Tuesday 29 October 2013

De Crevecoeur American Farmer



When I read the second letter in De Crevecoeur’s book I immediately thought of this advert for Ram pick-ups from last year’s Superbowl. The speech heard is by Paul Harvey a radio news presenter who was addressing the Future Farmers of America Convention in 1978.  The advert talks about the hard work and ingenuity of the American farmer and links to the American being exceptional in this case specifically the farmers of America.
When it talks about “needing someone strong enough to clear trees”, De Crevecoeur talks of this as an essential job for the American farmer, to build a house or barn. De Crevecoeur talks about spending a lot of time in the woods looking out for the wildlife such as bees. He also talks about caring for the birds, either building nests for them or housing them in his barn or giving them seed in the winter. This is represented in the advert/speech with the line “who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark”. The central theme of the speech is religion and in the letters religion is mentioned often, De Crevecoeur talks a lot about what religion people are and when they meet and what they do in those meetings. I think just about every line in the advert/speech can have an example from De Crevecoeur’s letters.

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