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Ideologies of the American Dream

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Although the imagery of the "American Dream" is ever-changing, the idea remains prominent. Many times the American Dream is seen as one image, such as a little white picket fence, with a house, and a stable, wholesome family. The more abstract ideologies of the infamous American Dream are, that America is the land of opportunity, and there are ample amounts of opportunities to make something of oneself. Many people will come to America, The Land of Opportunity, to find a better job, or to have an all over better life. The theme of families, and the sense of a strong family atmosphere is an important factor in the American Dream. Other ideologies may include the value of independence, for that is what America was founded upon, through hard work and determination anyone can succeed, and American Exceptionalism.

In American Literature

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Many authors and works in American Literature provide evidence in illuminating these American Ideals associated with the American Dream. The themes of these works famous American Authors display especially show off this idea of the American dream. Other people such as political figures such as John Winthrop adds to the many American Ideals associated with the American Dream.


Literature

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The term is used in popular discourse, and scholars have traced its use in American literature ranging from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,[1] to Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Willa Cather's My Ántonia,[2] F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977).[3] Other writers who used the American Dream theme include Hunter S. Thompson, Edward Albee,[4] John Steinbeck,[5] and Langston Hughes.[6] The American Dream is also discussed in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman; the play's protagonist, Willy, is on a quest for the American Dream.

As Chua (1994) shows, the American Dream is a recurring theme in other literature as well, for example, the fiction of Asian Americans.[7][8]

American Ideals

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Illuminating American Ideals in writing is one of the best ways to do it, the mass medias can see them. Many American authors added American Ideals to their work as a theme or other reoccurring idea, to get their point across. [9] There are many ideals that appear in American Literature such as, but not limited too, all people are equal, The United States of America is the Land of Opportunity, independence is valued, The American Dream is attainable, and everyone can succeed with hard work and determination. John Winthrop also wrote about this term called, American Exceptionalism. This ideology refers to the idea that Americans are the chosen ones, and that they are the light.[10]

Literary commentary

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European governments, worried that their best young people would leave for America, distributed posters like this to frighten them. This 1869 Swedish anti-emigration poster contrasts Per Svensson's dream of the American idyll (left) and the reality of his life in the wilderness (right), where he is menaced by a mountain lion, a big snake, and wild Indians who are scalping and disembowelling someone.[11]

The American Dream has been credited with helping to build a cohesive American experience, but has also been blamed for inflated expectations.[12] Some commentators have noted that despite deep-seated belief in the egalitarian American Dream, the modern American wealth structure still perpetuates racial and class inequalities between generations.[13] One sociologist notes that advantage and disadvantage are not always connected to individual successes or failures, but often to prior position in a social group.[13]

Since the 1920s, numerous authors, such as Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel Babbitt, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his 1925 classic, The Great Gatsby, satirized or ridiculed materialism in the chase for the American dream. For example, Jay Gatsby's death mirrors the American Dream's demise, reflecting the pessimism of modern-day Americans.[14] The American Dream is a main theme in the book by John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men. The two friends George and Lennie dream of their own piece of land with a ranch, so they can "live off the fatta the lan'" and just enjoy a better life. The book later shows that not everyone can achieve the American Dream, thus proving by contradiction it is not possible for all, although it is possible to achieve for a few. A lot of people follow the American Dream to achieve a greater chance of becoming rich. Some posit that the ease of achieving the American Dream changes with technological advances, availability of infrastructure and information, government regulations, state of the economy, and with the evolving cultural values of American demographics.

In 1949 Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, in which the American Dream is a fruitless pursuit. Similarly, in 1971 Hunter S. Thompson depicted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey Into the Heart of the American Dream a dark psychedelic reflection of the concept—successfully illustrated only in wasted pop-culture excess.[15]

The novel "Requiem for a Dream" by Hubert Selby, Jr., is an exploration of the pursuit of American success as it turns delirious and lethal, told through the ensuing tailspin of its main characters. George Carlin famously wrote the joke "it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it".[16] Carlin pointed to "the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions" as having a greater influence than an individual's choice.[16] Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges echos this sentiment in his 2012 book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt:[17]

The vaunted American dream, the idea that life will get better, that progress is inevitable if we obey the rules and work hard, that material prosperity is assured, has been replaced by a hard and bitter truth. The American dream, we now know, is a lie. We will all be sacrificed. The virus of corporate abuse - the perverted belief that only corporate profit matters - has spread to outsource our jobs, cut the budgets of our schools, close our libraries, and plague our communities with foreclosures and unemployment.

