 Tom displays an Emersonian understanding of national identity.His sense of Americanness is connected to the land and its beauty, and he believes in a collective possession of this land and all of its history for all Americans.His anger at Roddy’s sale of the Native American artifacts to the German stems from a belief that they were a piece of American history, that they were of the land, and therefore nobody had the right to sell them, much less to a non-American.