Myths in our Life - стр. 10

The myth of Jonny– the-Fool also acquired features of other myths. A young man from a small provincial town aims to get all the benefits from life. He goes to the metropolis, where, using all means at his disposal, he tries to achieve the “American dream”. As a result, he gets what he wants, but he may feel dissatisfied, because the spiritual side of his life is likely to remain unaffected.

In American "mythology" there is such a thing as a self-made man. This is the fusion of all three myths into the one and the creation of a completely new image, the image of a “man who“ made ”himself”, an individual who by his work won himself the right to live according to the “American dream”.

It is necessary to clarify that when we talk about people who achieves the ideals of the “American dream”, we often mean ordinary people who wants something extremely small, small things that would not occur to well-known personalities because the whole “American dream” is the dream of a man in the street, striving for a quiet, prosperous, peaceful life, willing to live without any worries and anxieties.

You shouldn’t think that the “business above all” position which is prevalent among the majority of American youth, is a phenomenon of the 20th century. The beginning of everything was laid in the XIX century, when mass literature began to flourish in the United States. The authors of the textbook "History of Literature of the USA", published by the Institute of World Literature. A.M. Gorky, consider that the mass literature includes “works of a low aesthetic level, designed for a wide audience and reflecting the mentality of the middle strata of society” [Literature in the USA 2003: 836]. Necessary and inalienable features of mass literature as such – formula, cliché, mythology – were noticeable in the first literary production of the colonial era (travel notes, religious sermons, political pamphlets, etc.). Puritan thinking has already created a number of national myths, even in the XVII century. The facts of American history – the creation of colonies in the New World, the development of a frontier, and the war with the Indians – were conceptualized in the formulas of heaven and hell, the building of the city of God, the struggle of angels and demons. In this literature were formed persistent concepts, ideas, images and techniques, which determined the face of all national literature, and in their simplified, elementary forms – the face of the modern mass American culture. The artistic heritage of the frontier spawned the national genre of westerns; Puritan literature became the source of a religious, and in many ways a romantic novel; “The American dream and personal success was embodied in the narratives about“ the man who created himself ”; the cult of the family and the hearth was reflected in the "family romance".