The Danish Immigrant Experience in the Fiction of Enok Mortensen

Authors

Rudolf J. Jensen

Keywords

emigration, Danish literature, working class, Americanization

Abstract

Here are several short quotations from Enok Mortensen 's fiction for the purpose of showing its primary themes: " . .. for you emigrants, nothing is ever as good as it was in Denmark . .. you always have to compare . .. Over here one always possesses a peculiar unrest-only another hundred dollars, a thousand, or a million dollars more. In the old country everything was ordered and secure . .. Sons followed in the footsteps of their fathers, but as a rule they didn't get any farther either . .. Here in America it was the Golden Chance that egged one on, that always pushed one feverishly forward . .. It wasn't only the possibility of scraping some money together that bound him to his adopted land; it was the right to stand alone and independent . .. I am an immigrant-that is the crux of it-because of it one has a split personality, a damned rootlessness; nowhere is one at home, nowhere at peace. "

Recommended Citation

Jensen, Rudolf J. (1987) "The Danish Immigrant Experience in the Fiction of Enok Mortensen," The Bridge: Vol. 10: No. 2, Article 7.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thebridge/vol10/iss2/7