Basic Composition 355:100: G6
Final Draft Paper #5
12/1/10
America’s Craving for Desire
The great American author Napoleon Hill once said, “Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” Hill presents the idea that these desires become the foundation, which in turn creates a power that is superior to the standard. America as a whole has the desire to be better than every other country, even if the consequences are unknown. Americans believe our way of living has put the country above the rest, for our advancements are much greater than the rest. Barbara Kingsolver in “A Fist in the Eye of God,” explores the theory that America wants …show more content…
America has always had the desire to be the most efficient and potent country in the world, while other countries attempt to be like America. There is no country like America, for Americans are always one step ahead of the competition: “dinosaurs are distinctly American, not only because our scholars have so often been at the forefront of fossil discoveries and paleontological theory but because the popular dinosaur is a wholly owned projection of the nationalist psyche of the United States” (Hitt 128). Hitt notes that the tyrannosaurus rex was generated from Americans ambitions and how Americans wanted to see T. rex, for America had basically found most of these dinosaurs through archeological digs. In Hitt’s essay, countries like China tried to make new dinosaurs based off of their own desires, but America quickly shot them down because the image did not accommodate what Americans wanted dinosaurs to be. Hitt explains that through Americans aspirations, America had used the T-rex to create the powerful country that it is today, making the T-rex our mascot. America may be a dominant country compared to other countries, but that does not mean that everything is done in everyone’s best interest. Kingsolver says, “But I only have to stand still for a minute and watch the outcome of thirty million years’ worth of hummingbird evolution transubstantiated before my eyes into nest and egg to get knocked down to size” (Kinsolver 213). Kingsolver presents the idea that America can get to the stature it wants to be by following the example of the hummingbird, as the hummingbird has done just fine by itself over the billions of years without technology. Kingsolver explains that America is efficient like a hummingbird, but ultimately gets to that desired efficiency through an unethical approach. America’s