American Pride

Pride is not simply an American trait but is rather a human emotion, and as such it can be for good or ill. There is a saying that "pride goeth before a fall," for pride is one of the seven deadly sins. Pride can also be justified, however, but only if it is not excessive. It need not lead to one's downfall but can instead be evidence of accomplishment. In the American character, the emotion of pride derives from the combination of the success in creating what has been perceived as being a new and free nation and the exuberance that this success engenders. At the same time, there has been a tension between pride and the religious strictures against that emotion, beginning in the Calvinist era and continuing as a strain in the Protestant ethic that has been a key theme in American life ever since. In fact, this tension is evident in the works of different writers from different historical periods.

Benjamin Franklin represents the colonial era as an icon, one of the Founding Fathers whose intellect and many accomplishments certainly gave him a reason for feeling pride. In the colonial era, though, personal pride would be avoided, while pride in the nation-state that was being developed would be another matter. The Founding Fathers asserted their pride in the institutions they were creating in terms of how well they themselves were able to base those institutions on basic human freedoms given by God.

The fact is that the institutions they had created

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e says he has to leave his wife on this particular night, but he has no doubt that she is righteous and that he will be so as well with her in the future: "Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven" (Hawthorne 707). The vision that the devil offers to Young Goodman Brown is a vision of the mixture of good and evil in the world, and this causes the young man to question himself and his community. The journey undertaken by Young Goodman Brown into the woods is a symbolic journey into his own soul, and his progress reflects ideas about the Fall and its aftermath and thus about the human condition, ideas derived from the Puritanism of the period. The form of the story is that of a story of initiation, and ritual and ceremony are dominant as Goodman Brown is invited to become an initiate into the community of evil. This is considered one of Hawthorne's most profound tales: "In the manner of its concern with guilt and evil, it exemplifies what Melville called the "power of blackness" in Hawthorne's work. The thrust of the narrative is to move the protagonist toward a personal and climactic vision of evil which leaves in its aftermath an abiding legacy of distr

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