American Classics Worth Celebrating This July

Commentary

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, celebrations and commentaries will rightly hail the document and other civic and political touchstones of our history. The declaration, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address, and many secondary statements such as Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise speech of 1895 make up a civic corpus unequaled by any other nation in human history.

But let’s not overlook another canon of civic expression, a parallel tradition that likewise offers American ideals but in another mode. I mean the American literary heritage, the writers who have given to the civic principles we extol every Fourth of July a narrative, a drama, a protagonist, and a rhetoric. These form the literary side of the national character and the American way, and they are always worth reiteration. Here are a few of them.

Ben Franklin’s “Autobiography” is an archetypal rags-to-riches American plot. We find elements of it in the Horatio Alger stories, “The Great Gatsby,” William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!” Washington’s “Up From Slavery,” and many more.

Franklin’s “Autobiography” sets the pattern. We remember him as a famed Founder, a renowned scientist, a diplomat, and a wit. The autobiography begins in his childhood and adolescence, when Franklin became a runaway and a criminal, landing in Philadelphia with no money or prospects—nothing but some experience as a printer. He has a strong Protestant work ethic, though, and an eye for profit (which never slips into chicanery). He reads a lot and finds friends with whom he can discuss ideas and works. Fame and fortune follow. Franklin presents his path to success as an example to be imitated. There are lessons in free speech and freedom of the press in these early sections, too, which adds a real-life component to the First Amendment decades later (his brother lands in jail for an editorial criticizing Boston officials).

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”: For more than 30 years, Emerson stood at the very top of American society as the “Sage of Concord.” Americans far and wide read his essays and attended his lectures, the most programmatic of which may be “Self-Reliance,” a hymn to nonconformity.

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,” Emerson wrote. He also wrote, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind,” and he wrote, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” The announcements are a provocation. Be independent, don’t follow the crowd, go your own way, “imitation is suicide.” Here we have the cry of the Revolution—”Don’t tread on me!”—brought down to the individual, where the threat of freedom is not King George III but customs, fashions, norms, and institutions that require too much compliance. The group survives by curbing the individual outlook and taming the will, Emerson warns. When Marlon Brando, the motorcycle gang leader in “The Wild One,” is asked, “Hye, Johnny what ‘er you rebelling against?” and he replies, “Whad’ya got?” he’s a pure Emersonian.

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”: I could have selected “Walden” as the next entry (Henry David Thoreau takes full residence in the woods on July 4, 1845), or some of the Emersonian poems of Emily Dickinson, or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s preface to “The Scarlet Letter,” which recounts Hawthorne’s depressing time as a federal employee in Salem, Massachusetts, but let’s go with Whitman’s great free verse composition, first published in 1855.

It’s a prime expression of anti-tradition, fully in line with American exceptionalism. He aims for a fresh style, a poetic form as novel as the nation he inhabits. No sonnets for him, no conventional stanzas and rhyme and metaphors, only the rhythms and sounds that come out of his own heart and soul, what he calls “the Me myself.”

Grand works of the Old World celebrate great heroes such as Odysseus and King Arthur. Here, the opening line is “I celebrate myself.” The past is unequal to who we are, Whitman insists, the old books inadequate to the bustling life of America. Rather than sit in the library, Whitman opts to ride the buses on Broadway and listen to “the blab of the pave.” The frontispiece of the first edition shows Whitman in a working man’s attire. No gentleman scholar identity for him. He’s a regular American, loose and easy like the beatnik or folk singer or the intellectual who wears jeans and a T-shirt and is comfortable with slang. The “genius” in America, he wrote in the preface, lies “most in the common people.”

Frederick Douglass, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”: There is much to say about the story of Douglass, but one element has special relevance to the present time. He is one of the superb rhetoricians in American literary history, and his presentation of the evils of slavery is moving and trenchant. They are enough to give the book a place in the canon.

So is something that happens in his childhood, a strange development for a slave. When he’s still a boy (Douglass isn’t quite sure of when he was born), his mistress sets about teaching him to read. She is new to slavery and looks upon Douglass with kindness. However, when her husband finds out, he insists that she stop, telling her that literacy would unfit him to be a good slave. It would also make him miserable, he predicts, and she desists.

Douglass overhears their conversation and draws a bold conclusion: “I must learn to read—if I don’t, I shall never be free.” What follows is a tricky course of action on his part whereby he uses white boys to school him on ABCs. The more he learns, though, the more the master is proven right. He hates his life. The story goes from adventure to adventure and eventually to an escape, none of which would have happened had not the reading habit formed. As young Americans log ever fewer hours of book time, Douglass’s risky pursuit is an inspiration.

That’s just a sample of literary works to go with the civic treatises. If we wish to pass along the full meaning of the American past and the American way, they should be assigned in school, read at the dinner table, and included in the rituals to come this summer.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.