What is America?” in the book What I Saw in America, by British writer G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

When we are to travel or go on a long journey to a new place where we have never been before, we normally create our own imaginations about what we think that place will be like. We create these imaginations based on what we have heard, read, or watched on television. Usually when we get to the place the feeling is always different. We sometimes find better things than what we expected, sometimes when we put higher expectations we end up being disappointed if we find less appealing environments or setting.

 In the book what I saw in America, G. K. Chesterton gives his narrative on what he imagined about America and what his experience was before, during, and after his American visit. In this paragraph we only focus in the chapter “What is America”. In this chapter Chesterton discusses what he thinks about America and the American people. "As he writes, I have found the American people the politest people in the world (4). Chesterton goes on to discuss that American constitution is founded on creed and that Americans are patriotic and they love their country".

 Despite all these, Chesterton is quick to point out that America is a country of tolerance as it accepts people from all over the world. America teaches its new people to love America just as their own home. From this reading I was deeply touched by the following quote; It is the experience of men that always returns to the equality of men…  is when men have seen and suffered much and come at the end of more elaborate experiments, that they see men as men under an equal light of death and daily laughter  (18). I feel like Chesterton is saying that people will mistreat, oppress, and dehumanize other people until they undergo the same mistreatment, and this is when they come to their senses that all people are supposed to be treated equally and with dignity.