<p>From Cliff’s prep book, question on pg 48</p>
<pre><code> Written in the infancy of the United States, Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crevecoeur’s “Lettters from an American Farmer” (1782) contrasts the deprived lives of European with the flourishing ones of Ameircans. Crevecoeur constructs the two paragraphs in blatant contrast, first accounting the ragged Europeans then the vital Americans. Full of patriotism, the passage serves as an expression of the early American, full of pride for his own nation. Crevecoeur expresses his own attitude in order to bolster the reputation of America. He skillfully chooses words to portray two sharply contrasting visions, one of constraints and the other of power.
The first paragraph introduces the horrors of the improvished Europeans. Crevecoeur liberally uses words with negative connotations in order to express his discontent mind with the old European aristocracy. A gloomy helplessness develops within the sentences as Crevecoeur asserts that Europeans belong to no country. In exploiting the weaknesses of th Europeans, Crevecoeur employs two methods, one creates imageries of negativety while the other a lack of promises. Not only does he note "the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punishments", he also repeatedly, through parallel syntax, stress lives devoid of the luxuries common to Americans. "No bread ..... no harvest.... not a single foot of extensive surface of this planet." Through these closely placed phrases of unfulfilled hope and the discontent rooting from "want, hunger, and war", the author fully details the weaknesses of an European society.
Away from the despair in the first paragraph comes the hope and promises of the second. Starting with a rheotical question, the second paragraph no longer contains the terriable truths of the first paragraph. Replacing "wither", "frowns", and "jails" are "arts, sciences, vigor, and industry." Indeed, it seems that the American have in his hands, every desires coveted by the common Europeans. Crevecoeur plants a seed of his own in the construction of the passage. Every discontent imageries of the first half mirrors a satisfaction of the latter. An unsightly seed flourishes as the blatant contrast between what is good and what is evil unfolds. Without the "sore affiction or pinching penury", the promise of "labors and posterity" may have never unfolded.
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however, you might want to establish the author’s purpose more clearly, because after I’ve read the entire essay i’m still not positive what EXACTLY the prompt was on. it seems as if the prompt says “analyze the rhetorical devices Crevecoeur uses to establish his attitude of the new United States.” Something like that. So you need to tie your topic sentences and your analysis back into the thesis, ALWAYS. How does the decay and negativity and hopelessness of the European reflect Crevecoeur’s attitude? How does the American prosperity, positivity, and hope reflect his attitude?</p>
which would give you more room to go more in depth with your analysis, right? </p>