For example, a gentleman asks him to guide his nephew around the city for a day because he likes Dick’s honest looks (57). Such trust helps him get shoe-shine customers as well as other opportunities. In addition to his virtue, Dick has “a frank, straight-forward manner” (40) that leads people to trust him despite his shabby appearance. He helps other homeless boys like Johnny Nolan, who doesn’t have enough money for food Henry Fosdick, who needs lodging and clothing and Tom Wilkins and his mother, who are being evicted. His nature was a noble one and had saved him from all mean faults (43-44).ĭick puts the welfare of others ahead of himself. He would not steal, or cheat, or impose upon younger boys, but was frank and straight-forward, manly and self-reliant. He was above doing anything mean or dishonorable. He also has the essential prerequisite to success-good character. Dick’s fortunes improve because he follows advice, works hard to acquire an education, and takes advantage of every opportunity. The novel covers the hero’s transformation from a ragged, homeless boy of the streets to a respectable clerk with a salary of ten dollars per week. This “rags to riches” theme provides the basic plot and character motivation in two recent young adult novels,Īlger made a homeless orphan into a hero who became the prototype for the hundreds of heroes Alger created in the next thirty years. Like an archetypal fairy tale, Alger’s story of how a poor boy can move from the fringes to become a respected member of society lives on in contemporary young adult stories depicting the struggles of immigrants to the United States. , and the “rags to riches” theme shows no sign of losing its attraction. Hirsch included Horatio Alger in his 1987 list of ideas that form part of our cultural heritage inĬultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know
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Edward Stratemeyer, who started an influential syndicate of children’s series books in 1883, read Alger’s novels as a young boy and set out to write similar stories which continue to be highly popular even today (Johnson 33). While he never achieved the literary fame he sought, his stories struck a chord in the dreams of the American people.
Alger went on to write over one hundred novels in the second half of the nineteenth century using the formula he worked out in , but it became so popular that he eventually published it as his first novel.
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In 1867 Horatio Alger’s story of Ragged Dick began as a twelve-part serial in the magazine The wiser man who thinks twice about that sterling author will realize that Alger is to America what Homer was to the Greeks.” (Nathanael West and Boris Ingster, 1940) “Only fools laugh at Horatio Alger, and his poor boys who make good. The Horatio Alger Theme in Adolescent Novels about the Immigrant Experience
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