Word: individualist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...valid for being something of a cliche. Anyway, the characters are so strong that the piece does not play as a cliché. Hepburn, for example may have a less chewy part than has Fonda, but the briskness of her manner, her well-justified image as a no-nonsense individualist who is nevertheless a good sport, serve her wonderfully. There is a vivifying touch of tension between an actress who was a liberated woman before the movement was born and her role as traditional wife and mother...
...body can partly be seen as a diminished expression of the old or of unquenchable American optimism. "Here's for the plain old Adam, the simple genuine self against the whole world." So Ralph Waldo Emerson toasted the American spirit. But the "old" Adam, that rugged and predatory individualist, in his current incarnation is caught in a dilemma: how to survive an increasingly imperfect, not to say hostile, environment...
...Americans always claim their dispensation. A dream house has been a vision at the core of American hopes, a tender blend of expectation and nostalgia. It derives its imagery from the historical spaciousness of the land (God's country, after all, his bounteous land grant, the interminable individualist homestead unfolding toward the horizon) and the simultaneous need for shelter that its harshness imposed. A people so socially and geographically mobile used housing as an instrument to trumpet their wherewithal, their substance, their civic presence. They have sometimes nearly impoverished themselves to anchor their identities in their homes...
...outfit pickup trucks as high-ridin', gas-guzzlin' quarter horses: shotguns are displayed in the rear windows, and western music yips through the air conditioning. Whether the collars be blue or button-down, frontier chic is a perennial fashion. Our conviction that the cowboy was an enviable individualist in denim persists like a psychic saddlesore...
...CUMULATIVE effect of these stories shatters one of the pervasive myths usually associated with the American Dream: the rugged individualist. Not everybody in this book wants to be thought of as a cowboy poking along into the sunset. They tend to value--even rely on--community much more than Americans are supposed to. Take, for example, Sam Lopez, a former gang member, who reformed and eventually became director of a program for ex-offenders. Like many others, he cannot achieve personal satisfaction until he has helped others; he doesn't come off at all preachy, only determined to see that...