The American Experience
While America has always been a country that preached unity, being referred to as a "melting pot" and known for its cultural and racial diversity, the American experience has eternally been one of isolation and discrimination. Since its primitive beginnings until present day, Americans have been segregated by race, as well as by the distinct classes that have formed due to regional separation. These severances have led to feelings of resentment amongst fellow Americans, which are expressed beautifully in the poem I Too, by Langston Hughes and the essay, What Is an American by Michael-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur.De Crevecoeur paints a blatant picture of the regionaliza
Hughes articulates his feelings of isolation, and speaks of his plans to someday, put those Americans who have isolated him to shame. Hughes' attitude towards America is both contradictory and concurrent to de Crevecoeur's. His feeling of seclusion is due to the color of his skin, and he wants to show the absurdity of the unwritten rule that blacks and whites are not equal. Whether regional separation or unfair attitudes and prejudices towards racially different persons are the origin, segregation is indisputably a huge part of the American experience. tion that occurs so frequently in this unified nation. The powerful wording and cynical tone of Langston Hughes' poem exhibits not only his bitter attitude towards the American experience, but is a fairly accurate depiction of most African Americans' feelings. His metaphoric comparison of men to plants, claiming that the fruit they produce is dependant upon the soil in which they grow, illustrates his feelings towards the extreme differences between Americans coming from, or, "growing in," different parts of the country. Hughes refers to a table he is not allowed to eat at, which symbolically represents America. However, de Crevecoeur's appalling characterization of frontiersmen depicts them as drunken, lazy, greedy, "carnivorous animals," who are often in a "perfect state of war" against not only the wild beasts they live amongst, but each other. He writes as a representative of African Americans throughout the country who feel they too are being categorized based solely on race. He characterizes coast-dwellers as enterprising and cultured folk, while he describes land-dwelling farmers as spiritual and well-mannered. His discriminatory attitude is certainly not exclusively de Crevecoeur's idea, but reflects the beliefs of many who feel America is so geographically estranged that it's only point of unity is language. Feeling as if he deserves an opportunity equivalent to that of any Caucasian, Hughes eagerly waits to demonstrate his equality. While both writers feel that the American experience revolves around segregation, they each trace the division to dissimilar causes.
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Acceptance Essays
