Horatio Alger, Jr. - Style and Themes

Style and Themes

Alger scholar Gary Scharnhorst describes Alger's style as "anachronistic", "often laughable", "distinctive", and "distinguished by the quality of its literary allusions". Ranging from the Bible and Shakespeare (half of Alger's books contain Shakespearean references) to John Milton and Cicero, the allusions he employed were a testament to his erudition. Scharnhorst credits these allusions for distinguishing Alger's novels from pulp fiction.

Scharnhorst describes six major themes in Alger's boys' books. The first, the Rise to Respectability, he observes, is evident in both his early and late books, notably in Ragged Dick, whose young impoverished hero declares: "I mean to turn over a new leaf, and try to grow up 'spectable." His virtuous life wins him–not riches–but, more realistically, a comfortable clerical position and salary. The second major theme explores Character Strengthened Through Adversity. In Strong and Steady and Shifting for Himself, for example, the affluent heroes are reduced to poverty and forced to meet the demands of their new circumstances. Alger occasionally cited the young Abe Lincoln as a representative of this theme for his readers. The third theme is Beauty versus Money, which became central to Alger's adult fiction. Characters fall in love and marry based on the their character, talents, or intellect rather than the size of their bank accounts. In The Train Boy, for example, a wealthy heiress chooses to marry a talented but struggling artist and in The Erie Train Boy a poor woman wins her true love despite the machinations of a rich, depraved suitor.

All of Alger's novels rework the same plot: a young boy struggles to escape poverty through hard work and clean living. However, it is not always the hard work and clean living that rescue the boy from his situation, but rather a wealthy older gentleman, who admires the boy as a result of some extraordinary act of bravery or honesty that the boy has performed. For example, the boy might rescue a child from an overturned carriage or find and return the man's stolen watch. Often the older man takes the boy into his home as a ward or companion and helps him find a better job (sometimes replacing a less honest or industrious boy).

According to Scharnhorst, Alger's father was "an impoverished man" who defaulted on his debts in 1844. His properties around Chelsea were seized and assigned to a local squire who held the mortgages. Scharnhorst speculates this episode in Alger's childhood accounts for the recurrent theme in his boys' books of heroes being threatened with eviction or foreclosure, and may account for Alger's "consistent espousal of environmental reform proposals". Scharnhorst writes "Financially insecure throughout his life, the younger Alger may have been active in reform organizations such as those for temperance and children's aid as a means of resolving his status-anxiety and establish his genteel credentials for leadership."

Alger scholar Hoyt notes that Alger's morality "coarsened" around 1880, possibly influenced by the Western tales he was writing, because "the most dreadful things were now almost casually proposed and explored". Although he continued to write for boys, Alger explored subjects like violence and "openness in the relations between the sexes and generations"; Hoyt attributes this shift to the decline of Puritan ethics in America.

Scholar John Geck notes that Alger relied on "formulas for experience rather than shrewd analysis of human behavior", and that these formulas were "culturally centered" and "strongly didactic". Although the frontier society was a thing of the past during Alger's career, Geck contends that "the idea of the frontier, even in urban slums, provides a kind of fairy tale orientation in which a Jack mentality can be both celebrated and critiqued". He claims that Alger's intended audience were youths whose "motivations for action are effectively shaped by the lessons they learn".

Geck notes that perception of the "pluck" characteristic of an Alger hero has changed over the decades. During the Jazz Age and the Great Depression, "the Horatio Alger plot was viewed from the perspective of the Progressive movement as a staunch defense of laissez-faire capitalism, yet at the same time criticizing the cutthroat business techniques and offering hope to a suffering young generation during the Great Depression". By the Atomic Age, however "Alger's hero was no longer a poor boy who, through determination and providence rose to middle-class respectability. He was instead the crafty street urchin who through quick wits and luck rose from impoverishment to riches".

Geck observes that Alger's themes have been transformed in modern America from their original meanings into a Male Cinderella myth, and are an Americanization of the traditional Jack tales. Each story has its clever hero, its "fairy godmother", and obstacles and hindrances to the hero's rise. "However", he writes, "he true Americanization of this fairy tale occurs in its subversion of this claiming of nobility; rather, the Alger hero achieves the American Dream in its nascent form, he gains a position of middle-class respectability that promises to lead wherever his motivation may take him". The reader may speculate what Cinderella achieved as Queen and what an Alger hero attained once his middle class status was stabilized and "t is this commonality that fixes Horatio Alger firmly in the ranks of modern adaptors of the Cinderella myth".