America's Individual Identity

It seems a common search among many American’s to discover what their role and identity is as an American. Many agree that American identity is founded upon empty pockets and calloused hands, ultimately reaping gold-filled dreams. Others concur that democracy and freedom of rights is the basis of their nations character. While others see their national identity built upon their foreign fore fathers homage to America. No matter the idea the list of what American Identity is could spring on, but perhaps that springing of possibilities is where the true answer of American Identity lies. It isn’t just one defining quality that makes an identity, but rather it is the abundance of character and uniqueness that creates the American Identity. American Identity in and of itself lies within each citizen’s individuality and personal experience.
Perhaps there is no better way to create and share the individual experience as a whole than through the varying mediums of art. Such shared but unique experiences are shown by: the art of Maynard Dixon, the poetry by Edgar Guest, and the music by Duke Ellington during the mid 1900’s. Each artist tangibly depicted his own experience through artistic mediums, which American’s clasp to today for their identity.
Maynard Dixon’s painting, Forgotten Man, is his dismal but poignant depiction of an individuals struggle and loneliness amidst a busy successful America. From the viewer’s eye, one is drawn into a gray city sidewalk containing only: a fire hydrant, busy businessmen and women seen from the legs down only, and a downtrodden man sitting on the curb. This man’s expression of helplessness draws the onlooker into the picture and creates a lasting connection. This connection reveals this man’s vulnerability and loneliness although he is surrounded by many fellow American’s monotonously rushing to their various places. They are too busy to even notice their struggling and forsaken brother on the street.
This powerful depiction of abandonment and difficulty among a seemingly busy and prosperous America acts as a reminder for every American to not forget the individual, and more importantly, not forget that most men will one time or another fall onto their own curbs. Dixon is prompting his fellow American brothers and sisters to not march with the bustling crowd, but live up to the identity of America and rescue their fellow individuals in need of lifting and sustenance struggling on any street of life.
Just as others need rescuing, the American poet Edgar Guest reminds the individual to not forgo rescuing him/herself personally. His poem rings with the rhetoric of virtue, integrity, and the value of ultimately being able to live with oneself. “I want to live with myself and so, I want to be fit for the world to know…I want to be able as days go by always to look myself straight in the eye…so whatever happens I want to be self respecting and conscience free.” No messages, than living unique and distinct lives lacking personal guilt and regret, are more important or powerful. American identity founded upon individual character and experience can only strengthen when each member is living a life of integrity and self respect.
Perhaps there is no smoother synthetic interpretation of individual experience and freedom than that expressed by Duke Ellington’s Mood Indigo. The song begins its introduction with a strong piano solo immediately followed by an interpretive and individualistic trumpet solo with the subtle beat of the bass heard beneath the trumpets independent tone. Before long the listener is not only encapsulated by the trumpeters tune but by each brass instrument. The band further compliments the individual solo experience to form a rare but complete identity as a group. America’s Musical Landscape explains that Ellington “used the jazz band as his real ‘instrument’ exploring its entire range of sounds with unprecedented imagination and creativity. By juxtaposing instruments in nontraditional combinations and using them in the extreme limits of their range, he transformed their sound, sometimes effectively obscuring their identification” (Ferris 217-218).
In a sense Ellington’s ability to “juxtapose instruments in nontraditional combinations” as well as Guest’s and Dixon’s depictions of individual experience, is the essence of the American character; the ability our nation has to contrast one another’s differences into distinctive combinations, a distinct American Identity.