51 pages • 1 hour read
Thornton WilderA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
American Exceptionalism is the belief that the United States and its citizens are fundamentally unique and special compared to every other country in the world. The notion is based on the glorification of the country’s founding documents and the idealism embedded in grand terms, such as liberty and freedom. In the years after World War I, the country was divided in terms of how this exceptionalism should play out in America’s foreign policy, and this was heightened with the start of World War II overseas in 1939. Isolationists believed that the country should stay out of foreign affairs and wars to focus on its own development and security. Interventionists believed that because America was exceptional, it had a duty to fight international enemies and spread American values around the globe. When the war began, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a statement of neutrality. However, Japan’s surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 shook even the isolationists into supporting US intervention in Europe, and the country declared war the following day. Roosevelt couched his rhetoric about the war in American Exceptionalism, professing that fighting was necessary to stop evil, that even in using force, “Americans are not destroyers – we are builders” and winning the war would be a “victory for freedom.
By Thornton Wilder
Allegories of Modern Life
View Collection
American Literature
View Collection
Dramatic Plays
View Collection
Family
View Collection
Good & Evil
View Collection
Hate & Anger
View Collection
Pride Month Reads
View Collection
Pulitzer Prize Fiction Awardees &...
View Collection
The Future
View Collection
The Past
View Collection
War
View Collection
World War II
View Collection