(American) Identity Fraud: Jill Lepore's New Narrative Karen Zahara 10th Grade

Men of influence throughout history have endeavored to shape their own identities and public personas, to many effects. America, and its great experiment of democracy, was to foster an equal, equitable, and responsible government and society, one where the leaders were selected on their merits and governed based on the will of the people. Given the disingenuous images of three American icons explored in Jill Lepore’s “The Story of America”, in particular - Thomas Jefferson and his scrupulous exterior, Washington’s firm and resolute visage, and Kit Carson’s larger-than-life action hero bravado - the American identity appears as a morally strong, decisive, stoic, and assertive, all traits that Jefferson, Washington, and Carson had ascribed to them despite not being wholly accurate.

The American identity is an ideal that these men could not measure up to, so they forged an American identity of their own - one of deceit in their public images: “Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia” reads the gravestone of the third President of the United States. These are the deeds by which Thomas Jefferson wanted to be, and indeed...