 5. Narrative Identity and the Life Story 133
2016). For many highly productive and car -
ing midlife American adults, the redemptive 
self has proven to be an especially compel -
ling narrative for living a good life.
The redemptive self is a life-story proto -
type that serves to support the generative 
efforts of midlife men and women. Their re -
demptive life narratives tell how generative 
adults seek to give back to society in grati -
tude for the early advantages and blessings 
they feel they have received. In every life, 
generativity is tough and frustrating work, 
as every parent or community volunteer 
knows. But if an adult constructs a narrative 
identity in which the protagonist’s suffering 
in the short run often gives way to reward 
later on, he or she may be better able to sus -
tain the conviction that seemingly thankless 
investments today will pay off for future gen -
erations. Redemptive life stories support the 
kind of life strivings that a highly generative 
man or woman in the midlife years is likely 
to set forth. They also confer a moral legiti -
macy to life. Through redemptive stories, 
adults legitimate their strivings and com -
mitments to make the world a better place 
for generations to come, which in turn give 
direction and form to their daily behavior as 
parents, citizens, role models, and the like.
Culture: The Role of Master Narratives
The conception of the redemptive self (Mc -
Adams, 2013) brings to attention the role of 
culture in the construction of narrative iden -
tity. The kinds of life stories that highly gen -
erative American adults tend to tell reprise 
quintessentially American  cultural themes—  
themes that carry a powerful moral cachet 
among Americans. The redemptive stories 
told by highly generative American adults 
recapture and couch in a contemporary psy -
chological language especially cherished, as 
well as hotly contested, ideas in American 
cultural history and heritage—  ideas that 
appear prominently in spiritual accounts of 
the 17th-  century Puritans, Benjamin Frank -
lin’s celebrated 18th-  century autobiography, 
slave narratives and Horatio Alger stories 
from the 19th century, and the literature 
of self-help and American entrepreneurship 
from more recent times (McAdams, 2013). 
Evolving from the Puritans to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Oprah Winfrey, the redemptive 
self has morphed into many different story 
forms in the past 300 years as Americans 
have sought to author their lives as redemp -
tive tales of atonement, emancipation, recov -
ery, self-  fulfillment, and upward social mo -
bility. The stories speak of heroic individual 
protagonists—  the chosen people —whose 
manifest destiny  is to make a positive dif -
ference in a dangerous world, even when the 
world does not wish to be redeemed. The 
stories translate a deep and abiding script of 
what historians call American exceptional -
ism into the many contemporary narratives 
of success, recovery, development, libera -
tion, and self-  actualization that so pervade 
American talk, talk shows, therapy sessions, 
sermons, and commencement speeches. It is 
as if especially generative American adults, 
whose lives are dedicated to making the 
world a better place for future generations, 
are—for better or worse—the most ardent 
narrators of a general life story format as 
American as apple pie and Walt Disney.
The redemptive self is an example of what 
Hammack (2008) described as a master nar -
rative of culture. Hammack defined a master 
narrative  as “a cultural script that is readily 
accessible to members of a particular axis of 
identity, whether that be a nation, an ethnic 
group, or a gender” (p. 235). A master nar -
rative conveys how a particular identity con -
stituency has traditionally construed its own 
history and the expected life history of its 
individual members. As such, a master nar -
rative conveys an ideological message that 
both validates the group’s identity and sets 
forth what counts as a good and praisewor -
thy life for the individual. In the case of the 
redemptive self, the master narrative affirms 
the values of autonomy, freedom, empathy, 
optimism, resilience, steadfast conviction, 
hard work, upward striving, giving back to 
others, and the sense that some people (and 
indeed some groups or nations) are specially 
chosen to do good things in the world. Many 
midlife American adults are motivated to 
shape their life stories in accord with the re -
demptive self, for they aspire to live a life 
that exemplifies the values inherent in the 
master narrative. Any given society may 
have a range of different master narratives. 
In American society, therefore, the redemp -
tive self is one especially salient story about 