A Young Irishman Comes To America, 1818 Essay, Research Paper

A young Irishman comes to America, stubborn, full of pride and patriotism, and wanting a better life, but not wanting to leave his old life behind. This gentleman s name is John Doyle and though young, he is married to a young lady named Fanny. This story, consists of a letter to his wife, detailing how he came to America and through his hard work and determination has become a successful person. Along the way we also see a man who has changed internally from loving Ireland and criticizing America, to loving America and criticizing Ireland.

His letter starts out on October 7th, 1818 when Mr. Doyle s ship arrives at Philadelphia. After paying for the trip across the ocean, he is disturbed to find out that they want more money to ferry him ashore. All he needed was a meager three or four pence which to his embarrassment he didn t have. The people on the boat were so miserable and bitter they wouldn t lend him the money. But he managed somehow to make it to shore. He said, ” and God is my witness that at that moment, I would as soon the ground would open and swallow me up.” (p. 148) That is basically saying how embarrassed he was about his arrival and his penniless state.

He joins his father whom he hadn t seen for seventeen years. They go to visit his fathers friends although he really didn t want to. They greet him with sayings like ” you are welcome to this free country-you are welcome to this land of liberty. Pray sir, are you not happy to have escaped the tyranny of the old country?” Mr. Doyle found this amusing because he didn t think of Ireland as a tyranny and preferred his old home to this new country which I think he looked down upon. He says about his fathers friends, “Their ignorance and presumption are disgusting, their manners worse.” He continues with, “As to politeness and good nature, they are totally unknown and though they all pretend to be well acquainted with the affairs of Europe they are entirely ignorant of all transactions there, or at the best know them imperfectly.” Here he is resenting his fathers friends. He feels they are insulting his home and they don t really know what it is like in Ireland. In contrast perhaps he was guilty of the same crime considering his own new arrival to America.

The morning after his arrival he went to work at a printing press and was surprised that he still had the knack after not working for so long. He ended up working in Philadelphia for four and a half weeks and managed to save up 6. Lewis, his brother, gave him the “most pressing invitation” to move to New York, even though his father tried everything possible to make him stay and even after he left he received weekly letters from his father wanting him to return. This further shows his feeling of being better than everyone else by calling his brother poor and ignoring his fathers wishes and going to New York when he knew there wasn t any jobs for his kind of work. Since there was no demand for printers or bookbinders, he eventually got a job selling maps for 7 dollars a week. Unfortunately he got laid off and his boss still owed him 9 dollars but he was never able to collect it through legal means. He was appalled when he went to the local authorities and expected them to help him out but they didn t do anything. By this time he had 60 dollars saved up. By the 26th of January he was able to deposit 100 dollars in the bank which he thanked God for being so well off.

Mr. Doyle believes that God has helped him out because he has worked hard and helped himself. Now that he has established himself in America he asked his wife to come over because he is getting lonely and misses her greatly. He says every time he returns home in the evenings he feels ” a lonesomeness and lowness of spirits which oppress me almost to fainting.” (p. 150)

By this time he has slowly been assimilated from a proud Irishman into being a true American. He says that it s a fine country and much better than Ireland for a poor man and there is potential to make lots of money. He talks about how at first people dislike it but after a while they don t want to leave. In effect he is talking about himself and how he was and what he has become. Mr. Doyle also says that he has made more money in the short amount of time that he has been in America than most of his people who have been here two or three years because they indulge in too much drinking. This he is very proud of that he is so successful and able to save up his money, and disappointed that others don t take a similar course to his. Mr. Doyle says that if immigrants knew beforehand that they would suffer for six months after leaving home, that many would never come in the first place. This is more of his bragging about how successful he is and how he feels now that many other people can t handle the competition. He particularly likes America because of the freedom of speech, he talks about the ability ” to slander and damn government, abuse public men in their office to their faces, wear your hat in court and smoke a cigar while speaking to the judge as familiarly as if he was a common mechanic ” He is also impressed by the absence of taxes, he says ” a man is allowed to flourish , without having a penny taken out of his pocket by the government ” He even said that crimes that people go unpunished for here, they would surely be hung in Ireland. All this he says and without realizing it, he has become exactly like his father and friends talking about how much better and free America is and how tyrannical Ireland was