2. Pocahontas and the Myth of Transatlantic Love

The figure of Pocahontas is at the core of an American foundational myth that for a long time has been considered the first love story of the ‘new world’ and thus paradigmatic for casting intercultural relations in the early colonial history of the Americas as harmonious and peaceful. As a Native American female foundational figure, Pocahontas may seem less prominent than the male European Christopher Columbus and his myth of discovery (due to her gender and ethnicity), yet her story has had an enormous circulation. The romanticization of Pocahontas and her encounter with the English settlers have become one of the most enduring narratives of American culture: this story was “recast and retold more often than any other American historical incident during the colonial and antebellum periods”, pointing to the “evolution of an American narrative” over the course of two centuries and to the debate and refashioning of this narrative in the centuries to follow.

3. Pilgrims and Puritans and the Myth of the Promised Land

The Pilgrims and Puritans who settled in New England in the first half of the 17th century are the protagonists of a foundational myth that has survived across the centuries as a story of American beginnings characterized by religiosity, idealism, sacrifice, and a utopian vision based on theology. Many scholars have considered the New England Pilgrims and Puritans as the ‘first Americans’ in the spirit of what would later develop into the full-fledged notion of American exceptionalism. Often, they have been contrasted favorably to the settlers in Virginia, who were seen as “adventurers” supposedly interested in material gain only, whereas the Pilgrims and Puritans, it was claimed, came for spiritual reasons and considered themselves religious refugees

4. The American Dream

Rather than just a powerful philosophy or ideology, the American Dream—“a vision of a better, deeper, richer life for every individual, regardless of the position in society which he or she may occupy by the accident of birth,” as James Truslow Adams defined the phrase in his 1931 book, The Epic of America —is thoroughly woven into the fabric of everyday life. It plays a vital, active role in who we are, what we do, and why we do it.

No other idea or mythology—even religion, I believe—has as much influence on our individual and collective lives, with the American Dream one of the precious few things in this country that we all share. You name it—economics, politics, law, work, business, education—and the American Dream is there, the nation at some level a marketplace of competing interpretations and visions of what it means and should mean.

5. The American Way of Life

Since the term was popularized in the 1930s, the American Way of Life—a belief or set of beliefs that assign certain attitudes and/or behaviors related to our national character—has served as another guiding mythology or ethos of the United States. Because it is simply an idea open to interpretation and is constantly mutating, it is impossible to say with certainty what the American Way is and what it is not. The American Way has over the years thus represented many things to many people, making it a useful device for anyone wishing to promote a particular agenda that serves his or her interests.

The American Way is essentially whatever each of us wants it to be, a wonderful thing that does justice to the libertarian streak embedded in our national charter. While the term has been attached to everything from farming to baseball to barbecue, a consumerist lifestyle supported by a system based on free enterprise has served as its ideological backbone.