Abduction and the American Dream

That the idea of abduction runs so prevailantly through the numerous texts of this course should come as very little of a surprise. So much of what is America produces a type of abduction in the minds of the those who view it. From outside, the hope embodied in the American Dream pulls so heavily upon the dreams and desires of those who long for it. The promise eternal youth, boundless riches, and beginning life anew have forever held the psyche of so many who seek America’s tempting promises. She is a seductress. Perhaps the largest problem with America is that she is not at all a she. America is man, and an evil abductor at that. Both Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Waldo Ellison dealt directly with this in their seminal anti-Horatio Algerian novels. Horatio is the abductor at that heart of the seductive lie of the American Dream.
Abduction proceeds seduction!