Reading Martin Chuzzlewit again (Signet classic edition 1965) 53 years since my first reading, I was struck by Dickens’ observations of the American character. Writing in 1842, he seemed to sum up how the collective psyche was sucking the nation down the vortex of exceptionalism and insularity. Dickens’ principal character inquires of his host (p569):
“Are Mr Chollop and the class he represents an Institution here? Are pistols with revolving barrels, sword-sticks, bowie-knives, and such things, institutions on which you pride yourselves? Are bloody duels, brutal combats, savage assaults, shooting down and stabbing in the streets your institutions! Why, I shall hear next that dishonor and fraud are among the institutions of the Great Republic!”
He records the following exchange (p581) between Martin Chuzzlewit and his travelling companion Mark about the iconic emblem of America:
“Why I was a-thinking, sir,” returned Mark, “that if I was a painter and was called upon to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?”
“Paint it as like an eagle as you could, I suppose.”
“No,” said Mark. “That wouldn’t do it for me, sir. I should want to draw it like a bat for its short-sightedness, like a bantam for its bragging, like a magpie for its honesty, like a peacock for its vanity, like a ostrich for its putting its head in the mud and thinking nobody sees it—-“
“And like a phoenix for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices and soaring up anew into the sky!” said Martin. “Well, Mark. Let us hope so.”
In an Afterword by Marvin Mudrick in this edition (p894) he notes:
“Of course there is also Dickens the intelligent and sardonic reporter, who rehearses, out of his disillusioning tour, an America still uncomfortably recognizable, more than a century later, in its confusion of violence with courage, intimidation with justice, chauvinism with pride, conformity with freedom.”
Today, that ostrich head seems still to be firmly planted in the mud with its backside exposed to ridicule.
Awesomely Astute 