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 Crévecoeur.
             De Crévecoeur paints a blatant picture of the regionalization that occurs so frequently in this unified nation. 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. He characterizes coast-dwellers as enterprising and cultured folk, while he describes land-dwelling farmers as spiritual and well-mannered. However, de Crévecoeur'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. His discriminatory attitude is certainly not exclusively de Crévecoeur's idea, but reflects the beliefs of many who feel America is so geographically estranged that it's only point of unity is language.
             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. Hughes refers to a table he is not allowed to eat at, which symbolically rep...

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The American Experience. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 04:00, August 02, 2025, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/72095.html