Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
American mythology essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: American mythology essay
In his article “The Mythology of Hope and Change”, Ira Chernus attempts to explain Americans worldview -one with a built in contradiction. This is based upon the Settlers belief that in coming to the New World, out of a desire to be religiously and personally free; they see themselves like a New Israeli, blessed by God. They are people that risked their lives for the ability to create a new country, a new community, out of the wilderness that surrounded them. Americans from the very beginning, have embraced change as a necessity for improving their lives. An example that Chernus provides is the fact of the settlers going westward from their homeland from europe; to escape the strong grip of the government and church had it’s people. But at
David L. Chappell. A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow
In the 17th Century, widespread colonization of the new world was constantly changing the face of the Americas. European power-houses like England, France and Spain were building colonies on every coast line of the new world. The Native Americans were being forced from the lands they called home for many years, and those that wished to stay were being converted to Catholicism or other religious practices. In some parts of the Americas Native Americans were even being pressed into slavery.
Boyer, Paul S. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. D.C. Heath and Company, Mass. © 1990
In a lively account filled that is with personal accounts and the voices of people that were in the past left out of the historical armament, Ronald Takaki proffers us a new perspective of America’s envisioned past. Mr. Takaki confronts and disputes the Anglo-centric historical point of view. This dispute and confrontation is started in the within the seventeenth-century arrival of the colonists from England as witnessed by the Powhatan Indians of Virginia and the Wamapanoag Indians from the Massachusetts area. From there, Mr. Takaki turns our attention to several different cultures and how they had been affected by North America. The English colonists had brought the African people with force to the Atlantic coasts of America. The Irish women that sought to facilitate their need to work in factory settings and maids for our towns. The Chinese who migrated with ideas of a golden mountain and the Japanese who came and labored in the cane fields of Hawaii and on the farms of California. The Jewish people that fled from shtetls of Russia and created new urban communities here. The Latinos who crossed the border had come in search of the mythic and fabulous life El Norte.
American Indians shaped their critique of modern America through their exposure to and experience with “civilized,” non-Indian American people. Because these Euro-Americans considered traditional Indian lifestyle savage, they sought to assimilate the Indians into their civilized culture. With the increase in industrialization, transportation systems, and the desire for valuable resources (such as coal, gold, etc.) on Indian-occupied land, modern Americans had an excuse for “the advancement of the human race” (9). Euro-Americans moved Indians onto reservations, controlled their education and practice of religion, depleted their land, and erased many of their freedoms. The national result of this “conquest of Indian communities” was a steady decrease of Indian populations and drastic increase in non-Indian populations during the nineteenth century (9). It is natural that many American Indians felt fearful that their culture and people were slowly vanishing. Modern America to American Indians meant the destruction of their cultural pride and demise of their way of life.
The American version of history blames the Native people for their ‘savage ' nature, for their failure to adhere to the ‘civilized norms ' of property ownership and individual rights that Christian people hold, and for their ‘brutality ' in defending themselves against the onslaught of non-Indian settlers. The message to Native people is simple: "If only you had been more like us, things might have been different for you.”
The United States was a recently forged nation state in the early 1800’s. Recently formed, this nation state was very fragile and relied on the loyalty of its citizens to all work collectively toward the establishment and advancement of the nation states. Many members of the nation state gave great sacrifices, often their lives, to see that the united states was a successful and democratic. However, the United States, was fundamentally a mixing pot of all foreign people (excluding marginalized Native Americans). This early 1800 's flow of new “Americans” continued as people sought new opportunities and escaped religious or political persecution and famine. One notable
While the US may have prided themselves in the fact that we didn’t practice imperialism or colonialism, and we weren’t an Empire country, the actions conquering land in our own country may seem to rebuff that claim. In the 19th century, the West was a synonym for the frontier, or edge of current settlement. Early on this was anything west of just about Mississippi, but beyond that is where the Indian tribes had been pushed to live, and promised land in Oklahoma after policies like Indian removal, and events like the Trail of Tears. Indian’s brief feeling of security and this promise were shattered when American’s believed it was their god given right, their Manifest Destiny, to conquer the West; they began to settle the land, and relatively quickly. And with this move, cam...
During 1607-1753, Colonial America was founded. Starting on 1492, when Christopher Columbus discovered land beyond the England, people were launched into a new life. A group of puritans departed from England to escape the growing stress of the English government. Searching for freedom, in both religion and government, they sailed towards America. Their main goal was not only to start e new life, but also to convert the savages; “Indians.” With this move they experienced many difficulties. Upon starting a new life, they had to learn a new way of political life, social life, educational life, and above all religious lives.
St Jean de Crevecoeur, was an emigrant of Europe. Crevecoeur, had no desire to go back to the land in which his forefathers had lived. He was going to a more diverse way of living “where all races melted into new race of man.” (pg 308) He believed America was a place to go to be a free man, “who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, that he receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he hold.”(pg 308) Crevecoeur knew that his life as a new man would entail new ideas and new opinions. Hoping that the new laws protect him, “from involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury and useless labor, he has passed to tolls of very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence.” (pg 308) Crevecoeur lived the life of a free man in which he was paid for his labors, he owned land and was a farmer. His view of an American, “is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions.” (pg 308)
During the three centuries, the Americans' governmental philosophy changed from communal living to more federalism. The religious faith shifted from internal to external, and devotion to God changed to a greedy search for material good. People's value was changed and it is still changing and redefining the American self.
America was not expected to be able to settle its peoples’ differences because it had a never-before-seen diversity. For example, when Thomas Paine said “different in their modes of worship,” he was considering the different types of people that were then living in the new nation. Colonists were importing Africans, dislocating Native Americans, and settling the country. People from all over the world would soon be coming to experience the new world
Many people today know the story of the Indians that were native to this land, before “white men” came to live on this continent. Few people may know that white men pushed them to the west while many immigrants took over the east and moved westward. White men made “reservations” that were basically land that Indians were promised they could live on and run. What many Americans don’t know is what the Indians struggled though and continue to struggle through on the reservations.
Change is at the center of countless promises made by parents, leaders, and politicians every day. We’re promised change during every election cycle, at the end of every fight, and we even promise ourselves change in the beginning of every new year, all to tremendous magnitudes. Yet, these promises are seldom fulfilled, if only to the barest minimum. Even with a monumental event— a Revolution nonetheless— the resulting change in society was not very significant. After the American Revolution, citizens eager to part from England’s “corrupt” government found themselves forming one extremely similar once independent. The absolute upheaval of religious virtues in theory was barely carried out in action. Woman suffrage was virtually nonexistent until the Seneca Falls Convention, more than 60 years later. For these reasons, many who are critical of the war argue if the Revolution was truly all that Revolutionary. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a famous commentator of American values and ideals, takes a look into the beliefs and tendencies that brought America into existence in his short story “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”. While examining the behavior and actions of the various characters in the story, Hawthorne argues that humans tend to regress to what is already established, for
The Journey from Tragedy to Triumph Have you ever wondered why so many people always choose to root for the underdog in a dramatic movie or why so many people say, “What does not kill you only makes you stronger” when you are going through a rough patch in life? Well, the answer to these ponderings is based on the thought that one can only achieve a triumph or victory when faced with struggles that make him/her sacrifice something important. The poem “Dream of the Rood” vividly exhibits a theme of triumph emerging as a result of tragedy; however, the query remains as to the elicitations of these remarkable occurrences. Ultimately, the transformation from tragedy to triumph requires a sacrifice on the part of the “defeated.” This poem perfectly demonstrates a parallel between the suffering and transformation of Christ and the suffering and glorification of the Rood.