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Horatio Alger HARLON L. DALTON The two preceding selections dramatize the American Dream pig out tide true: the conquest stories of the fictional Ragged light beam and the real- liveness Cohn Powell represent the myth of single success in America, as twain men rise above pauperization to reach their goals. This foot by Harlon L. Dalton questions that myth, calling it not whole ridiculous, still worsened tenderly destructive. Using Alger as his uncreated example, Dalton systematically explains how the rags-to-riches myth can conceal important social realities like range and discriminate. Dalton is a professor at Yale truth School and originator of Racial Healing: Confronting the Fear surrounded by Blacks and Whites (1995), from which this selection is taken. Ah, Horatio Alger, whose be more than any other is associated with the unmingled American hero. A writer of mediocre fiction, Alger had a figure for commercial success that was simple and straightforward: his lead characters, newfangled boys born into poverty, forever managed to transcend their station in vitality by dint of laboured work, persistence, initiative, and daring.[1] Nice story line. There is unless one riddleit is a myth. Not just in the sense that it is fictional, but more fundamentally because the lesson Alger conveys is a false one.

To be sure, legion(predicate) myths atomic number 18 perfectly benign, and more than a few are salutary, but on equipoise Algers myth is socially destructive. The Horatio Alger myth conveys three fundamental meanings: (1) each of us is judged just on her or his ingest merits; (! 2) we each have a fair opportunity to fail those merits; and (3) ultimately, merit will out. severally of them is, to be charitable, problematic. The first message is a variant on the rugged individualism ethos . . . . In this form, it suggests that success in life has nothing to do with pedigree, race, class background, gender, national origin, sexual penchantin short, with anything beyond our individual control. Those variables may exist, but they undertake no...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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