Individualism is always to be an interesting issue because of its relevancies with some big cases in America and its impacts toward the other countries, mainly, in Indonesia. This paper is by no means a comprehensive account of individualism or more accurately, individualism, in America. In fact, it is intended to be more suggestive than comprehensive though it is characterized by more summary than controversy. Many ideas as well as some of the highlights of American manifestations of individualism and modes of individualistic thought and philosophy have been added to fit this into a length paper. What follows, then, is merely a look at some of the high-water marks of literary American individualism and an attempt to offer some cursory explanations for this American phenomenon in theory and practice. Reader-Response criticism is used to make perspective and interpretation without a doubt. For Indonesian, they can be more comprehensible about the deep meaning of American individualism than before.

        Kata kunci: individualism, American culture, Reader-Response criticism