Michel-Guillame Jean de Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer

In Letters from an American farmer Crevecoeur poses as a provincial, evaluating the American lifestyle and what it means to be American. He also develops strong determined opinions regarding the European and American cultures. He claims America to be a “Land of opportunity.” The independent country is not for wealth but for humanity, he declares. Crevecoeur also states that Americans are shaped as must by land as they are by their origins. In this attempt to reason our differences, Crevecoeur however, begins making racist and sexist comments against the Irish and women. 

After evaluating Letters from an American Farmer, my question to Crevecoeur would be; does the same America you describe in your letters apply to, and define America today? The America Crevecoeur describes in his letters, is very rural and filled with opportunity. However, the America we experience today consists of many cities, and is extremely wealth driven. The drive towards money that is seen so clearly in society today completely contradicts Crevecoeur’s statement “the independent nation is not for wealth but for humanity.”  Although we still hold to the same values such as freedom, and opportunity I feel the America we experience in the 21^st century has been corrupted since the simple times that Crevecoeur describes.