The Contemporary Student and Horatio Alger Carl Brucker Published in The Journal of General Education (1983) A young child dreams of being rich and of some day being a famous business tycoon. He goes to school and studies hard. The hard work pays off by his receiving many scholarships for his higher education. After ggraduation he receives numerous job offers from very prestigious firms from allover the world. He starts at the bottom of the business ladder and works his way up to be a top executive. The paragraph above was not written as a parody of Horatio Alger, nor is it reproduced in an effort to deride its student author. It is meant to be an indication of the endurance of the Alger myth and the relevance of this myth to· college students in the 1980's. The paragraph was written as a sincere and serious part of a composition arguing against federal budget cuts in student aid. The author was a nineteen-year-old freshman who had never read Horatio Alger, but his vision of the road to success provides an unusually unobscured view of an American myth that we associate with the nineteenth-century author of over one hundred children's nnovels. It is a myth that continues to shape the beliefs and actions of college students today. A teacher might understandably dismiss this sstudent's tthoughts because they are simplistic, vague, and unoriginal, but those are also characteristics of fairy tales, legends, and mmyths: these traditional story forms are simple because they pportray action in a direct, empirical manner; they are vague bbecause they draw us into the world of dreams; they are unoriginal because they express the commonality of experience. AAs teachers, we should make some effort to recognize and examine tthe myths that shape our students' beliefs and actions. We teachers often appear to base the justification of our pedagogy on two false assumptions about the mythological baggage oour students bring to college. We sometimes act as though we believe that our students are dumb blanks who arrive in our classrooms without beliefs, commitments, or thoughts. Other times we act as though we assume that our students enter our classrooms with beliefs roughly identical to our own which they simply cannot articulate well. In truth, our students show up with an extensive catalog of myths of which they are only dimly aware, a mythology that may, in some ways, be foreign to us. The student who wrote the paragraph with which this essay oopens was probably most conscious of his wearying effort to fill out a 500 word composition while avoiding grammatical errors, but in this numbed state he expressed with great clarity a vision stored in many of our student's minds, a dream that, consciously or not, affects their actions, the dream of self-improvement and virtue's reward. I think, as teachers, we should approach this ddream with caution, but approach it we must. Too often the books we select for our classes ignore the myths that drive our students or display an elitist scorn for ideas that we may see as unsophisticated. We have all heard the timeworn student complaint that English teachers always select "depressing" novels. The complaint has some validity. Collectively, we are biased against simple, linear solutions to complex social and personal problems. In fact, most of us distrust anything that presents itself as a solution of any sort. We repeatedly ask our students to read, understand, and analyze lliterature that presents the world as complex, enigmatic, or even absurd. Thus, the students' complaint is a plea for relevance, an expression of the natural desire to see their own beliefs represented. I think we must recognize the myths that our students carry with them and be willing to examine them without prejudice, for how can we expect our students to take our concerns seriously when we dismiss theirs out of hand? Horatio Alger, Jr. is an example of an author who allows us the opportunity to examine some of these myths undisguised by literary sophistication. We should not expect our students to grow beyond these dreams until they examine and understand them, because in understanding them, they are often understanding a part of themselves. Between 17,000,000 and 300,000,000 Americans have read a Horatio Alger novel[l]; the phrase, "a Horatio Alger story" has eentered our language, and most contemporary Americans feel they understand its meaning; the USPS issued a commemorative stamp in 1982 to celebrate the l50th anniversary of Alger's birth; yet I suspect that Alger's novels rarely appear on the reading lists of college-level literature courses. In fact, when I described this article to a well-read colleague, he was surprised to discover that Alger had been a "real person." Any analysis of contemporary mythology or popular cultural beliefs reminds us that we are, in some ways, paradoxically most ignorant of the most familiar. There are many sound reasons for our collective decision to ignore Alger's work: the novels exhibit limited literary skill-flat