Freedom Fries Symbol Analysis

In the mid-2000s, when France refused to join the United States in its invasion of Iraq, a wave of anti-French sentiment led some American senators to cry that French fries should be renamed “freedom fries.” To Vowell, this seemingly silly protest was fascinating because it symbolized just how little Americans understand their own history. As Vowell proves over and over again in her book, the ill-prepared American Patriots would not have stood a chance against the British Redcoats in the Revolutionary War were not it for French aid; if anything, it was the Americans who failed their French allies, when they refused to get involved in the French Revolution just a few years after their own victory. Vowell was so mystified by this widespread anger at the French that she was motivated to write her book about Lafayette, a French hero of the American Revolution whose very existence embodied the close tie between the two nations. If “freedom fries” are the product of Americans’ short historical memory, then, Lafayette is a necessary counterbalance, a human reminder of the essential role France played in the development of the new United States.