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John De Crevecoeur And Phillis Wheatley The Seduction Of Freedom

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For J. Hector St. John De Crèvecoeur and Phillis Wheatley the seduction of freedom was strong enough to have a hold over them throughout their lives. They express obtaining or wanting independence through writing about certain myths of American culture and identity. This idea of unfiltered, unbiased liberty saturates images of America. Even before it officially became a gaggle of nations, North America was known as a wide-open space full of possibilities. Crèvecoeur and Wheatley want the opportunity of self-determination, but it comes easier for one and with more complications for the other. Wheatley has the added disadvantage of her race and gender, while Crèvecoeur comes to these lands with all possibilities open and within reach. These outstanding factors affect the way these two write about American identity. Crèvecoeur’s Letters of An American Farmer: What is an American and various poems by Wheatley comment on the experience of being an American and share a critique on oppression, but there is a dichotomy in their specific views of the American Dream and the Self-Made Man due to their different positions in society.
The American Dream is the idea that every person should have an equal opportunity to achieve success. Crèvecoeur and Wheatley do not explicitly reiterate this definition, but the idea permeates their writings. In Letters of an American Famer Crèvecoeur writes, “we are the most perfect society now existing in the world. Here man is free as he ought to be”

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