Crevecoeur, Hughes, and Hope

     Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer and John Hughes’ Weird Science are two seemingly unrelated works. Yet these disparate works both touch upon the theme of hope. Hope unites these two works, and gives rise to another way one can interpret Crevecoeur’s Letters.

     Both Crevecoeur's Letters and Hughes Weird Science are filled with hope. In Crevecoeur’s third and seventh letter, he establishes what he hopes Americans will be, and in his ninth letter, he writes about who he hopes his kindsmen will not become. Similarly, Hughes' movie is filled with hope - in fact, the whole plot is based upon the effects of the protagonists's hope.

     One should read Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer with hope. Crevecoeur's farmer in his Letters shows what awaits the hopeless in difficult situations: depression and disillusionment. In Crevecoeur’s last letter, “Distresses of a Frontier Man,” Crevecoeur laments the fall of America in the Revolutionary War. Disillusioned with America, Crevecoeur’s farmer highlights the violence and horrors of the war, and accuses it of robbing his generation of future happiness (xroads.virginia.edu). He even describes life itself as “a mere accident, and of the worst kind; we are born to be victims of disease and passions, of mischances and death; better not to be than to be miserable (Taylor 45).” , One should read Crevecoeur’s last letter with hope, for without hope, it is easy to become disillusioned with life in difficult times, like the farmer in Crevecoeur’s Letters. Yet with hope, one clings onto the possibility of better times, and continues to move forward.