American Exceptionalism

When America's founders declared independence on July 4, 1776, they pledged to each other: "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour" - and expressed their "firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence."

In the zenith of an unfinished pyramid is an eye in a triangle surrounded with a golden glory. Over the eye are the words ANNUIT COEPTIS. On the base of the pyramid the numerical letters MDCCLXXVI, and underneath, the motto NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM. This is the image depicted on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States of America. The Great Seal was carefully designed by the Founding Fathers to be a symbol of the United States both, to the world and to the future. It is America's symbolic mission statement. Although the eagle side of the great seal quickly became popular, the image on the reverse side remained obscure until it appeared on the one-dollar bill in 1935. As a result the image of the pyramid and radiant eye is usually associated with financial matters, this is a misleading view that overlooks the intended significance of a symbol that openly declares "God Bless America."

This usually unseen side of the seal demonstrates a good example of what is termed American Exceptionalism. American Exc

James Gatz in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby clearly seems to fulfil the criteria of exceptionalism and the "dream". A successful immigrant Gatsby shows all the outward signs of a man who has attained the dream through academic studies and hard work. Gatsby is portrayed as an Oxford educated man; Meyer Wolfesheim carries on this illusion when he says, "He's an Oggsford man... He went to Oggsford College in England" (p50). In reality, it is disclosed that Gatsby did indeed attend Oxford, but he admits, "It was in nineteen nineteen. I only stayed five months." It is further revealed that Gatsby's fortune was also open to question about its legitimacy, when Tom confronts him. Tom confesses, "I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn't far wrong."

In Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser shows that for the vast majority of American people the idea of the American dream is seldom achieved and for many the idea is precisely that, just a dream. Many characters in the book rarely get the opportunity to chase after that dream. The draw of the big city was the start of the dream for Carrie, "She gazed at the green landscape now passing in swift review until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be. Since infancy her ears had been full of its fame."(p3). Her thoughts turn to how her family had once thought of moving there and how they might come if she were to secure good employment. She clearly believes that she can engineer all this. After all, "it was vast...people were rich." (p3) She is content to let the train speed on to her dream.

...The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past. We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can".

The character of the Captain is the only one who comes across as an exceptional person, who for no apparent gain has made it his mission to make a stand for the needy and disadvantaged of the area. He remains true to the moral origins of the country. He is a character who seems to represent the disenfranchised America, the vast majority for whom the dream is impossible to fulfil.