Coney Island Response

Kasson's history describes a place where the working man and his family could come to be amused in a fashion removed from genteel America. The harbingers of these Coney Island amusement parks such as Thompson and Dundy viewed their creationa as place where people did not come "in a serious mood, and do not want to encounter seriousness. they have enough seriousness in their day to day lives, and the keynote of the thing they do demand is change. Everything must be different from odinary experience. What is presented to them must have life action, motion , sensation, surprise shock, swiftness or else comedy.""a different world- a dream world, perhaps a nightmare world-where all is bizzare and fantastic-crazier than the craziest parts of Paris-gayer and more different than thew evryday world." Gorky and Lorca undoubtedly viewed these worlds as "nightmare worlds." Gorky perhaps takes the Marxist stance that these types of amusement parks are another form of an "opiate of the masses" when he draws on the righteous religious imagery proffered in the parks. Both Lorca and Gorky provide the reader with sordid imagery such as "vomit" and the toture of animals. Gorky writes "Joyous screams are heard, which strangely remind me of the merry yelp of a puppy let to the floor after he has been held up in the air by the scruff of his neck" this is a clear window into how Gorky views the supposed amusement provided in the parks, as a sordid, demeaning, exploitation of the working class.