Misplaced Pages

#357642

144-505: "The American Dream " is a phrase referring to a purported national ethos of the United States : that every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and attain a better life. The phrase was popularized by James Truslow Adams during the Great Depression in 1931, and has had different meanings over time. Originally, the emphasis was on democracy , liberty and equality, but more recently has been on achieving material wealth and upward mobility . Adams defined it as "that dream of

288-451: A status symbol separating the middle classes from the poor . Ethos Ethos ( ἦθος , ἔθος ; plurals: ethe , ἤθη ; ethea , ἤθεα ) is a Greek word originally meaning "accustomed place" (as in ἤθεα ἵππων "the habitats of horses/", Iliad 6.511, 15.268), "custom, habit", equivalent to Latin mores . Ethos forms the root of ethikos ( ἠθικός ), meaning " morality , showing moral character". As an adjective in

432-543: A 2013 poll by YouGov , 41% of responders said it is impossible for most to achieve the American Dream, while 38% said it is still possible. Most Americans perceive a college education as the ticket to the American Dream. Some recent observers warn that soaring student loan debt crisis and shortages of good jobs may undermine this ticket. The point was illustrated in The Fallen American Dream ,

576-543: A Chicago suburb on the prairie as the location of the lab. A small herd of American bison was started at the lab's founding to symbolize Fermilab's presence on the frontier of physics and its connection to the American prairie. This herd, known as the Fermilab bison herd , still lives on the grounds of Fermilab. Architecturally, The lab's designers rejected the militaristic design of Los Alamos and Brookhaven as well as

720-631: A Salesman , in which the American Dream is a fruitless pursuit. Similarly, in 1971 Hunter S. Thompson depicted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey Into the Heart of the American Dream a dark psychedelic reflection of the concept—successfully illustrated only in wasted pop-culture excess. The novel Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr. is an exploration of the pursuit of American success as it turns delirious and lethal, told through

864-547: A certain objective from the beginning of the play. However, Murray clarifies that strict constancy is not always the rule in Greek tragedy characters. To support this, he points out the example of Antigone who, even though she strongly defies Creon at the beginning of the play, begins to doubt her cause and plead for mercy as she is led to her execution. Several other aspects of the character element in ancient Greek tragedy are worth noting. One of these, which C. Garton discusses,

1008-512: A comparatively weak welfare state to insure against risks in adulthood," as well as that "exposure to childhood poverty is particularly severe in the US." A 2017 study stated that the UK, Canada, and Denmark all offered a greater chance of social mobility. Black families were stated to be disadvantaged relative to white families when it comes to both upward mobility from the bottom and downward mobility from

1152-506: A documentary film that details the concept of the American Dream from its historical origins to its current perception. A 2020 poll found 54% of American adults thought the American Dream was attainable for them, 28% believed it was not, and 9% rejected the idea of the American Dream entirely. Younger generations were less likely to believe this than their older counterparts, and black and Asian Americans less likely than whites, Hispanics and Native Americans. Research published in 2013 shows that

1296-458: A dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. Adams contended that extreme wealth inequality was among the worst enemies of the American Dream, and said that: So long also as we are ourselves content with

1440-404: A land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. [...] It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of

1584-463: A leading geologist, Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin ), using the time dimension of American history, and the geographical space of the land that became the United States. The first settlers who arrived on the east coast in the 17th century acted and thought like Europeans. They adapted to the new physical, economic and political environment in certain ways—the cumulative effect of these adaptations

SECTION 10

#1732764727358

1728-422: A little, send the kids to college so they can do better than you did, and retire happily to a warmer climate" has been the script we have all been handed. A key element of the American Dream is promoting opportunity for one's children, Johnson interviewing parents says, "This was one of the most salient features of the interview data: parents—regardless of background—relied heavily on the American Dream to understand

1872-420: A living—are an even bigger factor in how far you get in life than we had previously realized. Generations of Americans considered the United States to be a land of opportunity. This research raises some sobering questions about that image." Michael Hout , Professor of Sociology at New York University, 2018 Hanson and Zogby (2010) report on numerous public opinion polls that since the 1980s have explored

2016-470: A memoir, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream . It was this interpretation of the American Dream for a young black man that helped establish his statewide and national reputations. The exact meaning of the Dream became a minor partisan political issue in the 2008 and 2012 elections . Political conflicts, to some degree, have been ameliorated by the shared values of all parties in

2160-412: A mere extension of the material basis of existence, with the multiplying of our material possessions, it is absurd to think that the men who can utilize that public attitude for the gaining of infinite wealth and power for themselves will abandon both to become spiritual leaders of a democracy that despises spiritual things. He also said that the American institution that best exemplified the American dream

2304-538: A motto of progress ('getting America moving') throughout his term of office." He promoted his political platform as the "New Frontier," with a particular emphasis on space exploration and technology. Limerick points out that Kennedy assumed that "the campaigns of the Old Frontier had been successful, and morally justified." The frontier metaphor thus maintained its rhetorical ties to American social progress. Adrienne Kolb and Lillian Hoddeson argue that during

2448-531: A national spirit complementary to democracy, as the wilderness defies control. Therefore, Andrew Jackson's brand of popular democracy was a triumph of the frontier. Turner sets up the East and the West as opposing forces; as the West strives for freedom, the East seeks to control it. He cites British attempts to stifle western emigration during the colonial era and as an example of eastern control. Even after independence,

2592-482: A new frontier," said Turner. In Turner's thesis, the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in

2736-688: A paper entitled " The Significance of the Frontier in American History ", delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner elaborated on the theme in his advanced history lectures and in a series of essays published over the next 25 years, published along with his initial paper as The Frontier in American History. Turner's emphasis on

2880-674: A person ... have far greater opportunity to display than in monarchies. The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought in a hundred thousand men looking for their fortune overnight—and a few did find it. Thus was born the California Dream of instant success. Historian H. W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread across the nation: The old American Dream ...

