Individuals and Responsibility in American Literature.
This paper examines how America is founded on a spirit of independence. A war was fought for it, and even the Civil War might be seen in part as an effort to preserve the independent culture of the South from the industrial tyranny of the North. Certainly, American literature is littered with the independent hero and movies and have recently taken up the theme with gusto. The notion of independence, however, is often wedded to the notion of responsibility. Authors like Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Thoreau and Hawthorne have all explored the idea of individualism as it relates to notions of responsibility. 3.5 pgs. 0 f/c. 0b.
