Synopsis Of Redeemin America

The american lifestyle is characterized by a dominance of an idividualistic aspect where persobal rights are prirotized over public rights . Americans are obsessed with a quest for self-glorificationa nd achievement ignoring meanwhile their obligations towards their nation The american idividualism was thought of by some thinkers as being void and outta all conventions and moral ideals. During the post WWII boom, there were lots of contradictions and paradoxes as the coexistnece of mercifulness and powerfulness, luxury and economy, richness and charitableness The emasculation of ideals into interests was deemed by Broostin to be the secularization of the providential vision of America as Eden. this was instigated by the flattening distinction between Utopia and reality thatw as in its turn the outcome of individual desires. Habits and customs hold a paramount importance in the eyes of Americans and political inventions become therefore a mere traces of the past. This doesn’t imply that any disruptive trends and energies are aborted and killed, they persist, hand in hand with the conservative obligations and conventions. Americans remained embalmed to their achievements and entitlements and consequently to their history and blissful past. This was a attack mainly upon Jefferson’s and his colleagues’ conception of moral ideals and their contribution to the making of the nation. Kemble believes : « The fact is, that being politically the most free people on earth, the Americans are socially the least so ». the mœurs of America suited, according to him, to the task of reconciling equality and liberty. Religious life, human nature and physical geography combined all together to shape americans’ commitment to the public interests of their nation. America’s greatness as Tocqueville declares lies in its goodness. When it ceased to be good, it ceased to be great. People keep faith in their greatness and their interdependence through their assumption of America’s errand into the future. American poets like Whitman had a great share in spreading and forging a literary vision of democracy and politics as a whole. This committed literature conceived of a strong and adequate belief in America’s errand into the future. Early American writers were seen as the prophets of the nation, defining literary mimeses that illustrate their visions and speculations abt life on the new nation soil. They wanted to be original in their works and avoided imitation believing that failing in originality stands much better than succeeding in imitating old and canonic works.

They sought to remain aloof from flunkyism to the British and French pundits for it meant more submissiveness and dependance.