters and
Speakeasies.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 25 Aug. 2012,
www.theguardian.com/film/2012/aug/26/lawless-prohibition-gangsters-speakeasies.
4. Sanneh, Kelefa. “Prohibition and the Penal State.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 31 July
2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/drunk-with-power.
5. “Unintended Consequences .” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service,
www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/unintended-consequences/.
6. McLaughlin, Eliott C. “Marijuana Advocates Hope to Rise from 'Prohibition'.” CNN, Cable
News Network, 4 Dec. 2012,
www.cnn.com/2012/12/01/us/marijuana-legalization-and-prohibition/index.html.
6
7. “33 Legal Medical Marijuana States and DC.” Should Marijuana Be a Medical Option?, 2019,
medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000881.
8. Hales, Taylor. “Prohibition Literary Analysis .” Prohibition - Literature Analysis, 2004,
umich.edu/~eng217/student_projects/nkazmers/prohibitionlit.html.
9. Hmm. “The Ohio State University Press.” The Ohio State University Press, 2019,
ohiostatepress.org/books/Book%20Pages/Drowne%20Spirits.html.
10. Flavorwire. “How Prohibition Turned American Writers Into Drinkers: From Susan
Cheever's 'Drinking in America'.” Flavorwire, 14 Oct. 2015,
flavorwire.com/542656/how-prohibition-turned-american-writers-into-drinkers-from-susan
-cheevers-drinking-in-america.
11. Unknown. “Spirits of Defiance: National Prohibition and Jazz Age Literature | Origins:
Current Events in Historical Perspective.” Origins, 2019,
origins.osu.edu/review/spirits-defiance-national-prohibition-and-jazz-age-literature.
Mending Wall by Robert Frost
In this poem about the Mending Wall, Frost seems to be talking about the
relationship people can have with barriers. The theme is keeping people away from
each other. It seems to be about people who are trying to stay away from each other
and keep their own space. Some people try to stay private and don’t like people in
their lives. Even if there are barriers, people can still meet somewhere in between
and have a conversation. An example of this is in line 4 “And makes gaps even two
can pass abreast”. I think he is referring to a place in a wall where people can stop to
talk, a whole in the wall.
There is conflict in this story. As he continues with his wall, he begins to talk
about “But at spring mending-time we find them there.” Even if, as he says earlier,
“The work of hunters is another thing”, he is still talking about a relationship people
have with each other. I think he is talking about how people can work together to
build a wall, only to break down the barriers it might create. If people have conflict
and can’t work together, there will be problems for them.
The setting is the countryside in a small town. A wall has plenty of purposes.
The most often use of a wall is to create a barrier between two places, sometimes
between two people. Frost talks about how rabbits and yelping dogs might find a
place at a wall. It creates an image in your mind about what he is talking about. He
finds ways to give you information about a place with his words. As people find that
they have more in common in this small town, they can use their area and space to
stop their conflict. So the setting and the plot of the story come together.
All of these ideas come together through personification, metaphor and
similes throughout the story. Frost makes good use of words to express the way
people feel about their neighbors and the places around them. What some people
might see, others might not. Frost mentions “There where it is we do not need the
wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard.” Maybe he is referring to how people
might want to stay on their own sides of their wall or keep their space. People have
different interests and different ways to keep themselves happy. They don’t always
have to come together.
I think that Frost brings a lot of the parts of writing together in his stories. I
think this one especially brings parts of speech together with conflict, symbolism in
a lot a places and through the characters. Maybe mending the wall is what people
should be doing in order to get along. Maybe people should work harder at their
relationships. Frost goes on to say, “Good fences make good neighbors”. He also
finishes with this line. I think this is important because it is true. If you aren’t going
to be a good neighbor, you aren’t going to have a good fence. If you aren’t willing to
work with your neighbor, you won’t have a happy life.
45. Respond in a paragraph. Answer is written in complete sentences. (16 pts)Choose any two (16 points)
characters studied in Semester B, and compare them to one another. The characters that you
choose may be characters in a story or the narrators of poetry or nonfiction. How are these
characters similar? How are they different? How do you think these characters might interact if
they had the opportunity? How do you think they would act if suddenly transplanted to the
twenty-first century? Be sure to include direct references to the traits of the characters learned
through the stories.
Select the link to access the English Essay Rubric.
46. In English 11 you have studied literature from the 1920s through the 1980s and learned about (16 points)
how American society changed over that time period.
Write an essay about how the literature of America has changed over time, as seen in this
semester's readings. You should select 4 important pieces of literature that you have read and
use them to show how literature reflects history, as well as how literature reflects changes or
events throughout history. Be sure to include a brief summary of the historical time periods for
each piece. Consider elements such as theme, style, and tone in your analysis.
Select the link to access the English Essay Rubric.
Purchase answer to see full
attachment