Name: YINGYING HUANG
Professor: Teddy Chocos
Class: ESL 100DE
Day: 10.15.2015
The Impact of the American Frontier
There is no doubt that when we think back to the pioneers of an earlier century in
the United Stated. The first thought enter into brain is Colonists and Indians Fight for
Mutual Interests on the American Frontier Since the settling of the English colonies in the
early 17th century. North American has been a pioneer. Every coin has its pros and cons.
On the one hand, American frontier lead to war, the war produced many casualties in
both armies. On the other hand, American frontier was very important in shaping
American values. Such as hard work, individual freedom, equality of opportunity and so
on. This aim of this essay is talk about the impact of American frontier.
The daily life of people living on the frontier was filled with hard work and
difficulties. They didn’t live in house or apartment like our today’s life. They lived on
land. Each family lived far away; it would be difficult to communicate them. They can’t
rely on other help just depend on your family who live with you. In order to survive, the
entire family needed to work. They need to constructed their own houses, hunted, tended
their own gardens, and mode their own clothing and household item. At that time all of
them need you have self-reliance quality. If you don’t want to work, you would be died
on the frontier. This is the most wonderful quality in our life. Now, we live in urban that
have neighbor, friends surround you and are with you. Once you meet problem, they can
come and help you. Technologies make today’s life become simple. However, I feel bad
for we live now. We are richer than past, have more free time. We live in world peace.
Yet we are too depend on “help” that more and more people keep away self-reliance
quality. If you meet some work you don’t want, money can help you solve this problem.
It’s terrible for our life that make human be lazy. In my opinion, people need to hold the
quality for self-reliance. Work by yourself, don’t stand-by other people.
The frontier has not existed for more than 100 years, but its effects are sill present
today. In Datesman’s book called “The American Ways”, Datesman states: “In the
United States, where freedom from outside social controls has traditionally been values,
the frontier has been idealized, and it still serves a basis for a nostalgic view of the early
United States, a simpler time that was last when the country became urbanized and more
complex” (81). Rugged Individualist plays an important role in the early United States
and brings it to nowadays. For me, I think urban is noisy, polluted and stressful. I prefer
rural lifestyle. Because I am more like away from the noise and traffic. Rural lifestyle is
simple and natural. We can breathe flash air and do more individual work, don’t worry
work environmental influences. Now, in my country China, we have many people, who
want to find the work, they could follow commercial market. For example, the previous
year in China, FuJian, teacher became a very popular work. School open accept
thousands teacher. In that time, many graduates chose candidate teacher rather than they
really like becoming a teacher. In rural, you don’t need to think too much. Just do what
you want. But in the United Stated, they do more well than China. They put past frontier
life values into now. Especially hard work, I can see many American students choose one
side go to college, the other side to work. They worked too hard and still hard to study. It
is difficult for most Chinese student. We just study and after graduation we find a job.
China should learn more value of the United States.
Briefly, the reason why America became first power on the earth, we can say the
quality of the American frontier also have many good point impact America today’s life.
If America lost frontier life, maybe there have different life style.