Criticism and Analysis
Scholars have conflicting views over the validity of Horatio Alger's moral in his stories.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Alger’s works were virtually out of print and many commentators seemed to have regarded Alger as a propagandist, saying “the author who celebrated capitalist markets and insisted that in the United States, any poor boy with patience and an unwavering commitment to hard work can become a dazzling success.” While those moving between income brackets and improving their socio-economic status may not be experiencing dazzling success, there is some evidence that the United States may be a land of opportunity, highlighted by, “the potential greatness of the common man, rugged individualism, economic triumph.”
Read more about this topic: Horatio Alger Myth
Famous quotes containing the words criticism and/or analysis:
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)