Moby Dick: The Genesis of American Literature

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Author James A. Michener once said, “I have often been mildly amused when I think that the great American novel was not written about New England or Chicago. It was written about a white whale in the South Pacific…” (Michener). American literature started with a single book, titled Moby Dick. This book existentially began the genre of literature that gets labeled “American”. Everything in history has the ability to change with one event taking place, and for American lit’s sake, Moby Dick being created was that event. Ever since “MD” got published, American lit standards have been based off of that book. In Moby Dick, one of the major themes in the book is Honor, a theme of which that is contained in the many dominant themes of American literature. …show more content…

As a country, Freedom exists as a value that represents American literature and the way Americans live. To begin, during the Dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument speech, Daniel Webster proudly exclaims, “And by the blessing of God may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever” (Webster). Webster proclaims about how Americans live in a country that expresses various values along the lines of liberty, freedom, and peace. These values exist as key descriptions of the way Americans live in the culture. Also, Webster does a great job of describing what America does not represent, and what America really stands for. Following the passage in Webster’s address, in Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Address, he reminisced about his time at war telling the audience, …show more content…

Three of the strongest themes are freedom, honor, and hard work. In American literature, each of these are some of the strongest and most apparent themes in most pieces of text. At the end of the day, if these values were non-existent in American literature, the literature and the themes of the writing would not be the same. These themes are some of the values that shape not only American literature, but the American lifestyle as

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