What Is An American

In his essay “What Is an American”, Hector St. John de CrÐ"Ёvecoeur writes about his experiences seeing the new American culture shortly after it came about in North America. He contrasts the type of live that these new Americans had with what was common in Europe at the time. Through the passage, he expresses much dissimilarity between the lives of Europeans and Americans, highlighting how different the situation was in America. He mainly illustrates that the working class and those that were more privileged shared a closer bond in America. The power was more spread out, and there was no system where a few individuals held control over a number of peasants. Although he accepts that there will always be separations in class caused by money, he notices that the distinction among these groups of people is more blurred than what he is used to in Europe.

Throughout the years, these notions as given by CrÐ"Ёvecoeur seem to have fallen by the wayside. There is still a division among classes of people, the blue collar workers from corporate employees and everyone in between. The wealth of society is also not such a shared resource, and more commonly it seems as though the rich keep increasing their prosperity and the poor continue on their path further into want. A common example is all to prevalent today when I paid four dollars for a gallon of gasoline, while the heads of the companies that refine and extract that gasoline are enjoying more and more luxury. Those who could really use the extra money are the ones that end up giving it, through one form or another, to those who have no need for an increase in assets.