The American Dream Analysis

The American dream is a rhetoric of hope and mobility to reach the heights of economic sustainability that you wish to achieve. The idea is that the amount of effort you put forth will emanate the amount of success you can produce as a byproduct of American society. This concept however couldn’t be further from the truth, as many have tried to work up for years but only got slightly better at best then they say what they were nearly a decade ago. Many researchers have demonstrated that not only has the American Dream often times been influenced by our socioeconomic roots, but that to progress out of it is like a dime in a dozen. Since education provides students the material to move onto the larger job industry, and because the disparity between high school graduates and college graduate has increased so drastically, Americans are clamoring for college now more so than ever before. Student debt has been an issue that has kept many Americans in the lower end of the social class spectrum to miss out on utilizing college resources. Many financial aid programs have been established to attempt to decrease this tendency, particularly the Pell grant having the most success. Unfortunately, despite the initial success of the Pell grant program, it still has its limitations on how much help it can provide to underprivileged students. An incentive based scholarship program such as the Performance-based scholarships where attendance rates, passing classes, and student involvement

Immigrants dreamed of coming to the United States for years. The United States is emerging and becoming more industrialized. Immigrants wanted a this thriving country for their own. They also wanted the government to protect each person’s opportunity to pursue their own idea of happiness. So these families immigrated and came to America to live the American Dream. The American Dream us achieved through sacrifice, risk-taking, and hard work, not by chance. Both sacrifice and risk-taking may have been hard for some families to accomplish in order to come to America, but it was necessary. These families that really had a passion to live in America, and to be happy needed to put in hard work, to get back a good result. The American Dream is something that needs to be worked for, not taken for granted and was not achieved by chance, it was achieved through sacrifice, risk-taking, and hard work.

and had to look at other parts of the world for expansion. At the time,

What is the American Dream? Is it home ownership, gaining fame or wealth, having a great family or is it gaining a peace of mind? Many people have different versions of what the American Dream is, some people believe the dream is lost, and some people are right in the middle and still believe the American Dream is still alive. “The American Dream” by Brandon King debates about what the true state is left in the American Dream now. Throughout the essay, King asks if the American Dream is dead, alive, on hold or just changing due to economic hardship. King believes that the American Dream is still alive even though there are people who believe it's not, and is defined today as the ability to work hard, plan for the forthcoming and have a

The American Dream was a well thought idea during the creation of the Declaration of Independence; in fact, the original belief of the American Dream was that all Americans could pursue “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (McQuade and Atwan). Furthermore, today the American Dream is an ideal thought to the overall strive for success. According to Kimberly Amadeo, a well-known author, she elaborated in her article What is the American Dream Today “… a focus on more of what really matters, such as creating a meaningful life, contributing to community and society, valuing nature, and spending time with friends and family” (Kimberly Amadeo). Creating the American Dream, controlling decisions, and building a life that can carry out success

David Kamp's 2009 Vanity Fair article "Rethinking the American Dream" focuses on the general perception of the ‘American Dream’ and how it has evolved throughout our nation’s history. It clearly states that as the average American household's lifestyle has become more and more consumer-oriented, the original spirit that invigorated and united its people from the age of western expansion to the Great Depression has begun to fade. The dream has been dampened as the vision of "success" has become more focused on gaining material/getting rich quick, rather than working hard all throughout one’s life to attain what they want and desire.

In her 1961 essay “What Has Happened to the American Dream?”, Eleanor Roosevelt stated that “no single individual and no single group has an exclusive claim to the American dream...but we have all a vision of what it is, not merely as a hope and an aspiration, but as a way of life, which we can come ever closer to attaining its ideal form if we keep our belief in its essential value”. The belief of pursuing the American dream is one that has been instilled since the formation of the country itself, and with those beliefs come those who pursue it. Unfortunately, achieving this dream is not without difficulty, and those who realize the true obstacles in front of them turn to other ways to sustain themselves in this nation. Not everyone has an equal opportunity to pursue the American dream because of social exclusion, the government prioritizing the wrong issues, and economic gaps, which has thus led to organized crime, however some say that all citizens do have the equal opportunity.

