Baldwin's What It Means To Be An American

In Baldwin’s “what it means to be an American” there are areas in, which one can see the effect of American societal standards on writers. An opposing view of America is seen in Europe, where writer’s ideas can flourish through deep thought and new experiences. America has taken the creativity from writers through our undertones that we all label them with. They vary from expectations of writer’s success being defined by their time wasted at Starbucks cafes to playwrights that will never find success. If those writers do become successful it’s not because of the work they put in, but because they got lucky. We judge the success of writers based upon how much money they make or how many movie deals they have signed, but not the content and

We are quick to judge those that have different passions, then us and if we believe them to be unproductive, we ridicule them for their passions and call them lacking in effort. When they become successful, there must have only been luck involved and we pick from the vine of ideas writers produce, but don’t give back praise and feedback just hate and criticism. This does not mean that every writer is the next JRR Tolkien there are many poor writers out there, but America’s materialist society does not appreciate endeavor writing is. Baldwin states “the American writer, Europe, released, first of all, from the necessity of apologizing for himself” (139). A writer currently has to prove who he is based on his educational background, monetary standing and how many books he has published and found success in. Writers such as JK Rowling are stars out of their fame and money, but writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald can be forgotten because they lacked personal finical success. This expectation of writers has helped push them to another country in Baldwin’s time. They were fed up being the bit of a joke and wanted to truly find

What if Aristotle had been a writer in today’s world his ideas would have been repressed and in America we are not open anymore to free interpretations and expressionism. We are a very individualistic society, but don’t practice it when we refer to “oh those writers.” Our fellow country men’s repression of ideas and the writing endeavor forced men like Baldwin, who was on the extreme of being black and writer led to him needing salvation in Europe from our group think and materialistic society. Writers want to find a place where they don’t have to use “habit of flexing his muscles and proving that he is just a “regular guy” that he realizes how crippling this have has been” (139). We have stagnated the intellectual curiosity of millions of Americans for many years. Telling them unless you can flex your scholarly muscle then you can’t find success as a writer. “You son should be an engineer, your no good at writing” or “Do something actually productive with your life don’t write for a profession, there is no money” we force these ideas upon the young so they can’t grow up to find success. Though some may not be good at writing it can be learned through practice and the practice is