Analyze an example of the archetypal con artist in a work of American
literature by carefully considering and answering one of the following questions:
In what ways does the author’s text comment on or engage with the status of rhetoric in
American culture?
What does the author’s use of the archetypal figure of the con artist signify, symbolize, or
comment on?
Based on the text, what would be the author’s position on Johnson Jones Hooper’s aphorism ”It
is good to be shifty in a new country”?