T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

make the Unlted States their permanent home. Whetherperceived through the metaphor of the melting pot,or more fashionable today, through ethnic pluralismAmerica has assimilated and taken its charactersfrom an ertra-ordinary variety of peoples. (Luedtke1987.81.In a world of fast-changinq values and priorities, manhas become vulnerable to new sets of realitles end risks. Thenew reallty may be seen thus:In this century history stopped paylng attention tothe old psycholog~cal orientation of reality. Imearb, these days, character Isn't destiny any more.Economics 1s destlny. Ideology 1s destiny. Bombs aredestlnv. What does a famine. , a aas-chamber. agrenade care how you llved your life? Crisis comes,death comes, and your pathetlc Individual selfdoesn't have a thlng to do wlth lt, only to sufferthe effects.(Rushdle 1987,432).Struggling to define the essence of the new land at thetime of the Amerlcan Revolutlon, the French lmmigrant, Michel-Gullaume Jean de Crevecoeur posed the classic question ofAser;can natlonallty ~n hls Letters from an Amerlcan Farmer:what then 1s the Amerlcan thls new man' He 1s eltheran European, or descendent of an European, hencethat strange rnlxture of blood, whlch you wlll findIn no other country. I would point out to you afanjly wh:~so grandfather was an Englishman, whosewlfe wes Dutch, whose son marrled a French woman,and whose present four sons have now four wives ofdifferent natlons. He is an Amerlcan, who leavingbehind him all hls ancient pre]udioes and manners,receives new ones from the new mode of life he hasembraced, the new government he obeys, and the newrank he holds. He becomes an Amerlcan by belng