characterizations, heavy-handed moralizing, formulaic predictability; the books are written for children and therefore seem inappropriate for college-age students; the novels' informative use as guidebooks and etiquette manuals is outdated; Alger's optimistic belief in the compatibility of success and virtue in an unrestricted free enterprise environment seems singularly inappropriate to an age too familiar with entrepreneurial abuses and too familiar with the many people for whom -success remains a cruelly elusive dream. In short, the little contemporary use of Alger in academia is largely nostalgic or ironic. I suspect that most professors of literature find it ddifficult to take him seriously. Although I share this ddifficulty at times, I know that an Alger novel can make a valuable addition to a syllabus because the mythic vision it presents is relevant to our students' perception of themselves and their society. Alger did not create the myth of improvement that we associate with the phrase "American Dream," nor did he consciously attempt to express the ethos of his age. Like many other authors of his time, his purpose was simply to write instructive and entertaining stories for young people. But unpretentious as his purpose may have been, his mixture of predictable surprises and gentle preachment, of pragmatic behavioral advice and wondrously fortunate happenstance, captured the imagination of his nation. In a very real sense, Alger was an American folk artist, primitively expressing archetypical beliefs and desires that transcend the pluralism of American society. And the myths Alger celebrated are still -lodged in the hearts of contemporary Americans. Undoubtedly, they must compete with a variety of contradictory cultural messages, but most AAmericans, whose lives are subtly and mysteriously illuminated by these dreams each day, are not overly troubled by these logical flaws; like Alger they intuitively weave opposing myths into a web of commonly shared belief. In a variety of ways our culture encourages our belief in self-improvement and the providential reward of virtue. Advertisements imply that if we virtuously use a particular toothpaste or drive a certain car, we will be rewarded with health, beauty, money, love, or social status; magazines ttitillate us with stories about 23 year-old millionaires who started building computers in their garages when they were twelve; portions of state budgets are based on thousands of individuals' dreams of winning a lottery; politicians glibly promise to solve crime, unemployment, and disease; we make The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube a best-seller and reaffirm our shared dream that reason can overcome any of life's puzzles. But I am not advocating that Alger should be brought into the college classroom merely to provide a lesson in American cultural mythology; I believe that Alger's novels are relevant to the personal beliefs and experiences of our students. The Alger myth lives in the most sophisticated of our students. Many will openly admit their admiration for his thought and unquestioningly enjoy his writing more than other "classic" authors. More will be able to intellectually disassociate themselves from Alger, while secretly feeling a portion of themselves respond to his simple message. TThe formula that Alger intuitively pieced together in over one hundred novels succeeded because it encompassed competing eelements in American thought without questioning their contradictions: the dark archetypical fears of childhood nightmares and bright pragmatic advice for overcoming them; the romantic and the rational; the magical and the mundane. The formula does not push the reader to understand these paradoxes but merely presents them as part of the natural landscape; moreover, Alger shows that an individual, even a young, uneducated, and fatherless boy, can succeed in such a contradictory environment. Like classic fairy tales and many children's works, Alger's novels introduce the archetypical fears of youth: abandonment and impotence. His heroes are orphans, or suppose they are orphans, or are temporarily disinherited. They suffer the absence of parental support: the poverty, hardship, and injustice that result from not having an adult defender. Their daily life is the antithesis of protected childhood, a struggle for survival in a world populated by swindlers, thieves, murderers, drunkards, ungrateful heirs, pompous aristocrats, and avaricious capitalists. Forced into premature independence, they face physical and moral death. In short, Alger's novels operate against a darkened background, a background that is lightened by the expected surprise of his hero's triumph. The element of threat heightens the drama of Alger's novels, but he offers his readers a clear-cut plan for combating the darkness of life: the trinity of effort, virtue, and luck. Alger adopts the Protestant Ethic and its encouragement of diligent effort as well as the Victorian myth of self-improvement. To