The United States is an heroic country, a benevolent giant with the power and the will to do good, blinded by the lack of proper intellectual guidance. Despite its strength and moral goodness, this lack has left the country helpless against the irrational ideas that are destroying it. This theme-the strong, morally good hero destroyed by his tragic lack of intellectual understanding-is the essense of post-World War II America, and it is not surprising, therefore, to find it embodied, however unwittingly, in some contemporary American novels. This course will philosophically examine three such novels––Shane, A Separate Peace, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest––from two perspectives: (a) contemporary America's conception of heroism, and (b) the philosophic roots of this conception of heroism.