3024-404: A sense, ethos does not belong to the speaker but to the audience and it's appealing to the audience's emotions. Thus, it is the audience that determines whether a speaker is a high- or a low-ethos speaker. Violations of ethos include: Completely dismissing an argument based on any of the above violations of ethos is an informal fallacy ( Appeal to motive ). The argument may indeed be suspect; but

SECTION 20

#1732764727358

3168-469: A speaker's or writer's durable position of authority in the world; invented ethos relies more on the immediate circumstances of the rhetorical situation. Ethos, or character, also appears in the visual art of famous or mythological ancient Greek events in murals, on pottery, and sculpture referred to generally as pictorial narrative. Aristotle even praised the ancient Greek painter Polygnotos because his paintings included characterization. The way in which

3312-440: A unified identity that is similar to human nature is usually fulfilled. Thirdly, characters in tragedies include incongruities and idiosyncrasies. Another aspect stated by Garet is that tragedy plays are composed of language, character, and action, and the interactions of these three components; these are fused together throughout the play. He explains that action normally determines the major means of characterization. For example,

3456-460: A very difficult political and economic environment that made democracy and individualism much less likely to appear and it was much more difficult to throw off a powerful royalty, standing armies, established churches and an aristocracy that owned most of the land. The question is whether their frontiers were powerful enough to overcome conservative central forces based in the metropolis. Each nation had quite different frontier experiences. For example,

3600-501: A way as to multiply the positions from which women may speak" (83). Rhetorical scholar and Kate Ronald's claim that "ethos is the appeal residing in the tension between the speaker's private and public self", (39) also presents a more postmodern view of ethos that links credibility and identity. Similarly, Nedra Reynolds and Susan Jarratt echo this view of ethos as a fluid and dynamic set of identifications, arguing that "these split selves are guises, but they are not distortions or lies in

3744-414: Is important to consider the different experiences of gender as much as race. There are oftentimes tensions between economic and political agendas. By studying the global tensions and events outside of the United States, helps to form a broader viewpoint and perspective of the past. After 1776, the United States became a part of the global connections improving marketing opportunities. This paragraph highlights

3888-470: Is not spurred by government incentives, but rather some "expansive power" inherent within them that seeks to dominate nature. Furthermore, there is a need to escape the confines of the State. The most important aspect of the frontier to Turner is its effect on democracy. The frontier transformed Jeffersonian democracy into Jacksonian democracy . The individualism fostered by the frontier's wilderness created

4032-534: Is not, in itself, invalid. Although Plato never uses the term "ethos" in his extant corpus; scholar Collin Bjork, a communicator, podcaster, and digital rhetorician, argues that Plato dramatizes the complexity of rhetorical ethos in the Apology of Socrates . For Aristotle, a speaker's ethos was a rhetorical strategy employed by an orator whose purpose was to "inspire trust in his audience" ( Rhetorica 1380). Ethos

4176-451: Is said to be a set of ideals including representative democracy , rights , liberty , and equality , in which freedom is interpreted as the opportunity for individual prosperity and success, as well as the chance for upward social mobility for each according to ability and achievement through hard work in a capitalist society with many challenges but few formal barriers. Evidence indicates that in recent decades social mobility in

4320-423: Is the fact that either because of contradictory action or incomplete description, the character cannot be viewed as an individual, or the reader is left confused about the character. One method of reconciling this would be to consider these characters to be flat, or type-cast, instead of round. This would mean that most of the information about the character centers around one main quality or viewpoint. Comparable to

4464-418: Is the one discussed the most by schools and universities. Ethos is limited, in his view, by what the speaker says. Others, however, contend that a speaker's ethos extends to and is shaped by the overall moral character and history of the speaker—that is, what people think of his or her character before the speech has even begun (cf Isocrates ). According to Aristotle , there are three categories of ethos: In

American Dream - Misplaced Pages Continue

4608-602: Is troubling for black women. Pittman writes, "Unfortunately, in the history of race relations in America, black Americans' ethos ranks low among other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. More often than not, their moral characters have been associated with a criminalized and sexualized ethos in visual and print culture" (43). The ways in which characters were constructed is important when considering ethos, or character, in Greek tragedy . Augustus Taber Murray explains that

4752-525: The American dream , that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to

4896-744: The Blood and soil ideology, stoking racial and destructive enthusiasm, rose to power in Germany . An example of this concern is in George Wilson Pierson ’s influential essay on the frontier. He asked why the Turnerian American character was limited to the Thirteen Colonies that went on to form the United States, why the frontier did not produce that same character among pre-Columbian Native Americans and Spaniards in

5040-855: The Founding Fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence . The concept of the American Dream has been used in popular discourse, and scholars have traced its use in American literature ranging from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , to Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Willa Cather's My Ántonia , F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) and Toni Morrison 's Song of Solomon (1977). Other writers who used

5184-589: The Rockwool Foundation , and Stockholm University found that "Intergenerational poverty in the U.S. is four times stronger than in Denmark and Germany, and twice as strong as in Australia and the UK," and that an American child who grows up in poverty has "a 43 percentage point higher mean poverty exposure during early adulthood (relative to an adult with no child poverty exposure)," the highest of

5328-551: The interdependence between ethos and cultural context by arguing that "To have ethos is to manifest the virtues most valued by the culture to and for which one speaks" (60). While scholars do not all agree on the dominant sphere in which ethos may be crafted, some agree that ethos is formed through the negotiation between private experience and the public, rhetorical act of self-expression. Karen Burke LeFevre's argument in Invention as Social Act situates this negotiation between