The capability of all Americans to achieve the American dream is what many believe to have made this country great. Perhaps this is why more immigrants flock to the United States than any other nation, because they view America as “the land of opportunity”, because here anyone can achieve the American dream. Generally, the American dream is the belief that anyone, even one at a low income level, can achieve success and make themselves content if they work hard enough and are determined. Unfortunately, when looking at certain aspects of society, it’s apparent that nothing can be further from the truth. For example, a person can pursue and live the American dream and still be unhappy. Also, the lifestyle that one may live to pursue the American dream can be dehumanizing. Both of these examples are flaws in the American dream that can be seen in the film Fight Club. Furthermore, rising levels of income inequality and the crushing debt people face also shows flaws in the idea of the American dream. When analyzing the evidence, it’s clear that in the modern United States, the American dream is non-existent.

That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”(quoted in “In Search of the American Dream”) For some, Truslow Adam’s definition of the American Dream leaves out the reality of how one’s socioeconomic status, on average, determines one’s wealth in American society. History shows that people born without certain privileges can’t ascend the figurative ladder to success with ease like their counterparts. Among these privileges were generational wealth and being White. A time when this was most evident was the 1920s: a time of mass spending, lavish lifestyles, and materialistic attitudes. Literary works like “In Search of the American Dream” by Jonas Clark, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and “One Christmas Eve” by Langston Hughes, show how the roaring culture of the 1920s caused an economic boom which widened the gap between the rich and the middle class, making it even more difficult for the majority of Americans to attain a sense of social and financial security. By the 1920s, the American Dream begins to lose its inclusive message and transform into an exclusive one in where one’s socioeconomic status mainly determines if one attains the Dream.

Is the American Dream still alive? In my opinion it is not. The American Dream is not something that can be applied to the people in this day and time. It’s just a piece of history that people are holding on to. Brandon King’s definition of the American dream being that it is the potential to work for an honest, secure way of life and save for the future, but it is not believable to say the American dream is alive in today’s society thanks to the changes in the economy.

“What is the true state of the so-called “American Dream” today? Is it still around, waiting to be achieved by those who work hard enough, or is it effectively dead, killed off by the Great Recession and the economic hardships that many Americans have come to face?” (Brandon King) King’s article focuses on the thought of if the American Dream is dead or alive. The American Dream is described as the potential to work for a secure lifestyle. King believes that the American Dream is still alive, however, Krugman believes that the American Dream is practically dead for most. It is also a belief that despite, the rules of the American dream not being taught, they can still have the possibility of working.

The American Dream is extremely complex, because there is no concrete definition. Almost everyone has a different opinion on what it means. It may have meant something entirely different two hundred years ago than it does today. It is also very likely that to immigrants and people from other countries this “dream” differs greatly from what we think the American Dream is. There are so many different ways to look at this topic. This essay will analyze the American Dream from many different angles and point of views from what historians say, to what it means to me, and to how books have portrayed this topic.

The American Dream What is it like to live the American dream? Many Americans will say they couldn’t imagine their life outside of America. America is full of diversity, money, families, career opportunities, and options for anything. Sometimes, Americans can get caught up in what is not important in life. If the main focus was on family, and independent success, more Americans may feel successful in life.

The American dream is the belief that anyone, from anywhere, can make a living for themselves and their family. That any man or woman can come up from the bottom and grasp for the grail that dangles before them with enough hard work. However now a days the “American Dream” seems to be exactly what we call it, a dream. A synthetic living belief that people only need to make it into America to have a better life when that simply just is not the case. The American Dream was and is an amazing idea, in theory at least. A theory that all will find work, that all will have jobs, and that none shall be left behind on the train of prosperity that we call America. But when this dream is applied to the Americans in todays society it falls short, where those who don’t get what they want lose their faith and soon find them selves not in gods

The American Dream" has become a widespread term to describe the American Way of Life in general, but it is by far not that easy." The American Dream" always has something individual. That is, why till today no one succeeded in giving a universally acceptable definition of the term.Essentially nowadays American Dream means have a job and to be out of debt.