The American Dream, and the sometimes dark response to it, has been a long-standing theme in American film.[18] Many counterculture films of the 1960s and 1970s ridiculed the traditional quest for the American Dream. For example Easy Rider (1969), directed by Dennis Hopper, shows the characters making a pilgrimage in search of "the true America" in terms of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifestyles.[19]

Comparative upward mobility

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Recent research suggests that the United States show roughly average levels of occupational upward mobility, and lower rates of income mobility, than comparable societies.[20][21] Blanden et al. report, "the idea of the US as 'the land of opportunity' persists; and clearly seems misplaced."[22] According to these studies, "by international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents' income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States."[23] "This challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity."[24][25][26] During a TED conference on the social ills associated with economic inequality, social researcher Richard G. Wilkinson said that, "if Americans want to live the American dream, they should go to Denmark."[27]

  1. ^ J. A. Leo Lemay, "Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream," in J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall, eds. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (Norton Critical Editions, 1986) pp. 349–360
  2. ^ James E. Miller, Jr., "My Antonia and the American Dream" Prairie Schooner 48, no. 2 (Summer 1974) pp. 112–123.
  3. ^ Harold Bloom and Blake Hobby, eds. The American Dream (2009)
  4. ^ Nicholas Canaday, Jr., "Albee's The American Dream and the Existential Vacuum." South Central Bulletin Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter 1966) pp. 28–34
  5. ^ Hayley Haugen, ed., The American Dream in John Steinbeck's of Mice and Men (2010)
  6. ^ Lloyd W. Brown, "The American Dream and the Legacy of Revolution in the Poetry of Langston Hughes" Studies in Black Literature (Spring 1976) pp. 16–18.
  7. ^ Anupama Jain, How to Be South Asian in America: Narratives of Ambivalence and Belonging (Temple University Press; 2011), looks at the American dream in fiction, film, and personal narrative such as Meena Alexander's Manhattan Music.
  8. ^ Guiyou Huang, The Columbia guide to Asian American literature since 1945 (2006), pp 44, 67, 85, 94
  9. ^ Neumann, Henry. Teaching American Ideals through Literature. Washington: Govt. Print. Off., 1918. Print.
  10. ^ Symposium: The Role of the Judge in the Twenty-first Century. Boston: Boston U Law School, 2006. Print.
  11. ^ The pictures originally illustrated a cautionary tale published in 1869 in the Swedish periodical Läsning för folket, the organ of the Society for the Propagation of Useful Knowledge (Sällskapet för nyttiga kunskapers spridande). H. Arnold Barton, A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans, 152547256425264562564562462654666 FILS DE (Uppsala, 1994) p. 71.
  12. ^ Greider, William. The Nation, May 6, 2009. The Future of the American Dream, Retrieved on June 20, 20205.
  13. ^ a b Johnson, 2006, pp. 6–10. "The crucial point is not that inequalities exist, but that they are being perpetuated in recurrent patterns—they are not always the result of individual success or failure, nor are they randomly distributed throughout the population. In the contemporary United States, the structure of wealth systematically transmits race and class inequalities through generations despite deep-rooted belief otherwise."
  14. ^ Dalton Gross and MaryJean Gross, Understanding The Great Gatsby (1998) p. 5
  15. ^ Stephen E. Ambrose, Douglas Brinkley, Witness to America (1999) p. 518
  16. ^ a b Smith, Mark A. (2010) The Mobilization and Influence of Business Interests in L. Sandy Maisel, Jeffrey M. Berry (2010) The Oxford Handbook of American Political Parties and Interest Groups p. 460; see also: Video: George Carlin "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." The Progressive, June 24, 2008.
  17. ^ Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco (2012). Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. pp. 226-227. Nation Books. ISBN 1568586434
  18. ^ Gordon B. Arnold. Projecting the End of the American Dream: Hollywood's Vision of U.S. Decline. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013.
  19. ^ Barbara Klinger, "The Road to Dystopia: Landscaping the Nation in Easy Rider" in Steven Cohan, ed. The Road Movie Book (1997).
  20. ^ Emily Beller and Michael Hout, "Intergenerational Social Mobility: The United States in Comparative Perspective," The Future of Children (2006) 16#3 pp. 19–36 in JSTOR
  21. ^ Miles Corak, "How to Slide Down the 'Great Gatsby Curve': Inequality, Life Chances, and Public Policy in the United States", December 2012, Center for American Progress.
  22. ^ Jo Blanden; Paul Gregg and Stephen Machin (April 2005). "Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America" (PDF). The Sutton Trust.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  23. ^ CAP: Understanding Mobility in America - April 26, 2006
  24. ^ Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well? Economic Mobility Project - May 2007
  25. ^ Obstacles to social mobility weaken equal opportunities and economic growth, says OECD study, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Economics Department, 10 February 2010.
  26. ^ Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs | By JASON DePARLE | January 4, 2012 ]
  27. ^ Wilkinson, Richard (Oct 2011). How economic inequality harms societies. TED Retrieved 18 May 2013.
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