What are your thoughts on this claim when compared to Paula Gunn Allen thoughts on the American tendency to view America as a blank slate

Question

In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald explores how Americans’ pursuit of social status and wealth through the rewriting of one’s past results in destruction and moral decay.

Answer 1

A major theme in “The Great Gatsby” is that the American Dream, as represented by the character of Gatsby, is loaded with excess and superficiality of the wealthy class in the novel.

Paula Gunn Allen wrote numerous essays, stories and poetry with Native American and feminist themes, and two biographies of Native American women. Paula believed that women form part of the continuity, balance, harmony, and completeness found in American Indian cultures.

 According to recent polls, 76 percent of Americans believe in the biblical account of creation, 79 percent believe that the miracles in the Bible actually took place, 76 percent believe in angels, the devil, and other immaterial souls, 67 percent believe they will exist in some form after their death, and only 15 percent believe that Darwin's theory of evolution is the best explanation for the origin of human life on Earth.(Source: 'The Blank Slate' - The New York Times (nytimes.com))

"Blank slate" is a loose translation of the medieval Latin term tabula rasa-literally, "scraped tablet." It is commonly attributed to the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), though in fact he used a different metaphor. Source: 'The Blank Slate' - The New York Times (nytimes.com))

Paula says 'The loneliness of exploration was, and is, a compelling idea for Americans. The lone hero still wanders, determined and self-assured, however lost, across the pages of America. Ronald Reagan in the forties and Robert Redford in the seventies flicker in their autistic heroism across the projected screens of American life. The Great American Cowboy is cheered for his self-reliance; the most hated American is the one who accepts society’s help through a welfare allotment. And it isn’t a matter of virtue in the Protestant sense that creates this peculiarity: It is not that taking care of oneself is a virtue.' (Source: From “Savages in the Mirror,” Paula Gunn Allen (1974) | for future reference (wordpress.com)

My thoughts are that the sources contrast themes of excess and self-reliance /gratitude.