Джон А. Тейлор
John A. Taylor
American Populism, Captain Daniel Shays, and The Wizard of Oz
"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." That is one of the
most famous lines in all of American cinema. Perhaps you will recognize
that it comes from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy tells it to
her little dog Toto when they get to Oz. Dorothy speaks for many
contemporary American people these days. Some people think we are in
a new and undiscovered situation, but they need not worry. Political
power in America is now in the hands of a representative of our oldest
and most familiar type of American politician, the populist. In this paper,
let me tell you first about American populism and the Wizard of Oz. I will
discuss Shays’ Rebellion. At the end of the paper, I will connect our past
to today’s American populism.
If you know the Wizard of Oz movie, then that is good because
therefore you already know a bit about populism. That famous movie
was a satisfactory exposition of populist thought. Of course, they based
the movie on the 1900 novel by L. Frank Baum. The Russian writer
Alexander Volkov reinvented the Oz story for Russian readers, and his
books are still very popular with Russian children. Perhaps his book is
even better known here in Russia than either the American movie or the
Baum novel because so many children read Volkov without knowing that
he borrowed the story. [Волков]
In The Wizard of Oz, both the American book and the movie, you
find a full and complete exposition of populism. Most of what I say here
about Wizard of Oz and populism is common knowledge in the United
States. I myself was taught about populism and the Wizard of Oz in high
school and university. These things are also all over the Internet now, but
I think most Americans still learn this information in school and university.
Following my own educational experience, therefore, I will divide my
discussion here of populism and the Wizard of Oz into two parts, the high
school part and the university part, simple and advanced.
Here is the high school version of populism and the Wizard of Oz.
First of all, the plot. Dorothy is a young girl in Kansas, an American state
on the Great Plains in the mid section of the country. A cyclone picks up
the little house with Dorothy and her dog Toto still inside, and the cyclone
sets them down in the land of Oz, an imaginary kingdom. Dorothy and
Toto meet witches good and bad, and they also meet a tin woodman, a
scarecrow, and a lion. The tin man lacks a heart, the scarecrow brains,
and the lion courage. Dorothy wants to go home to Kansas. They decide
to follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City where they hope the
wizard of Oz will be able to grant their desires. Dorothy wears magical
357 slippers. She and the others have adventures, but at last they meet the
wizard who at first appears great and powerful The wizard rules the
whole country. At the first meeting, he appears to each of them in a
different guise, but chance reveals that the wizard is only an ordinary
man who has all along used various tricks to fool people. He is in short
neither great nor powerful – nor evil – but just an ordinary humbug
American politician. He used the stupidity and guile of people to trick
them into obedience.
In an important detail of the plot, the movie differed from the book.
The detail concerned Dorothy’s magic slippers. In the book, the were
silver, but in the movie they were changed to ruby in order to make best
use of color. The detail is important to our interpretation of the Wizard of
Oz. Let us now turn from the plot to discuss this interpretation. We are
still at the high school level, of course.
For the high school version of populism and The Wizard of Oz I refer
you to “The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism” by Henry M. Littlefield.
As the article itself stated, the author was a teacher at Mount Vernon
High School in the state of New York when he published it. [Littlefield]
I also refer you to current controversy. As I write this paper, powerful
people say that the US dollar is overvalued, and they want it to go lower
against other currencies especially the Chinese RMB. They say that the
strength of the dollar is “killing” American jobs. They want our
government to slap tariffs on goods from countries or companies which
they believe are unfair in their trade practices. [Craig]
The world of the Wizard of Oz sounds very familiar, therefore.
Appearing in 1900, Baum’s Wizard of Oz reflected economic and political
controversies of its day, especially the debates over the gold standard
and over the tariff question or protectionism. Things have not changed
very much. Bankers then were part of a coastal elite which profited from
the gold standard and from some tariffs. They wanted strong
government, protection of property and the sanctity of contracts,
continued hard money, and some tariff protection. Farmers in Kansas,
like Dorothy’s Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, were at a disadvantage, and
they wanted the federal government in Washington to make silver into
legal currency, creating a bimetallic monetary system. William Jennings
Bryan of Nebraska, a state similar to Kansas, said in 1896, “they shall
not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,” and the phrase made him
famous.
This is the point of Dorothy’s silver slippers and of her journey on the
Yellow Brick Road. They are both part of the allegory about populism.
She follows the golden road in her magic silver slippers, and they
eventually set her free. Meanwhile she discovers that the bankers are
ordinary folk whose power and duplicity are mere humbug. They are a
threat only to weak and heartless people. When people have courage,
358 brains, and a good heart then those things make them safe against the
deceits and humbug wizardry of those in power. This argument is
populism in a nutshell.
The high school version connected The Wizard of Oz to the specific
controversies of Baum’s own day. The college version of the argument
agrees with that analysis but also maintains that populism is older than
the controversies of Baum’s day. Populism contributed to the formation
of the present federal government.
Here then is the university account of populism. It centers on the
1786 and 1787 rebellion of Captain Daniel Shays. That rebellion was the
origin, model, and type of all subsequent American populism, academic
historians usually say. A study of Shays’ Rebellion illuminates not only
The Wizard of Oz but also Trump’s recent victory, therefore. That is not
an opinion or a judgment. It is simply a fact.
You will need a bit of background about Captain Shays, no doubt.
No Alexander Volkov made Shays familiar to Russian readers. Shays
lived in western Massachusetts in the area around Springfield and
Northampton, and he was an officer in the revolutionary American army
during the War of the American Revolution. General George
Washington’s protégé the marquis de Lafayette awarded Shays a
ceremonial sword in recognition of his service, a high honor. However,
Shays was wounded in the war, and furthermore his army salary went
unpaid. With this background, Shays received the approbation of his
neighbors when they rebelled against in 1786. Shays reluctantly agreed
to lead their rebellion, and it took its name from him. (Note the final “s” in
the correct spelling of Shays. The possessive is Shays’ therefore, and
Shay’s is a misspelling.)
