How Does Bryson Obtain A Sense Of American Identity

Bill Bryson’s book The Lost Continent is an autobiographical piece in which Bryson talks of his experience travelling across the United States as an adult. As a child, Bryson did not identify with American culture or the American identity, idealising instead the European culture. The novel is set after the death of Bryson’s father, when he travels back to the United States in the hopes of finding his identity there, and a place where he feels fully a part of. Bryson seeks to restore his detachment with the ‘American identity,’ and rediscover his ‘American self,’ as well as ease his sense of having a ‘hybrid identity’ by finding a place that he fully identifies with and can associate with. Throughout the novel and his journey, Bryson is very
Bryson states that the people in Des Moines ‘never leave,’ but he himself did, due to the fact that he did not identify himself with the ‘culture’ and life of the people there. As Bryson recalls, even as a child, he identified much more with the stereotypical view of Europe, rather than the United States, as seen in his exclamation of ‘C’est moi!’ when seeing a European boy on television. This demonstrates where his association of identity with Europe came from, almost
The majority of memories mentioned about his father related to them taking trips as a family when Bryson was a child. Many of these included his father’s interest in trivial historical markers, his getting lost, and extreme frugalness, only letting his children go somewhere if it was ‘educational and free.’ Over the course of Bryson’s own journey, he himself demonstrates similar traits to his late father. He gets lost and ‘balks’ at the cost of various things. It appears that Bryson shares traits with his father, despite the fact that he does not feel associated with Iowa and this lifestyle. In mimicking his father, which the reader observes through Bryson’s recollections, he reveals a connection of identity to this ‘culture’ of lifestyle, by way of his