5472-563: The self (47). In the era of mass-mediated communication, Oddo contends, one's ethos is often created by journalists and dispersed over multiple news texts. With this in mind, Oddo coins the term intertextual ethos, the notion that a public figure's "ethos is constituted within and across a range of mass media voices" (48). In "Black Women Writers and the Trouble with Ethos", scholar Coretta Pittman notes that race has been generally absent from theories of ethos construction and that this concept

5616-594: The "tide of intelligence" had always moved from east to west. According to Bancroft, the Germanic germs had spread across of all Western Europe by the Middle Ages and had reached their height. This Germanic intelligence was only halted by "civil and ecclesiastical restraints" and a lack of "free land." This was Bancroft's explanation for the Dark Ages. Turner's theory of early American development, which relied on

5760-477: The 1880s somehow relates the western frontier, including slavery. In spite of this, Turner laments, the frontier has received little serious study from historians and economists. The frontier line, which separates civilization from wilderness, is “the most rapid and effective Americanization” on the continent; it takes the European from across the Atlantic and shapes him into something new. American emigration west

5904-451: The 1910s to 1940s black filmmaker and novelist Oscar Micheaux incorporated Turner's frontier thesis into his work. Micheaux promoted the West as a place where blacks could experience less institutionalized forms of racism and earn economic success through hard work and perseverance. Slatta (2001) argues that the widespread popularization of Turner's frontier thesis influenced popular histories, motion pictures, and novels, which characterize

American Dream - Misplaced Pages Continue

6048-541: The 1920s "the ethos of the Communist party dominated every aspect of public life". Ethos may change in response to new ideas or forces. For example, according to the Jewish historian Arie Krampf, ideas of economic modernization which were imported into Palestine in the 1930s brought about "the abandonment of the agrarian ethos and the reception of...the ethos of rapid development". In rhetoric , ethos (credibility of

6192-572: The 1970s to criticize the frontier thesis because it did not attempt to explain the evolution of those groups. Indeed, their approach was to reject the frontier as an important process and to study the West as a region, ignoring the frontier experience east of the Mississippi River. Turner never published a major book on the frontier for which he did 40 years of research. However his ideas presented in his graduate seminars at Wisconsin and Harvard influenced many areas of historiography . In

6336-495: The 20th century. Williams viewed the frontier concept as a tool to promote democracy through both world wars, to endorse spending on foreign aid, and motivate action against totalitarianism. However, Turner's work, in contrast to Roosevelt's work The Winning of the West , places greater emphasis on the development of American republicanism than on territorial conquest. Other historians, who wanted to focus scholarship on minorities, especially Native Americans and Hispanics, started in

6480-633: The American Dream is ever evolving and changing. When the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, the founding fathers believed that this would ratify the role of government and society in the United States. Jim Cullen notability claims: Ever since, the Declaration of Independence has functioned as the banner of the American Dream, one repeatedly waved by figures that included women’s rights activists, populists, homosexuals, and anyone who has ever believed that happiness can not only be pursued, but attained. The U.S. Constitution, which marked

6624-543: The American Dream theme in the careers of numerous political leaders, including Henry Kissinger , Hillary Clinton , Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln . The theme has been used for many local leaders as well, such as José Antonio Navarro , the Tejano leader (1795–1871), who served in the legislatures of Coahuila y Texas, the Republic of Texas, and the State of Texas. In 2006, then U.S. Senator Barack Obama wrote

6768-570: The American Dream theme include Hunter S. Thompson , Edward Albee , John Steinbeck , Langston Hughes , and Giannina Braschi . In 2006, Dr. Guiyou Huang from St. Thomas University in Florida wrote a paper regarding the American Dream as a recurring theme in the fiction of Asian Americans. Many American authors added American ideals to their work as a theme or other reoccurring idea, to get their point across. There are many ideals that appear in American literature such as that all people are equal,

6912-451: The American Dream, although it is possible to achieve for a few. A lot of people follow the American Dream to achieve a greater chance of becoming rich. Some posit that the ease of achieving the American Dream changes with technological advances, availability of infrastructure and information, government regulations, state of the economy, and with the evolving cultural values of American demographics . In 1949, Arthur Miller wrote Death of

7056-509: The Dream originated in colonial mystique regarding frontier life . As John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore , the colonial Governor of Virginia , noted in 1774, the Americans "for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled". He added that, "if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west". The idea of

7200-399: The Dream with fair means would become increasingly difficult for future generations. They were increasingly pessimistic about the opportunity for the working class to get ahead; on the other hand, they were increasingly optimistic about the opportunities available to poor people and to new immigrants. Furthermore, most supported programs to make special efforts to help minorities get ahead. In

7344-641: The Dutch Boers in South Africa were defeated in war by Britain. In Australia, "mateship" and working together was valued more than individualism. Alexander Petrov noted that Russia had its own frontier and Russians moved over centuries across Siberia all the way from the Urals to the Pacific, struggling with nature in many physical ways similar to the American move across North America - without developing

SECTION 50

#1732764727358

7488-570: The Germanic germ theory's version of Western history, the theory persisted for decades after Turner's thesis enraptured the American Historical Association. In 1946, medieval historian Carl Stephenson published an extended article refuting the Germanic germ theory. Evidently, the belief that free political institutions of the United States spawned in ancient Germanic forests endured well into the 1940s. A similarly race-based interpretation of Western history also occupied

7632-494: The New World . Despite Pierson and other scholars’ work, Turner's influence did not end during World War II or even after the war. Indeed, his influence was felt in American classrooms until the 1970s and 80s. Subsequent critics, historians, and politicians have suggested that other 'frontiers,' such as scientific innovation, could serve similar functions in American development. Historians have noted that John F. Kennedy in

