Essay Questions

What is the likely purpose of structuring the book as a series of letters?

Structuring such texts as a series of letters was a popular genre maneuver of the time. The form was popular because readers felt as if they were being spoken to directly by an author. Since letters are by definition more personal, conversational, and openly honest than literature like pamphlets or books, the epistolary form creates an immediate connection between writer and reader that facilitates trust and honesty on the part of the author. The implication is that person may be less than honest when giving a speech to a crowd and publishing an essay for a wide readership, but why lie in a letter?

How does the author distinguish the fundamental differences between European farmers and the American farmer?

Many cultural institutions separate Europe from America. Neither the farmer nor the lawyer in American ever sees a castle and is never required to address anyone as Lord. But for the farmer in particular, the primary distinction is not cultural, but economic. The European farmer is a tenant whose claim to the lander on which he harvests his crop is based on payment of taxes or tithes and both. In America, by contrast, this fundament issue of economic independence is the entire basis of agriculture: they are “the possessors of the soil they cultivate.”

For the student reading this text in an American school in the 21st century, what is the single greatest irony to be found the author’s argument about for defining “What is an American?”

The fundamental components of the American farm are industriousness through hard work in the service of the self-interest of ownership of their property. In comparison to those who toil the earth, those who live in the fringes of society that brings them closer to the pure wilderness must deal eventually turn to killing wildlife rather than working hard to raise their own food. Living amongst this “surrounding hostility immediately puts the gun into their hands…by defending their property, they soon become professed hunters; this is the progress; once hunters, farewell to the plough… a hunter wants no neighbor, he rather hates them, because he dreads the competition.” The modern-day vision of what makes an American always for some includes the rights to own guns and to use them. By contrast, the author here specifically suggests that an essentially quality of what separates the American from the European is his rejection of guns and their use. And just in case his delineation of the character traits of hunters is not clear enough, in the same letter he strips his point of view of all ambiguity: “The Irish do not prosper so well; they love to drink and to quarrel; they are litigious, and soon take to the gun, which is the ruin of everything.”