Tom Hanks and the American Dream

Or rather the character protrayed by Tom Hanks in that excellent and in my view underrated film Castaway.
Writing, or should I say blogging, as an Englishman living in France with a married daughter based in Houston, Texas, I often find myself pondering on what it is that makes Americans different from us. I have to say that I am unfettered by any great knowledge of Americans - I've only been to the States twice and curiously enough hardly met a single American while I was out there! But that's an advantage, surely, because once you get to know a country well, it's difficult to write about it with any confidence.
In his fascinating book On Paradise Drive, David Brooks pinpoints the extraordinary ENERGY of American people. That certainly strikes a chord with me, and it is the dominant trait of Tom Hanks in the first part of the film when he is the restless go-go FedEx executive. Where does this energy come from? Is it the cause or the result of a dominant society? After all, the world once looked on in amazement as mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the midday sun when the British Empire was at its zenith.
The second part, when Tom Hanks finds himself marooned on a desert island, is for me the least interesting part of the film though it reminds us what an extraordinarily fine actor he is.
It is the third and last part which I found the most engrossing and which even now, several years later, I can't get out of my mind. If you saw the film, you will remember that when Hanks is eventually rescued and returns to the States, he finds that his wife has given him up for dead and has, as the saying goes, "moved on". The film ends somewhere in the vast American West with Hanks driving out to some lone homestead to deliver a Fedex package which he had kept with him during all his time as a castaway. The closing scenes, with the merest hint of romance and a new life are beautifully done; they encapsulate what for me is the true American dream: the dream of a fresh start, of "starting over", of redemption. Perhaps this is why this inhabitant of congested, jaundiced Europe is drawn irresistibly towards America and feels a kind of nostalgic longing for it, as though I had spent much of my early life there!