7776-599: The New World where they were allowed to germinate in the North American forests. In so doing, the Anglo-Saxons and the Germanic people's descendants, being exposed to a forest like their Teutonic ancestors, birthed the free political institutions that formed the foundation of American government. Historian and ethnologist Hubert Howe Bancroft articulated the latest iteration of the Germanic germ theory just three years before Turner's paper in 1893. He argued that

7920-577: The U.S. as 'the land of opportunity' persists; and clearly seems misplaced." According to these studies, "by international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents' income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France , Germany , Sweden , Canada , Finland , Norway and Denmark . Research in 2006 found that among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only

8064-542: The U.S. provides, alongside the United Kingdom and Spain , the least economic mobility of any of 13 rich democratic countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Prior research suggested that the United States shows roughly average levels of occupational upward mobility and shows lower rates of income mobility than comparable societies. Jo Blanden et al. report, "the idea of

8208-585: The U.S., 50% of a father's income position is inherited by his son. In contrast, the amount in Norway or Canada is less than 20%. Moreover, in the U.S. 8% of children raised in the bottom 20% of the climbed to the top 20% as adult, while the figure in Denmark is nearly double at 15%. In 2015, economist Joseph Stiglitz stated, "Maybe we should be calling the American Dream the Scandinavian Dream." A 2023 paper written by academics at Bocconi University ,

8352-520: The United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States." Economist Isabel Sawhill concluded that "this challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity". Several public figures and commentators, from David Frum to Richard G. Wilkinson , have said that the American Dream is better realized in Denmark, which is ranked as having the highest social mobility in the OECD. In

8496-468: The United States has declined, and income inequality has risen. Social mobility is lower in the US than in many European countries, especially the Nordic countries . Despite this, many Americans are likely to believe they have a better chance of social mobility than Europeans do. The US ranked 27th in the 2020 Global Social Mobility Index . A 2020 poll found 54% of American adults thought the American Dream

8640-521: The United States is the land of opportunity, independence is valued, the American Dream is attainable, and everyone can succeed with hard work and determination. John Winthrop also wrote about this term called American exceptionalism . This ideology refers to the idea that Americans are, as a nation, elect. The American Dream has been credited with helping to build a cohesive American experience, but has also been blamed for inflated expectations. Some commentators have noted that despite deep-seated belief in

8784-418: The United States sponsored ethnic newspapers in their own language; the editors typically promoted the American Dream. Lawrence Samuel argues: For many in both the working class and the middle class, upward mobility has served as the heart and soul of the American Dream, the prospect of "betterment" and to "improve one's lot" for oneself and one's children much of what this country is all about. "Work hard, save

SECTION 60

#1732764727358

8928-400: The West in terms of individualism, frontier violence, and rough justice. Disneyland 's Frontierland of the mid to late 20th century reflected the myth of rugged individualism that celebrated what was perceived to be the American heritage. The public has ignored academic historians' anti-Turnerian models, largely because they conflict with and often destroy the icons of Western heritage. However,

9072-511: The Westerners and the native savages, struggled for mastery of the land through violence. Whereas Turner saw the development of American character occur just behind the frontier line, as the colonists tamed and tilled the land, Roosevelt saw it form in battles just beyond the frontier line. In the end, Turner's view would win out among historians, which Roosevelt would accept. Turner set up an evolutionary model (he had studied evolution with

9216-656: The academic architecture of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center . Instead Fermilab's planners sought to return to Turnerian themes. They emphasized the values of individualism, empiricism, simplicity, equality, courage, discovery, independence, and naturalism in the service of democratic access, human rights, ecological balance, and the resolution of social, economic, and political issues. Milton Stanley Livingston,

9360-469: The artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom." Turner concludes the essay by saying that with the end of the frontier, the first period of American history has ended. The Frontier Thesis came about at a time when the Germanic germ theory of history

9504-466: The changes of an expanding people to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life. According to Turner, American progress has repeatedly undergone a cyclical process on the frontier line as society has needed to redevelop with its movement westward. Everything in American history up to

9648-437: The character cannot exist without plot, and so the character is secondary to the plot. Murray maintains that Aristotle did not mean that complicated plot should hold the highest place in a tragedy play. This is because the plot was, more often than not, simple and therefore not a major point of tragic interest. Murray conjectures that people today do not accept Aristotle's statement about character and plot because to modern people,

9792-454: The character's choice, the pictorial narrative often shows an earlier scene than when the action was committed. Stansbury-O'Donnell gives an example of this in the form of a picture by the ancient Greek artist Exekia which shows the Greek hero Ajax planting his sword in the ground in preparation to commit suicide, instead of the actual suicide scene (Stansbury-O'Donnell, p. 177). Additionally, Castriota explains that ancient Greek art expresses

9936-447: The chase for the American dream. For example, Jay Gatsby's death mirrors the American Dream's demise, reflecting the pessimism of modern-day Americans. The American Dream is a main theme in the book by John Steinbeck , Of Mice and Men . The two friends George and Lennie dream of their own piece of land with a ranch , so they can "live off the fatta the lan'" and just enjoy a better life. The book later shows that not everyone can achieve

10080-453: The complex relationships between global integration within American history: These complicated transnational networks themselves are not the only story. Along with global integration went attempts to assert national distinctiveness amid growing global competition. Americans conceived of and responded to these pressures by striving to create national economic independence because they wanted to maintain political and social independence. Thus there

10224-420: The concept of persona has emerged from the literary tradition, and is associated with a theatrical mask. Roger Cherry explores the distinctions between ethos and pathos to mark the distance between a writer's autobiographical self and the author's discursive self as projected through the narrator. The two terms also help to refine distinctions between situated and invented ethos. Situated ethos relies on

