Israel Zangwill's The Melting Pot

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At the beginning of the 19th century, a Jew from England named Israel Zangwill wrote a play whose storyline has long been forgotten, but whose central theme has not. The play depicted the life of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family, the Quixanos. David Quixano has survived a pogrom, which killed his mother and sister, and he wishes to forget this horrible event. He composes an “American Symphony” and wants to look forward to a society free of ethnic divisions and hatred, rather than backward at his traumatic past. Zangwill's production was entitled "The Melting Pot" and its message still holds a tremendous power on the national imagination – the promise that all immigrants can be transformed into Americans and the blending together of different races into a unified culture full of democracy, freedom…show more content…
When walking down the street in New York City, you will run into someone from almost every country if you stay out long enough. Walk into a store and be greeted by someone from the Middle East Asia region, walk to the back to see a Caucasian asking his African friend what type of European tea he should buy, and overhear a Dominican ordering a bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll. These ethnicities clearly show the assimilation and the integration of different cultures in the United States as suggested in the metaphor of the melting pot. Therefore, assimilationists like author Stanley Crouch believes that cultural assimilation is alive and well in the United States. He described the new American as, "the American wears a top hat with an Indian feather sticking out of it, carries a banjo and a harmonica, knows how to summon the voice of the blues by applying a bathroom plunger to the bell of a trumpet or a trombone, will argue about the best Chinese

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