The American Soul

"True myth concerns itself centrally with the onward adventure of the integral soul. And this, for America, is Deerslayer. A man who turns his back on white society.... An isolate, almost selfless, stoic, enduring man, who lives by death, by killing, but who is pure white.

"You have there the myth of the essential white America. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never melted.

~ D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature