“Letters from an American Farmer 323-337” is a full description of what it means to be an American. Not only from the title there is much more than the author J. Hector St. De Crevecoeur explains in the text. For example, ‘Here he beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields,...
“Letters from an American Farmer 323-337” is a full description of what it means to be an American. Not only from the title there is much more than the author J. Hector St. De Crevecoeur explains in the text. For example, ‘Here he beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an immense country filled with decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where a hundred years ago all was wild, woody, and uncultivated.’ (323) I think this describes the American dream because so many people still to this day want to come to America people want to live the American dream. People escape here in the hope of a new life for a better future thing they might not have in Europe, China. Some people might even come here because they have rights, they feel safer. They feel they are cared about. He states that there are ‘no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion’ Some places still are run differently than America some places still have kings and queens some even have dictatorships some places women still do not have rights. This text to me is the one that stood out in what it means to be an American and what it feels like to live the American dream or at least work for the American dream.
I believe the details are true and matter a lot, these cannot take the power of his interesting narrative. Olaudah Equiano’s birthplace, and the creative conflict in his literary and intellectual developments. It also examines his contributions to the development of Igbo intellectual tradition, slavery historiography, African American literary genre, comparative literature, and other fields of study. However, Equiano’s life experiences and embodied identities, which helped to shape his personality, his humanity, and the intellectual tradition that he left behind are discussed. Knowledge about Olaudah Equiano comes from his book, The Interesting Narrative, which was published in London in 1789, and from other sources. Born an Igbo in 1745 in what became southeastern Nigeria, Equiano was the youngest son in a family of six sons and a daughter. He was kidnapped along with his younger sister between the age of ten and eleven by two men and a woman in 1756. He passed from one slave dealer to another within the region including a blacksmith whose people spoke his language. After many months of traveling, Equiano landed on the coast from where he embarked on the horrific “Middle Passage” to Barbados, in the West Indies. From there, he was sold to a Virginia planter in North America.
A Letters from an American Farmer is the reading I found to be most interesting and instructive and my reason is that Letters from an American Farmer Describes Certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and Customs not Generally Known; and Conveying Some Ideas of the Late and Present Interior Circumstances of the British Colonies in North America. The twelve letters cover a wide range of topics, from the emergence of American identity to discussions concerning the slave trade. He must greatly rejoice that he lived at a time to see this fair country discovered and settled; he must necessarily feel a share of national pride when he views the chain of settlements that embellishes these extended shores.’ (Crevecoeur 636) Each Letter concerns a different aspect of life or location in the British colonies of America. Americans are the Western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and industry which began long since in the East; The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power of the different climates they inhabit.