The article on the “Paradoxes of American Individualism” argues that Americans have a contradictory sense of the individual. Americans agree that the individual is bound to societal norms, but also agree that the individual is free and responsible for their own successes and failures at the same time. The article further argues that the contradiction between “Americans’ construction of the autonomous self and Americans’ seeming insistence on group loyalty” stems from a contractual mentality––a view that morality or other social norms is based on a contract between the individual and society.

The problem revealed when the message from Langston Hughes’s poem is paired with the article is a flaw in Americans’ idea of individual achievement and how personal it is. “Let America Be America Again” shows that American society hides that individual achievement isn’t solely personal, and that there are outside factors influencing everyone’s success. In the poem, America is a place where people with power determine the fate of the less powerful, and freedom is questioned. It implies that people with significant power and influence over others control society just like the English monarchs had control over the colonies. Americans think that every citizen is responsible for their own successes and failures, but society has a substantial influence over individuals’ fate. Americans do admit that society should be followed, but not that it could be harmful and skewed against their favor by people in power. To Americans, society is a point of reference, a constant which every American contractually agrees to participate in and let judge, not something that should be changed.

“America” by Walt Whitman, in contrast to Hughes poem, paints a more attractive view of America. It speaks to people around the world who strive for the American dream and look up to America as a place of freedom and opportunity. But the poem is about a minority of Americans––the people who hold real power in society. High-status Americans live in the illusionary side of America which hides economic inequality and division, and Whitman contributes to this illusion by leaving out those people who live under the influence of the powerful and are sociologically oppressed.