The Melting Pot as a Literary Theme
The "Melting Pot" is a literary theme that symbolizes the blending of diverse cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities into a unified American identity. This concept is rooted in the writings of French immigrant J. Hector St. John Crèvecœur in the 18th century, who portrayed America as a new race formed from various peoples seeking freedom and opportunity. The metaphor gained wider recognition through Israel Zangwill's 1908 play, "The Melting Pot," which highlighted conflicts between different ethnic groups while promoting the idea of a singular American identity.
However, the validity of this metaphor has been widely debated. Critics argue that it oversimplifies the complexities of cultural assimilation and neglects the persistent existence of diverse, multicultural identities within the United States. Many immigrants face challenges in fully abandoning their distinct backgrounds, leading to a more gradual process of integration. Additionally, historical and systemic barriers have often hindered the acceptance of different races and cultures. As a result, some contemporary perspectives suggest that the metaphor of a "bowl of tossed salad," where individual cultures coexist while maintaining their unique identities, may more accurately reflect the realities of American society today.
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The Melting Pot as a Literary Theme
History
In the melting pot metaphor, melting diverse nationalities and races creates one entity, a new American identity. In 1782, French immigrant Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crèvecœur, using the more American-sounding pen name J. Hector St. John, published a collection of essays entitled Letters from an American Farmer. These essays praised the quality of rural life in colonial America. In one essay entitled “What Is an American?” he wrote, “Here, individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.” European immigrants left oppression, hunger, ignorance, and poverty behind to pursue life, liberty, and happiness in North America. From Crèvecœur’s perspective, they blended their cultures into a new identity, dedicated to the goals of freedom and equality.
Crèvecœur came to Canada in 1754 during the French and Indian War as a soldier. After the war, he roamed the country and surveyed land around the Great Lakes. In 1765, he became a citizen of New York, married, and became a gentleman farmer. During the Revolution, he refused to take sides against British loyalists, so American patriots arrested and jailed him as a spy. When he was released, he fled, in fear for his life, to France, leaving his wife and children behind. French citizens found his essay collections interesting, and he became a minor celebrity. Benjamin Franklin helped Crèvecœur secure an appointment as French consul to New York. When he returned in 1783, he found his wife dead, his farmhouse burned, and his children living in foster homes.
In later essays, Crèvecœur revised his idealistic theory of a homogenous American society. He observed that the first wave of immigrants on the frontier lived in isolation with weak ties to government, religion, or morality. Their communities and farms symbolized hard work and self-reliance, and they were reluctant to make room for succeeding waves of immigrants. Some were assimilated, but debtors, speculators, traders, and castoffs of society moved on. Many of these people created problems with the Native American population.
In 1908, Israel Zangwill saw his Broadway play The Melting Pot performed. The four-act play dramatizes and resolves the conflict of Jewish separatism and Russian anti-Semitism. Walker Whiteside, star of the play, spoke the lines, “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the races are melting and reforming.” Although critics gave the play bad reviews, audiences kept it running for 136 performances. The metaphor of the melting pot entered the American vocabulary.
Ironically, Zangwill became an ardent Zionist only eight years after the opening of The Melting Pot and repudiated the theme of his play. He declared that a character’s statement that there should be neither Jew nor Greek was wrong. According to Zangwill, different races and religions could not mix, or at least not do so easily; a person’s natural ethnicity would return.
At Issue
The theory that American society is homogenous assumes that people from different ethnic backgrounds will resolve their differences in an environment of freedom and opportunity. The process of “melting” the origins, religions, languages, and traditions of Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Native Americans into a unique American identity is demonstrably incomplete. Whether the melting of various ethnicities into a new whole is a worthy or a possible goal is a source of controversy.
Many immigrants have been unwilling or unable to abandon their past identity for a new one. Strangers in a strange land naturally cling to what is familiar; assimilation has often been slow and difficult. Established groups, in turn, have set up legal, economic, and religious barriers to prevent assimilation of different races. In 1660, eighteen languages were spoken on Manhattan Island. In that heavily populated area in the 1990’s, at least that many are spoken, probably many more. Those who criticize the metaphor of the melting pot point out that the United States has always been and continues to be multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural, and that therefore the melting pot is more of a misguided ideal than an accurate representation of the acculturation process in the United States. The ideal, critics of the melting pot may argue, often covers morally questionable motives that are based on hatred of difference.
On the other hand, the melting pot metaphor still seems apt for Americans whose ancestors represent multiple ethnic groups, for example, someone with a German-Scotch-Cherokee heritage. To many others, however, the term “multicultural” applies to American society more realistically. Many Americans with distinct ethnicity like to use the metaphor of a bowl of tossed salad, in which each culture is represented as a separate entity.
Bibliography
Crèvecœur, Michel-Guillaume-Jean de. “What Is an American?” In Letters from an American Farmer. New York: Fox, Duffield, 1904.
Glazer, Nathan, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Beyond the Melting Pot. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1963.
Hughes, Glenn. A History of the American Theatre: 1700-1950. New York: Samuel French, 1951.