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"Only fools laugh at Horatio Alger, and his poor boys who make good. 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)
In 1867 Horatio Alger's story of Ragged Dick began as a twelve-part serial in the magazine Student and Schoolmate, but it became so popular that he eventually published it as his first novel. Alger went on to write over one hundred novels in the second half of the nineteenth century using the formula he worked out in Ragged Dick. While he never achieved the literary fame he sought, his stories struck a chord in the dreams of the American people. 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). E.D. Hirsch included Horatio Alger in his 1987 list of ideas that form part of our cultural heritage in Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, and the "rags to riches" theme shows no sign of losing its attraction. 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. This "rags to riches" theme provides the basic plot and character motivation in two recent young adult novels, Breaking Through, by Francisco Jiménez (2001) and Double Luck, by Lu Chi Fa (2001).
The Horatio Alger Hero: Ragged Dick
In Ragged Dick Alger made a homeless orphan into a hero who became the prototype for the hundreds of heroes Alger created in the next thirty years. 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. Dick's fortunes improve because he follows advice, works hard to acquire an education, and takes advantage of every opportunity. He also has the essential prerequisite to success-good character. The narrator describes Dick:
He was above doing anything mean or dishonorable. He would not steal, or...