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American Self-making and Self-Help - Coggle Diagram
American Self-making and Self-Help
Individualism
J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur, “What is an American?”
“We are all animated with the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained because each person works for himself.”
Side note: Crevecoeur does touch on Americans collectively wanting individualism.
Declaration of Independence: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for everyone (natural rights). Revolutionary, rhetorical, beautiful, sees the individual before the country
Thomas Jefferson believed in individualism: "Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual"
Edgar Allen Poe: Romanticist which was more individualistic "And we loved with love that was more than love" Annabel Lee Poem
Roosevelt: "I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction:". Believed in protecting the national parks and natural beauty.
Gillman: Believed that "women are the fed sex and men are the feeding sex". Had opposing thoughts of how women should be compared to the time period they were in and what was expected of them
Collective/Systemic
Thomas Paine “Common Sense”:
Paraphrase: This is a unique time that rarely comes that a nation has the chance to become independent . This quote is touching on all the colonies coming together to create a new nation that ideally is run more equally and united compared to England
George Whitfield: Taught religion in a new way that was not how tradiational preaching was. He was more entertaining. "other men may preach the gospel better than I, but no man can preach a better gospel". He was one preacher that began to change religions impact on society and how society as a whole thought about religion
Booker T Washington: "Compromising" over segregation laws. Doesn't care to protest about segregation but wants to fix economy
finger analogy
Enlightenment Period
Benjamin Franklin: "So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature", not so heavily religious,
Constitution
Establishment, procedural, technical, law that all has to abide by
Religion
Puritans/John Winthrop:
“city on a hill”:
The community’s success and perception on life was based off of being elect, being tested by God, or being “damned”.
Anne Hutchinson: Believed that some religous leaders were not teaching the right things or was speaking from human interpretation and not the Lord
New England Primer: "In Adam's fall we sinned all" this book taught children literature but was heavily religious based with many religious terms
Phillis Wheatley heavily believed that Christianity saved her and that if others are Christian, they will be saved. "taught my benighted soul to understand that there's a god, that there's a savior too once redemption neither sought nor knew.". Talking about being saved to a mother who's son passed "Yourselves, safe landed on the blissful shore, shall join your happy babe to part no more
Andrew Carnegie: WAS NOT RELIGIOUS BUT shares similar beliefs to puritans by believing rich should give to the poor
John Winthrop: You should love your neighbors as you love yourself
Impactful Defiance
Thoreau believed in changing unjust laws and he wouldn't pay tax as one way of being defiant.
John Brown: Acted on Thoreau's ideals before the country decided to collectively change laws.
Shay's rebellion to overthrow government
Nat Turner's rebellion: Nat was a slave who claimed to have been divinely choosen to lead the rebellion. Goal was to avenge slavery and lead other slaves who of slavery. "I heard a loud noise...the spirit...said the serpent was loosed...I should take it on and fight against the serpent."
Du Bois: Founded NAACP, protest for black rights and against segregation. "Double Conciousness:
Jacob Riis: believed in reform, brought light to lower class "The other half lives"
Economic Class
Sinclair Lewis, Babbit: "With a banker, Babbitt was humble. It was not only that the banker was by law and inescapably high priest of all finance, the man who handled the funds of the community." !
Dorthy Parker, The Waltz: "She had never been so close to money before, and it made her a little giddy. She had a feeling that it was not just money, but something else, something else. She decided that it was power. It was a feeling that she could get anything she wanted, that there was nothing she could not have."
Fitzgerald, Echoes of the Jazz Age: "It was an age of miracles...We were all going to the movies and, even more delightfully, to the motorcars. 'Anything for a change', was the slogan of the times; and in a sense, the greatest of all the changes was the rapid switch of the class in power."
Women Empowerment
Dorthy Parker, The Waltz: "She felt proud of herself for holding her own in his company. She felt that he was enjoying the dance as much as she was. She had never felt so womanly, so seductive, and so free."
Betty Friedan, The Problem that has no Name: "The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way."
Phyllis Schlafly, "What's Wrong with Equal Rights for Women": "I simply want to say that I'm against those who want to change the status of women from a protected class to unprotected. I want women to keep their special privileges."
