Dating to the Declaration of Independence, the American experiment has focused politically on attempting to mitigate the flaws of government by granting liberty to the people. For this reason, the American myth is commonly defined by the lionization of the individual. Yet, this political focus is motivated more by fear of government than by true respect for the individual. The degree to which American politicians, thinkers, and authors cherish the individual varies widely. But each of those we have studied shares a deep antipathy toward society. It is here, then, that the truth of the American myth is found.

**

In the popular understanding, religious colonists came to the New World for the freedom to worship. But John Winthrop’s Massachusetts colony hardly embraced the individual’s right to worship according to one’s conscience. The Puritans’ issue was that English society was corrupt, and they came to America to escape it. They had no understanding of themselves as pioneers pushing westward. Instead, they saw themselves as builders of a utopian society.

Nearly a century and a half later, Thomas Jefferson and the Founders declared that the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” entitled Americans to a “separate and equal station” to the British subjects of King George, and explained their causes – not out of necessity, but merely out of “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” The power of the individual is recognized, but the Declaration speaks more of a higher ideal.

Later, Jefferson would speak to the ability of government to keep the nation “free and firm.” In his First Inaugural, Jefferson addresses concerns that “man cannot be trusted with the government of himself” by asking how he could, “then, be trusted with the government of others?” This indicates that government has kept us free and firm precisely because it has stood aside to let the individual rule himself. Yet Jefferson also says the U.S. has the only government where “every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the standard of the law.” Once again, he returns to the theme of a higher order.

These bold expressions of a higher power superceding society’s law would later be mirrored by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Martin Luther King Jr. “Self-Reliance,” “Civil Disobedience,” and “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” all speak equally boldly about the importance of doing what one believes is right. When King argues that “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws” and defining unjust laws as those which codify “difference made legal,” and Thoreau argues that “under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison,” they are regarding the same higher ideal as Jefferson. Emerson speaks very directly to the individual, but even this is motivated in large part by mistrust of society, which he finds “everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.”

**

Turning from philosophy to literature, these themes continue. The authors we have studied assign differing degrees of merit to the individual, but all agree that society is, at best, troubled.

A cornerstone of American literature is the hero on the run – from society, from himself, and from responsibility. Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers,” and Richard Wright’s “Almos’ a Man” all feature a childlike protagonist with a need to escape: Rip from his oppressive wife, Nick from a violent world, and Dave from trouble he created. In each case, the reader is left with the impression that the escape was not cowardly or shameful, but in fact necessary and even admirable (the last case is perhaps an exception, but despite the reader’s judgment, it is clear that Dave himself believes he will prove his manhood by leaving town).

Yet in remarking on the similarity of these protagonists, one should not overlook the similarity of their antagonists. Nor should one overlook how the eventual decision of each protagonist to escape is reactive, not proactive. Rip Van Winkle does not fall asleep in the woods for forty years because of his love of exploring or history of adventuring. He is merely a man avoiding his wife who happens to have a drink from the wrong bottle. Nick did nothing to invite two hitmen into his diner. He merely bore witness to the reality of violence in society. And even Dave, who was totally proactive in making trouble, was still reactive in fleeing from it. These individual heroes may choose to make their own destiny – but only after being confronted by a society they cannot abide.

Finally, one must consider the author who is traditionally understood as standing alone against the American myth. There is little doubt that Nathaniel Hawthorne rejects the lionization of the individual. But he does not hold society in much higher regard. The faintest praise he will give it is that it’s as good as it gets.

In “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne concludes that we are all sinners and therefore need one another. On his journey through the woods, Goodman came to realize that all the individuals he had put on pedestals were really no better than he. Is this so different from Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”? With his conclusion – “his dying hour was gloom” – Hawthorne makes clear that the individual cannot escape society without abandoning himself to a miserable and lonely existence, but his vision of society promises little more than a miserable but social existence.

The conclusion of “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” is scarcely more cheery. After proving Robin to be embarrassingly mistaken about his kinsman’s stature, Hawthorne leaves him interested in returning home. But he leaves us with the promise that Robin might instead be persuaded to stay for a while – perhaps even to try and make it on his own, without the help of his kinsman. While it would be far more challenging to draw parallels to “Self-Reliance” from Robin’s experience, it is worth noting that the townsfolk do nothing more than reduce him to their level. Hawthorne tears down Robin’s inflated image of himself and his kinsman, but he does nothing to raise the image of society in its place.
Ultimately, Hawthorne’s storytelling is only anti-myth when the myth is understood as an optimistic sense of the potential of the individual to escape society’s bounds and achieve greatness. He differs much less from the other writers studied in his understanding of society’s flaws. A vision of the American myth that focuses primarily on the rejection of society, then, embraces even Hawthorne.

**

None of this is to say that American thinkers, authors, and (especially) politicians have not traditionally emphasized the paramount role of the individual and the critical importance of personal liberty. There is little question that the American zeitgeist has always tended to glamorize the star. But this glamorization is the end, not the means; the what, not the how. It is not self-evident. When it occurs, it is reactive – the result of a deep and fundamental mistrust of society. The lionization of the individual is so often understood as the American myth because it is the most visible effect of the myth. But the cause – and, therefore, the truth of the myth – is antipathy toward society.