Comparing Letters from an American Farmer and Thoreaus Various Essays

Comparing Crvecoeurs Letters from an American Farmer and Thoreaus Various Essays St. Jean De Crvecoeurs Letters from an American Farmer and Henry David Thoreaus various essays and journal entries present opposing views of what it means to be an American. To somewhat simplify, both writers agree that there ar two kinds of Americans those who argon farmers and those who are not. Crvecoeur views farmers as the true Americans, and those who are not farmers, such as frontier manpower, as lawless, idle, inebriated wretches (266). Sixty years later, Thoreau believes the opposite farmers are doomed and bound to their land, and free men who own nothing posses the only true liberty (9). Both Crvecoeur and Thoreau judge men and their professions on industry, phthisis of nature, freedom, and lawfulness. As America grew during these six decades, industrialization and higher education created more compact communities unable to economically provide the land needs of farmers. In Crvecoeurs Ameri ca, some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth(263). In 1850, Thoreaus Concord was among the many towns allowing people to leave their farms for a more urban setting to fellowship their law practices, shoe stores, or surveying businesses. The separation of farmers from the rest of society leads to intellectualizations of the profession by thinkers like Thoreau. Removed from the simple, hard labor of farming, it is easy for change society to forget the farmers purpose and importance in Western civilization. Crvecoeur states that industry, which to me who am but a farmer, is the criterion of everything(264). Indeed, a lack of industry in any vocation eventually leads to failure. Thoreau, however, sees little value in indu... ...d as Thoreau was from self-supporting agriculture, modern America is light years away. Thoreaus ideal lifestyle is at a time an impossibility. Many Americans would settle for an unadorned life on a small farm, and a clean, dry home. Possibly t he day will come when the land will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only-when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of Gods earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentlemans grounds. ... Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the lousiness days come. (Thoreau 667) Works CitedCrvecoeur, J. Hector St. John de. Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America. Ed. Albert E. Stone. New York Penguin, 1981.