10368-697: The country could not maintain its self-concept of being a nation based on ideals without some kind of savage 'other' to contend with. To this end, he claimed that the rising American influence in the Asia-Pacific constituted a new frontier. Historians, geographers, and social scientists have studied frontier-like conditions in other countries, with an eye on the Turnerian model. South Africa, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Australia—and even ancient Rome—had long frontiers that were also settled by pioneers. However these other frontier societies operated in

10512-441: The country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports." However, Turner argued that as the North American frontier was ending, a new frontier would have to be pursued, because

10656-428: The depiction of a character was limited by the circumstances under which Greek tragedies were presented. These include the single unchanging scene, necessary use of the chorus, small number of characters limiting interaction, large outdoor theatres , and the use of masks, which all influenced characters to be more formal and simple. Murray also declares that the inherent characteristics of Greek tragedies are important in

10800-550: The despotism, privileged orders and monopolies, intolerable taxes, and constraints in matters of belief and conscience. Everyone can travel and settle wherever he pleases. No passport is demanded, no police mingles in his affairs or hinders his movements ... Fidelity and merit are the only sources of honor here. The rich stand on the same footing as the poor; the scholar is not a mug above the most humble mechanics; no German ought to be ashamed to pursue any occupation ... [In America] wealth and possession of real estate confer not

10944-472: The dominant culture in America focuses on materialism and consumerism , or puts blame on the individual for failing to achieve success . Others have said that the labor movement is significant for delivering on the American Dream and building the middle class, yet in 2024 only 10% of American workers were members of a labor union , down from 20% in 1983. The American Dream has also been said to be tied to American exceptionalism , and does not acknowledge

11088-531: The early 1960s explicitly called upon the ideas of the frontier. At his acceptance speech upon securing the Democratic Party nomination for U.S. president on July 15, 1960, Kennedy called out to the American people, "I am asking each of you to be new pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age—to the stout in spirit, regardless of party." Mathiopoulos notes that he "cultivated this resurrection of frontier ideology as

11232-589: The eastern coast of the United States sought to control the West. Religious institutions from the eastern seaboard, in particular, battled for possession of the West. The tensions between small churches as a result of this fight, Turner states, exist today because of the religious attempt to master the West. American intellect owes its form to the frontier as well. The traits of the frontier are "coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in

11376-514: The egalitarian American Dream, the modern American wealth structure still perpetuates racial and class inequalities between generations. One sociologist notes that advantage and disadvantage are not always connected to individual successes or failures, but often to prior position in a social group. Since the 1920s, numerous authors, such as Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel Babbitt , and F. Scott Fitzgerald , in his 1925 classic, The Great Gatsby , satirized or ridiculed materialism in

11520-541: The end of the frontier represented the beginning of a new stage in American life and that the United States must expand overseas . However, others viewed this interpretation as the impetus for a new wave in the history of United States imperialism . William Appleman Williams led the "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic historians by arguing that the frontier thesis encouraged American overseas expansion, especially in Asia, during

11664-512: The ensuing tailspin of its main characters. George Carlin famously wrote the joke "it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it". Carlin pointed to "the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions" as having a greater influence than an individual's choice. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and leftist activist Chris Hedges echos this sentiment in his 2012 book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt : The vaunted American dream,

11808-459: The essay by calling to attention the fact that the western frontier line, which had defined the entirety of American history up to the 1880s, had ended. He elaborates by stating that, Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. The peculiarity of American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to

11952-511: The expectation that the American Dream will resolve many difficulties and conflicts. The ethos today implies an opportunity for Americans to achieve prosperity through hard work. According to the Dream, this includes the opportunity for one's children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the prior restrictions that limited people according to their class, caste, religion, race, or ethnicity. Immigrants to

12096-484: The expectations of feudalism. It eroded old, dysfunctional customs. Turner's ideal of frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats, or nobles; there was no landed gentry who controlled the land or charged heavy rents and fees. Rather, pioneers went and claimed territory for themselves using only loose organizations, and the toughness of the experience gave them discipline and self-sufficiency that would be handed down over generations, even after

12240-466: The five countries and exceeding the next highest by over 20 percentage points. The researchers found that "the persistence of poverty is strongly connected to tax rates and what they call transfer insurance effects, which can be considered as akin to a social safety net," and that the "U.S. is the archetype of a liberal and residualist welfare state, featuring stratified access to higher education and employment, strong earnings returns to higher education, and

12384-526: The flat character option, the reader could also view the character as a symbol. Examples of this might be the Eumenides as vengeance, or Clytemnestra as symbolizing ancestral curse. Yet another means of looking at character, according to Tycho von Wilamowitz and Howald, is the idea that characterization is not important. This idea is maintained by the theory that the play is meant to affect the viewer or reader scene by scene, with attention being only focused on

12528-431: The formation of the American character occurred not with early settlers struggling to survive while learning a foreign land, but “on the cutting edge of expansion” in the early battles with Native Americans in the New World. To Roosevelt, the journey westward was one of nonstop encounters with the “hostile races and cultures” of the New World, forcing the early colonists to defend themselves as they pressed forward. Each side,

12672-556: The fortuitous circumstances of birth or position". The tenets of the American Dream originate from the Declaration of Independence , which states that " all men are created equal ", and have an inalienable right to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ". The Preamble to the Constitution states similarly that the Constitution's purpose is to, in part, "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". It

12816-399: The frontier advanced beyond the old boundaries. The Frontier Thesis was first published in a paper entitled " The Significance of the Frontier in American History ", delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner elaborated on the theme in his advanced history lectures and in a series of essays published over

12960-467: The frontier as a transformative force, opposed Bancroftian racial determinism. Turner referred to the Germanic germ theory by name in his essay, claiming that “too exclusive attention has been paid by institutional students to the Germanic origins.” Turner believed that historians should focus on the settlers’ struggle with the frontier as the catalyst for the creation of American character, not racial or hereditary traits. Though Turner's view would win over