This rebellion was a decisive event in American history because it
occurred after the Revolution but during the formation of the present
federal government. During the War of the Revolution, the states crafted
a document which they called articles of confederation. James Madison
of Virginia – who wrote the present US constitution – dismissed the
articles. He said they established a mere league of amity and mutual
defense. The articles were still in force when Says led his rebellion, and
the rebellion pointed up faults in the articles.
When Shays and his neighbors rose in armed rebellion, rich
merchants ruled Boston, the capital city of Massachusetts. Many of these
merchants had supported the American Revolution, and they profited
from the war because of the opportunity it gave them to trade abroad
without much interference from any government, but now the war was
over, and they wanted stable government, hard money, and high tariffs.
Profiting, they had lent money at interest, sometimes to poor farmers in
western Massachusetts. The farmers had little cash money, and and the
Revolution crushed them with debt and taxes. It did so with Shays
359 himself. When he got home from the war, wounded and without his pay,
he was hounded for debt, and his poverty and hardship forced Shays to
sell his precious sword, a sad commentary on his legacy from the War of
the Revolution. He joined his neighbors when they demanded that the
state government issue paper money and use if for instance to pay the
unpaid soldiers. Shays and his neighbors then wished the state
government to authorize them to use their paper to pay their debts and
their taxes. The paper would depreciate in value, perhaps becoming
nearly worthless, you see, but this would not be any disadvantage to the
poor debtors, and it would be a hardship only to their rich Boston
creditors who had never served in the war and who instead were cosy
and comfortable throughout the conflict. The bankers would suffer
hardship because they would receive in repayment paper money worth
less in real value than the coined money which they had lent initially.
Shays’ Rebellion was decisive because it clearly highlighted the
weakness of American central government under the articles of
confederation. Since states remained fully sovereign under the articles,
the state government of Massachusetts was alone and without
assistance in the face of civil disorder. The central government under the
articles had no warrant to assist the statehouse in Boston. This
circumstance hastened approval of the present federal government,
giving it power to uphold the republican form of government in the states.
The point therefore is that Shays’ Rebellion had a powerful effect,
shaping subsequent US history. The present strong federal government
is partly a legacy of Shays Rebellion. [Vidal]
On the other hand, Shays’ Rebellion simply petered out. Dissidents
quieted themselves, and the state authorities for their part also shrank
from harsh repressive measures. Shays’ Rebellion melted away leaving
the present American system.
Today we may think we are out of our usual and familiar
surroundings. We are not in Kansas anymore. However, things may
again go the way of Shays’ Rebellion and The Wizard of Oz. Shays’
rebels wanted to melt the gilt on the dome of the statehouse to pay the
debts of the commonwealth. Our politicians make today’s version of
those same promises. They may truly make important and lasting
changes, but then the popular anger will melt away. Like the wizard of
the Oz story, today’s politicians will step out from behind the curtain and
will reveal themselves as an ordinary people who are tired of it all and
who want to go home.
I hope meanwhile we all find our own yellow brick roads and our
own magic slippers, be they silver or ruby!
360 Bibliography
1. Волков А. М. Волшебник изумрудного города: все истории в одной книге. –
СПб.: Ленинградское изд-во, 2011. – 862 с.
2. Littlefield H.M. The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism // American Quarterly.
1964. Vol. 16. No. 1 (Spring). P. 47–58.
3. Craig V. Dollar Slumps After Trump Says Currency Strength ‘Killing Us’. –
URL:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/17/dollar-slumps-after-trumpsays-currency-strength-killing-us.html [Date of access: 25.01.2016].
4. Vidal G. Homage to Daniel Shays. – URL: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/
1972/08/10/homage-to-daniel-shays/ [Date of access: 25.01.2016].
С. С. Шимберг, Н. В. Удальцова
Передача семантики оценочных суффиксов
в переводе с русского на английский язык
В русском языке суффикс является одним из наиболее используемых словообразовательных элементов, поэтому количество
суффиксов в языке очень велико. Среди них можно выделить особую категорию – суффиксы субъективной оценки, которые определяются как «суффиксы, служащие для образования форм имен
существительных, качественных прилагательных и наречий с особой, эмоционально-экспрессивной окраской и выражением отношения говорящего к предмету, качеству, признаку. Суффиксы
субъективной оценки придают словам различные оттенки (ласкательное, сочувствия, пренебрежения, презрения, уничижения, иронии, также реального уменьшения или увеличения)» [2, с. 314].
Частотность употребления оценочных суффиксов в современном русском языке весьма высока и передача их семантики при переводе становится актуальной проблемой, особенно для
переводчиков художественных текстов. При этом в пособиях по переводу не уделяется должного внимания этой проблеме. Именно
поэтому анализ данного явления может в дальнейшем стать основой для обобщения в теоретических и практических пособиях по переводу.
Глубинной предпосылкой трудностей, возникающих при передаче значений суффиксов, является типологическое различие в
строе языков. Так, русский язык по своей природе синтетичен, что
означает, что грамматическое значение «внутрь слова» привносят
окончания, суффиксы, приставки, внутренние флексии, повтор морфемы, супплетивное видоизменение основы слова. Английский же
язык аналитичен, а значит, грамматическое значение выражается
посредством предлогов, союзов, артиклей, вспомогательных глаголов, интонации, порядка слов [1, с. 69–70]. То есть те значения, которые в русском языке передаются синтетически, в английском
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