What Is An American?

6 Pages 1444 Words

“De Crevecoeur: What is an American?”




In Hector St. John de Crevecoeur’s essay “What is an American?” he attempts to describe American’s as a diverse people from many different walks of life. He describes how people came to this country to find freedom from an oppressive caste-like system. Europeans came to this country to find a new life far away from their kings, churches, and countrymen. Here, they found tolerance and a new way of life… and a new and ever-changing identity.
This new race of people was strong, hardworking, and risk-taking. They had a real need to leave Europe. The countries they left were stagnant and unchanging. Their kings were oppressive. The rich got richer and the poor stayed poor. These people had nothing in the countries they left:
“Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction or pinching penury; can that man call England or any other kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him, whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive surface of this planet? No! Urged by a variety of motives, here they came… What attachment can a poor European
emigrant have for a country where he had nothing?” (p 60)

These people had nothing to lose and everything to gain by coming to this country.
Many people who came here gained freedom and tolerance. People left behind countries of tyranny and intolerance. Intolerance from the church, from lords, kings, courts, from the rich, etc. Here they found a new place. A place where they could set up their own values and find whatever dreams they couldn’t find or have the opportunity to find in Europe.
“Here there are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to...