13104-399: The frontier had shaped what would become distinctly American institutions and the mysterious entity they each called “national character.” They also agreed that studying the history of the West was necessary to face the challenges to democracy in the late 1890s . Turner and Roosevelt diverged on the exact aspect of frontier life that shaped the contemporary American. Roosevelt contended that

13248-428: The frontier thesis, showing that frontier experience had a causal impact on individualism. Though Turner's work was massively popular in its time and for decades after, it received significant intellectual pushback in the midst of World War II. This quote from Turner's The Frontier in American History is arguably the most famous statement of his work and, to later historians, the most controversial: American democracy

13392-408: The fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position... The American dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been

13536-565: The further west, the more American the community. Turner saw the land frontier was ending, since the U.S. Census of 1890 had officially stated that the American frontier had broken up. By 1890, settlement in the American West had reached sufficient population density that the frontier line had disappeared; in 1890 the Census Bureau released a bulletin declaring the closing of the frontier, stating: "Up to and including 1880

13680-402: The government does serve this function; few have doubts that it should . Many well-educated Germans who fled the failed 1848 revolution found the United States more politically free than their homeland, which they believed to be a hierarchical and aristocratic society that determined the ceiling for their aspirations. One of them said: The German emigrant comes into a country free from

13824-529: The great difference between British society from which settlers went across the Atlantic and the Russian society which sent its own pioneers across the Urals. Turner's thesis quickly became popular among intellectuals. It explained why the American people and American government were so different from their European counterparts. It was popular among New Dealers—Franklin D. Roosevelt and his top aides thought in terms of finding new frontiers. FDR, in celebrating

13968-401: The hardships many Americans have faced in regards to American slavery , Native American genocide , their legacies, and other examples of discriminatory violence. The meaning of the American Dream has changed over the course of history, and includes both personal components such as home ownership and upward mobility as well as a global vision for cultural hegemony and diplomacy. Historically,

14112-400: The heyday of Kennedy's "New Frontier," the physicists who built Fermilab explicitly sought to recapture the excitement of the old frontier. They argue that, "Frontier imagery motivates Fermilab physicists, and a rhetoric remarkably similar to that of Turner helped them secure support for their research." Rejecting the East and West coast life styles that most scientists preferred, they selected

14256-872: The history of religion, for example, Boles (1993) notes that William Warren Sweet at the University of Chicago Divinity School as well as Peter G. Mode (in 1930), argued that churches adapted to the characteristics of the frontier, creating new denominations such as the Mormons , the Church of Christ , the Disciples of Christ , and the Cumberland Presbyterians . The frontier, they argued, shaped uniquely American institutions such as revivals, camp meetings, and itinerant preaching. This view dominated religious historiography for decades. Moos (2002) shows that

14400-456: The idea that character was the major factor influencing the outcome of the Greeks' conflicts against their enemies. Because of this, "ethos was the essential variable in the equation or analogy between myth and actuality". Frontier Thesis The Frontier Thesis , also known as Turner's Thesis or American frontierism , is the argument by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that

14544-512: The idea that life will get better, that progress is inevitable if we obey the rules and work hard, that material prosperity is assured, has been replaced by a hard and bitter truth. The American dream, we now know, is a lie. We will all be sacrificed. The virus of corporate abuse—the perverted belief that only corporate profit matters—has spread to outsource our jobs, cut the budgets of our schools, close our libraries, and plague our communities with foreclosures and unemployment. The American Dream, and

14688-572: The impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed results; especially that American democracy was the primary result, along with egalitarianism , a lack of interest in high culture , and violence. "American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched

14832-425: The importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines. Freelance writer James Truslow Adams popularized the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book Epic of America : But there has been also

14976-403: The influence that such ethical representation may exert upon the public". Castriota also explains that according to Aristotle, "[t]he activity of these artists is to be judged worthy and useful above all because exposure of their work is beneficial to the polis ". Accordingly, this was the reason for the representation of character, or ethos, in public paintings and sculptures. In order to portray

15120-546: The intellectual sphere in the United States before Turner. The racial warfare theory was an emerging belief in the late nineteenth century advocated by Theodore Roosevelt in The Winning of the West . Though Roosevelt would later accept Turner's historiography on the West, calling Turner's work a correction or supplementation of his own, the two certainly contradict. Roosevelt was not entirely unfounded in saying that he and Turner agreed; both Turner and Roosevelt agreed that

15264-409: The lab's associate director, said in 1968, "The frontier of high energy and the infinitesimally small is a challenge to the mind of man. If we can reach and cross this frontier, our generations will have furnished a significant milestone in human history." John Perry Barlow , along with Mitch Kapor , promoted the idea of cyberspace (the realm of telecommunication) as an "electronic frontier" beyond

15408-432: The least political right on its owner above what the poorest citizen has. Nor are there nobility, privileged orders, or standing armies to weaken the physical and moral power of the people, nor are there swarms of public functionaries to devour in idleness credit for. Above all, there are no princes and corrupt courts representing the so-called divine 'right of birth'. In such a country the talents, energy and perseverance of

15552-547: The main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching [...] while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name ethike is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit)" (952). Discussing women and rhetoric, scholar Karlyn Kohrs Campbell notes that entering the public sphere was considered an act of moral transgression for females of the nineteenth century: "Women who formed moral reform and abolitionist societies, and who made speeches, held conventions, and published newspapers, entered

15696-451: The makeup of the characters. One of these is the fact that tragedy characters were nearly always mythical characters. This limited the character, as well as the plot, to the already well-known myth from which the material of the play was taken. The other characteristic is the relatively short length of most Greek plays. This limited the scope of the play and characterization so that the characters were defined by one overriding motivation toward