these, he adds practical advice on moral behavior. Because AAlger's heroes always succeed, his novels imply that effort and vvirtue must lead to success, but Alger clearly states that success most often results from some chance opportunity that aallows the virtuous and diligent hero to display his merit and gget a start toward success. These improbable opportunities give Alger's novels a magical qquality and link him to the long tradition of fairy tales [2], but they are not presented as irrational or random; their unbelievability is not intended to shatter the orderliness of AAlger's fictional world. Instead they represent the workings of aa divine order and reason beyond man's ccomprehension, aa PProvidence of which wise Giles Crosmont reminds young Grant CColburn in Digging for Gold : "It was a mere chance," said Grant modestly. ""Say, rather, it was a providence," corrected Giles Crosmont reverently." FFor Alger, success, real success as opposed to mere material ssuccess, is the reward of Providence for virtue. Many college students understandably find Alger's message rreassuring, ffor tthey usually enter college burdened with ccontradictions they do not fully comprehend. Struggling to adjust tto independence and pressured to define their place in the world, tthey frantically search for vocational programs that seem to gguarantee tthem ssuccess and acceptance. Hoping for simple ssolutions to the growing complexity of their lives, tthey eencounter professors who encourage them to find their own answers aand tell them that they must learn to live with multiplicity and ambiguity. It is not surprising, then, that some students feel as though college is not meeting their perceived needs nor addressing the self they are trying to create. For many, Alger offers a contrast because he speaks directly to their fears and frustrations, fears which they may not understand nor be willing to admit. In Alger's archetypical orphans even the white, suburban teenager sees his own anxieties over separation from home and future career reflected. In Alger's formula of effort and virtue, he sees his wish for a simple, direct solution fulfilled. In Alger's equation of success and Providence, he feels his romantic, anti-materialistic guilt lifted. The typical student recognizes something familiar and comfortable in Alger, something of himself or his family, but he will also be struck by the contrast between his preconception of a "rags to riches" story and the actuality of an Alger novel. For example, the student who expects Alger to advocate materialism confronts Alger's contradictory attitude toward wealth. Each novel focuses on the pursuit of money and his characters' success is always measured monetarily, but he often creates devastating portraits of wealthy men who are motivated by greed and prejudice or boys who display their undemocratic natures by wearing "kid gloves". Alger's vision of success is not a glittering parade of fancy objects and people. For his characters, success is respectability. In each novel the contrast between the exciting pursuit of fortune and the boring possession of it is implicit. Moreover, echoing Carnegie's Go spel of Wealth , Alger felt a successful man carried with him the responsibility to start With careful guidance Alger can help students to examine the myths with which they try to shape their lives, myths they have most often not formulated or examined. They are usually able to identify the contradictions inherent in these myths, and this, in turn, may make them willing to examine more sophisticated vis1ons. Unfortunately there is only one inexpensive edition of Alger currently available, Macmillan's 1962 edition of Ragged Di£k and ~, ~ Match·~. Originally published in 1868 and 1869 respectively, they are the first and third novels in a trilogy that included .~ snd Fortune. Ragged Di£k was Alger's most popular novel and his first great success. It charts the progress of Richard Hunter from bootblack to up-and-coming businessman. In MaLk, ~ Match ~ the well-established Hunter assists the similar rise of young Mark, a sickly and abused child forced to sell matches. Rychard Fink's introduction provides a helpful discussion of Alger's literary formula and philosophy, but Fink's biographical commentary is based on Mayes' 1928 biography [3] which has been generally discredited as an imaginative piece of sensational fiction. [4] Notes [1] William Coyle, "Introduction," to Adrift In New York and The World Before Him (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), p.v. [2] See, John Seelye, "Introduction," to Digging for Gold (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1968). [3] Herbert Mayes, Alger: A Biography Without a Hero (New York: 1928). [4] See, Frank Gruber, Horatio Alger, Jr. (West Los Angeles: Grover Jones Press, 1961); Frank Gardner, Horatio Alger, .QL. ~ American !!e.L:.Q ~ (Mendota, IL: 1964); John Seelye, "Who Was Horatio? The Alger Myth and American Scholarship," American Quarterly , XVII (Winter 1965). |