Alfred Kazin Quotes
I had to admit that in his old-fashioned way O'Hara was still romantic about sex; like Scott Fitzgerald, he thought of it as an upper-class prerogative.
Kazin, Alfred. New York Jew. Knopf, 1978.
This quotation dramatically shows one of the class and occupational bias that existed during the Civil War and, albeit to a lesser extent, still existed till the draft was ended after the Vietnam War. The upper and professional classes had connections with physicians and others controlling the drafting process, and any possible physical infirmity was used by the powerful and well connected to gan a deferment.
Chivalry was a set of rules that regulated the behavior of knights especially as to their behavior in battle. It was the Medieval equivalent of the Geneva Convention. At the time knights fought against knights and peasants fought against peasants. After time the fighting was mixed. Previously, if a knight was subdued by other knights, he would surrender and promise to fight any more and that would be honored. But when a small group of peasants brought down a knight in armor, he could not surrender. He had probably killed other lightly armored peasants who were friends, and the peasants did not trust the knights. So typically, the peasants just killed the fallen knight. Social class determined the concepts of honor, fairness, trust, and chivalry came to an end.
Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic. He wrote often about the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America.
