Horatio Alger

Cast Upon the Breakers Horatio Alger

Horatio Alger wrote 135 dime novels in the latter part of the 19th century. His stories were rags to riches stories illustrating how down-and-out boys might be able to achieve the American Dream. The stories follow the adventures of bootblacks, newsboys, peddlers, buskers, and other impoverished children in their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of respectable middle-class security and comfort. Alger's stories empathize the need for hard work and honesty as a way to get ahead. In Cast Upon the Breakers our hero must overcome adversity, dishonesty, villains and bad luck to succeed. With his inheritance frittered away by an inept manager, young Rodney is on his own, and he heads to New York City to join the corps of homeless children during the nineteenth century. He finds a job as an errand boy, but false accusations cost him the job.