15840-412: The meaning of ethos within rhetoric as expressing inherently communal roots. This stands in direct opposition to what she describes as the claim "that ethos can be faked or 'manipulated'" because individuals would be formed by the values of their culture and not the other way around (336). Rhetorical scholar John Oddo also suggests that ethos is negotiated across a community and not simply a manifestation of

15984-474: The meaning of the concept for Americans, and their expectations for its future. In these polls, a majority of Americans consistently reported that for their family, the American Dream is more about spiritual happiness than material goods. Majorities state that working hard is the most important element for getting ahead. However, an increasing minority stated that hard work and determination does not guarantee success. In 2010, most Americans predicted that achieving

16128-415: The most memorable things about tragedy plays are often the characters. However, Murray does concede that Aristotle is correct in that "[t]here can be no portrayal of character [...] without at least a skeleton outline of plot". One other term frequently used to describe the dramatic revelation of character in writing is " persona ". While the concept of ethos has traveled through the rhetorical tradition,

16272-496: The neuter plural form ta ethika. In modern usage, ethos denotes the disposition, character, or fundamental values peculiar to a specific person, people, organization, culture, or movement. For example, the poet and critic T. S. Eliot wrote in 1940 that "the general ethos of the people they have to govern determines the behavior of politicians". Similarly the historian Orlando Figes wrote in 1996 that in Soviet Russia of

16416-409: The next 25 years, published along with his initial paper as The Frontier in American History. Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines. It

16560-419: The other bookend of the nation’s creation, lacks the mythic resonances of the Declaration, though it takes little reflection to see that it is the backdrop, if not the foundation, for all American Dreams. Whatever their disagreements about its scope or character, most Americans would agree that their national government is legitimate insofar as it permits a level playing field of dreams. Many of us have doubts that

16704-442: The philosopher's sense. Rather they are 'deceptions' in the sophistic sense: recognition of the ways one is positioned multiply differently" (56). Rhetorical scholar Michael Halloran has argued that the classical understanding of ethos "emphasizes the conventional rather than the idiosyncratic , the public rather than the private" (60). Commenting further on the classical etymology and understanding of ethos , Halloran illuminates

16848-495: The play Julius Caesar, is a good example for a character without credibility, Brutus. Another principle he states is the importance of these three components' effect on each other; the important repercussion of this being character's impact on action. Augustus Taber Murray also examines the importance and degree of interaction between plot and character. He does this by discussing Aristotle's statements about plot and character in his Poetics: that plot can exist without character, but

16992-619: The possibilities for children, especially their own children". Rank et al. argue, "The hopes and optimism that Americans possess pertain not only to their own lives, but to their children's lives as well. A fundamental aspect of the American Dream has always been the expectation that the next generation should do better than the previous generation." "A lot of Americans think the U.S. has more social mobility than other western industrialized countries. This [study using medians instead of averages] makes it abundantly clear that we have less. Your circumstances at birth—specifically, what your parents do for

17136-407: The private and the public, writing that ethos "appears in that socially created space, in the 'between', the point of intersection between speaker or writer and listener or reader" (45–46). According to Nedra Reynolds, "ethos, like postmodern subjectivity , shifts and changes over time, across texts, and around competing spaces" (336). However, Reynolds additionally discusses how one might clarify

17280-455: The public sphere and thereby lost their claims to purity and piety " (13). Crafting an ethos within such restrictive moral codes, therefore, meant adhering to membership of what Nancy Fraser and Michael Warner have theorized as counter publics. While Warner contends that members of counter publics are afforded little opportunity to join the dominant public and therefore exert true agency, Nancy Fraser has problematized Habermas 's conception of

17424-623: The public sphere as a dominant "social totality" by theorizing "subaltern counter publics", which function as alternative publics that represent "parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs" (67). Though feminist rhetorical theorists have begun to offer ways of conceiving of ethos that are influenced by postmodern concepts of identity, they remain cognizant of how these classical associations have shaped and still do shape women's use of

17568-446: The rhetorical tool. Johanna Schmertz draws on Aristotelian ethos to reinterpret the term alongside feminist theories of subjectivity, writing that, "Instead of following a tradition that, it seems to me, reads ethos somewhat in the manner of an Aristotelian quality proper to the speaker's identity, a quality capable of being deployed as needed to fit a rhetorical situation, I will ask how ethos may be dislodged from identity and read in such

17712-399: The sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands ... when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by

17856-436: The section at hand. This point of view also holds that the different figures in a play are only characterized by the situation surrounding them, and only enough so that their actions can be understood. Garet makes three more observations about a character in Greek tragedy. The first is an abundant variety of types of characters in Greek tragedy. His second observation is that the reader or viewer's need for characters to display

18000-648: The settlement and colonization of the rugged American frontier was decisive in forming the culture of American democracy and distinguishing it from European nations. He stressed the process of "winning a wilderness" to extend the frontier line further for U.S. colonization, and the impact this had on pioneer culture and character. Turner's text takes the ideas behind Manifest Destiny and uses them to explain how American culture came to be. The features of this unique American culture included democracy, egalitarianism , uninterest in bourgeois or high culture , and an ever-present potential for violence. "American democracy

18144-497: The social and political characteristics noted by Turner. To the contrary, Siberia - the Russian Frontier Land - became emblematic of the oppression of Czarist Absolute Monarchy. This comparison, Petrov suggests, shows that it is far from inevitable that an expanding settlement of wild land would produce the American type of cultural and political institutions. Other factors need to be taken into consideration, such as

