Hey! It's Amy!
We were talking in class a couple days ago whether pride was inately American. I would have to say that pride is definitely a strong characteristic that we possess in different ways than in other countries. As I brought up in class, the first wave of Cuban immigrants that came to the US after Fidel Castro gained power in Cuba were the "cream of the crop," the lawyers, the doctors, the businessmen, the well educated. However, they were willing to leave all of their wealth behind in Cuba in the hopes of starting a new life in America. This partially contradicts the idea that immigrants are willing to take menial jobs because they are better than the jobs in their home country. The wealthy and upper-middle classes were washing dishes, collecting trash, cleaning the streets, etc for even less that a caucasion would get paid to do these jobs.
If an American were to go to another country, we would expect to take whatever we wanted with us and would expect our degrees, bank accounts, and licenses (professional) to carry over. From our attitude towards the rest of the world, we seem to have this pride that says that the world bows down to America and that various nations are expected to speak English. Many nations have pride for their country, but Americans seem to take it to the level where we see our nation as the global leader.
Cubans are one of the most successful immigrant groups in the United States, but why were they able to leave all wealth and possessions behing in Cuba when US citizens would expect everything to just work out and carry over to the next location?
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3 comments:
The idea of American pride is reflected in both The Great Gatsby and the Death of a Salesman. First, the ambitions of many of the characters in the Great Gatsby set expectations too high and ended up risking everything for things or ideas that were not worth the risk and all for pride and desire. In Death of a Salesman, Willie's pride is one of the traits that leads to his downfall, the inability to reason. His pride is partially what causes him to put too much pressure on Biff to be perfect at everything because he's HIS son and is the idea of the American dream. Pride also leads to his inability to possess a job towards the end of the story, as he had multiple opportunities for a new line of work, but he wanted to maintain his pride as the New England merchant.
Willy's pride causes him to lie constantly: he lies about how much money he made, he lies about borrowing money from Charley to pay for things, he lies about the affair. Biff says that "we never told the truth for five minutes in this house." The example that Willy set for his family was that lying was okay because being "well-liked" and pride were very important. Because Willy refuses to tell the truth and admit that he is not perfect, his family lives a lie as well. Happy is much more content to follow his father's example and lie about Biff's meeting with Oliver than let Biff tell the truth.
Oh, no. That last comment was Erin.
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