Discuss the distinctive features of the American novel.

So, for the American mind, the insistence on the individual as the only proper unit of a social definition and the idea that society was “an invention” of civilization, so that one could destroy it by simply wishing it away” was an important idea. For. in the American mind, of the 19′ century, in place of an European concept of class-laden. society, we have, the experience of community life. This is an unstated ideal. It is an aspect of individual freedom without degenerating into selfishness and irresponsibility. It creates a set of values for relationship between individuals in forming a morally viable social living, without the threats of greed, acquisitiveness and cruelty.

This idea of natural sentiment of piety in moral values in human relationships is best expressed in the writings of Jhon Winthrop, who says that we should always keep “before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body”. This idea of community living in the 19′ Century reflected the original settlement of the Christian ideas, which inspired the initial Puritan pilgrims. It was the religious fervour, which formed the quintessential spirit of describing an individual as part of a selfless community life. Thus, as in Cooper’s frontier imagination, the wilderness is an image of ideal relationship of man in a near pastoral situation, through the figure of Daniel Boone and his Western myth. Here, the main purpose is to reconcile the individual freedom, (such as that of Natty Bumppo), with the social life, without loss of his moral, spiritual and emotional needs.

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  1. 2018

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