18288-425: The sometimes dark response to it, has been a long-standing theme in American film. Many counterculture films of the 1960s and 1970s ridiculed the traditional quest for the American Dream. For example, Easy Rider (1969), directed by Dennis Hopper , shows the characters making a pilgrimage in search of "the true America" in terms of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifestyles. Scholars have explored

18432-425: The speaker) is one of the three artistic proofs ( pistis , πίστις) or modes of persuasion (other principles being logos and pathos ) discussed by Aristotle in ' Rhetoric ' as a component of argument. Speakers must establish ethos from the start. This can involve "moral competence" only; Aristotle, however, broadens the concept to include expertise and knowledge. For the most part, this perspective of ethos

18576-460: The subject and his actions are portrayed in visual art can convey the subject's ethical character and through this the work's overall theme, just as effectively as poetry or drama can. This characterization portrayed men as they ought to be, which is the same as Aristotle's idea of what ethos or character should be in tragedy. (Stansbury-O'Donnell, p. 178) Mark D. Stansbury-O'Donnell states that pictorial narratives often had ethos as its focus, and

18720-541: The third anniversary of Social Security in 1938, advised, "There is still today a frontier that remains unconquered—an America unreclaimed. This is the great, the nation-wide frontier of insecurity, of human want and fear. This is the frontier—the America—we have set ourselves to reclaim." Historians adopted it, especially in studies of the west, but also in other areas, such as the influential work of Alfred D. Chandler Jr. (1918–2007) in business history. Many believed that

18864-553: The top according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago , with social mobility nationwide appearing to have declined since 1980. Social mobility can also vary widely geographically according to a 2014 paper, with the Southeast and lower East North Central states ranking near the bottom. In the United States, home ownership is sometimes used as a proxy for achieving the promised prosperity; home ownership has been

19008-613: The whole nation to come together in thoughtful pursuit of a common good, which Adams claimed needed to be "carried out in all departments of our national life" in order to make the American Dream a reality. Martin Luther King ;Jr. , in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963), rooted the civil rights movement in the African-American quest for the American Dream: We will win our freedom because

19152-541: The work of historians during the 1980s–1990s, some of whom sought to bury Turner's conception of the frontier, and others who sought to spare the concept but with nuance, have done much to place Western myths in context. A modern interpretation describes it as appropriating Indigenous land by means of "American ingenuity", in the process creating a unique cultural identity different from their European ancestors. A 2020 study in Econometrica found empirical support for

19296-728: Was Americanization. Successive generations moved further inland, shifting the lines of settlement and wilderness, but preserving the essential tension between the two. European characteristics fell by the wayside and the old country's institutions (e.g., established churches, established aristocracies, standing armies, intrusive government, and highly unequal land distribution) were increasingly out of place. Every generation moved further west and became more American, more democratic, and more intolerant of hierarchy. They also became more violent, more individualistic, more distrustful of authority, less artistic, less scientific, and more dependent on ad-hoc organizations they formed themselves. In broad terms,

19440-402: Was attainable for them, while 28% thought it was not. Black and Asian Americans, and younger generations were less likely to believe this than whites, Hispanics, Native Americans and older generations. Women are more skeptical of achieving the American Dream than men are. Belief in the American Dream is often inversely associated with rates of national disillusionment. Some critics have said that

19584-519: Was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier," wrote Turner. In this view, the frontier experience established the distinctively American style of liberty contrasted to deferential European mindsets still affected by

19728-612: Was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier. Not the constitution but free land and an abundance of natural resources open to a fit people, made the democratic type of society in America for three centuries while it occupied its empire. This assertion's racial overtones concerned historians as Adolf Hitler and

19872-497: Was not confined to academia, but rather was a popular and accepted view. For example, President John F. Kennedy described his programs in the 1960 election as a " New Frontier " to conquer, except meaning space and domestic issues. While this view remains reasonably common at a popular level, since the 1980s academic historians no longer hold to the Frontier Thesis, or only accept its most basic conclusions. Turner begins

20016-438: Was popular. Proponents of the germ theory believed that political habits are determined by innate racial attributes. Americans inherited such traits as adaptability and self-reliance from the Germanic peoples of Europe. According to the theory, the Germanic race appeared and evolved in the ancient Teutonic forests, endowed with a great capacity for politics and government. Their germs were, directly and by way of England, carried to

20160-439: Was tension between the economic imperatives of global integration, and national political debates and economic agendas - such as the enhancement of national security through a strong industrial and financial base. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 advanced the frontier thesis , under which American democracy and the American Dream were formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and

20304-557: Was the Library of Congress ; he contrasted it with European libraries of the time, which restricted access to many of their works, and argued that the Library, as an institution funded by and meant to uphold democracy, was an example of democratic government's ability to uplift and equalize the people that it ruled over and was ruled by in order to "save itself" from a takeover by oligarchic forces. The Library also offered an opportunity for

20448-582: Was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard"... of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream ... became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutter's Mill . During the 18th century provided Americans with new sources of wealth and looking for new ways of travel. When looking at immigration in history, it

20592-681: Was therefore achieved through the orator's "good sense, good moral character, and goodwill", and central to Aristotelian virtue ethics was the notion that this "good moral character" was increased in virtuous degree by habit ( Rhetorica 1380). Ethos also is related to a character's habit as well (The Essential Guide to Rhetoric, 2018). The person's character is related to a person's habits (The Essential Guide to Rhetoric, 2018). Aristotle links virtue, habituation, and ethos most succinctly in Book II of Nicomachean Ethics : "Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in

20736-408: Was therefore concerned with showing the character's moral choices. (Stansbury-O'Donnell, p. 175) David Castriota, agreeing with Stansbury-O'Donnell's statement, says that the main way Aristotle considered poetry and visual arts to be on equal levels was in character representation and its effect on action. However, Castriota also maintains about Aristotle's opinion that "his interest has to do with

#357642