The American Dream

Does being American mean that you’re an American citizen, or does it mean that you have the same rights and decisions as someone who is a successful American citizen? These decisions include choices you make in order to better yourself in life, whether it has to do with your choice in career, or what you want to do in life. Making decisions, and having choices comes with freedom, as a person, and that reflects on being an American everywhere in the world, even though you’ve never been in America. To be an American means that you have the freedom, and rights to do what you want, be who you are, and be/ become who you want. This right of having the freedom to do what you want, can be elaborated by someone’s life chances.

The idea of the American dream captured the hearts of millions. It twisted people’s mindset of believing that America was a place of wealth and that anyone who traveled here would be filled with happiness. Many immigrants discovered the complete opposite. These people were met with criticism, hardships, and false dreams. Nick Carraway, was an American who was entrapped by the artificial dream. Originally, Carraway was from the West but traveled to the East in search of a new beginning and a new job. He is met with is a wealthy neighbor who hosts extravagant parties, his cousin and her cheating husband, and all the problems that come along with them. The American dream blocks their vision of what is really happening in their lives, until it

An article by Jenniffer L. Hochschild decribes the American dream as follows, “The idea of the American dream has been attached to everything from religious freedom to a home in the surbubs...a world where anything can happen and good things might.” (15). In her book, Hochschild portrays the speaker’s, the little girl in the short story, American dream, which she is unlikely to ever achieve due to her present circumstances. The

The American Dream started off as propaganda in order to make the American people of the early twentieth century work harder to build a successful economy. The idea of the American Dream is that every American citizen has an equal opportunity of making money along with owning a large house, some land, and having a family with kids. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck illustrates that the American Dream, no matter how simple is impossible to achieve. As everyone has their own interpretation of the American Dream, Steinbeck uses George and Lennie, Crooks, and Curley’s Wife to demonstrate how the American Dream is impossible to achieve and how important the dream was for people so they could carry on with their lives.

Many of famous figures in our society’s past have spoken their minds about the American Dream, for each and every one of those minds, are a different response. J. G. Ballard once spoke of his American Dream, “The American Dream had run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.” The outlook on this dream has changed over the years it has existed, most societies nowadays look onto this as a “curse” or something worse. This dream now is speculated as hurting our home, America. As Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men, the grave story of the American Dream was revealed by main characters, George, Lennie, and Candy. These main characters give us an inside look into what they think the American Dream is.

The "American Dream" is an idea that has always been different throughouttime. It changes in diverse forms and in the end involves success. The "American Dream" was a phrase used by the American people and peoplewanting to become American. It was always the idea that you can become a success. This is true in a partial way, but the true "American Dream" is that with somework and determination anyone can build themselves up in the economic classsystem.

"The American Dream is that any man or woman, despite of his or her background, can change their circumstances and rise as high as they are willing to work” (Fabrizio Moreira). For many years, men and women struggled to achieve the idealistic life of living on independent terms. Many characters in Of Mice and Men work in order to pursue and achieve the American Dream that consisted of having their own house and income. Characters in the book may use that dream to help the overcome their life struggles and personal problems. Of Mice and Men tells the story of two friends, George and Lennie, who find themselves on a ranch in pursuit of their dreams. Unfortunately for them, circumstances beyond their control cost Lennie and George their dream and much more. In Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Steinbeck portrays how dreams create a false sense of hope in order to cover up the realities of life through George, Curley’s wife, and Candy.

Walters idea of an “american dream” is to have everything. He wants his family to have the best of everything. Walter works hard everyday as a chauffeur for a rich white man. He has strong work ethics and works extremely hard. Mr. Younger wants to earn as much money as he can because he believes it will bring his family peacefulness and happiness. Mr. Younger’s main goal is to have money and he dreams up so many different ways to make money that he is sometimes overwhelms himself. He doesn’t want to think about reality and how things really are. He only concentrates on the future. Even though he knows in the back of

The American Dream is something many Americans desire. The desire to the mind – set or belief that anyone can be successful if they worked hard for what they’ve been yearning. It is considered to be a ‘perfect life’; it can be full of money, contentedness or even love. There are many divergent opinions given by people. Walter Younger from Lorraine Hansberry’s ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ and Willy Loman from Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of the Salesman’ both have their own views on the American Dream and how it can be achieved. Walter Lee Younger, a

In today’s society, many dream of becoming rich and successful, similar to many people during the Great Depression. The American Dream is the idea that every individual can receive wealth and prosperity due to their hard work and determination. In the novel, Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck, George and Lennie are best friends, facing the challenges of the Great Depression by working on a ranch in the Salinas Valley. As Lennie copes with the struggles of the era, he stays focused on his dreams and constantly has a positive mindset, which shows the American Dream can give hope even in the hardest times.

Acclaimed writer and professor of English literature, Azar Nafisi said “The negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn destroys the vision and the dream”. The American Dream is the “ideology that states that if people work really hard and are determined to achieve their financial goals, they will attain financial success” (Tyson). The Marxist belief that the American Dream is a restrained belief system is widely evident in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The means by which some people pursue this dream ultimately results in the destruction of the dream itself. This is explored through the narcissist attitudes of the individuals who are living the American Dream, the alternatives the proletariat population uses to obtain the dream and the widespread evidence of the unachievability of the dream itself

The American dream has forever been debatable. It can be the smallest thing or the largest. It changes for the person. It can be one thing for one person and a different thing for another. In “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, there are many types of American Dreams, from Lennie’s, Curley’s wife’s, and George’s. All of them have different dreams and different ways of accomplishing them.

The American Dream is an idea which usually includes something along the lines of anyone who does things right can be successful in America if they work hard enough regardless of their race, class, gender, or nationality. The only problem is that the American Dream does not account for issues in America like systematic racism, xenophobia, etc.; giving people a false sense of hope, or a misconstrued one. In addition, the issues presented were strongly visible during the 1920-1940’s eras; to find them one only has to look at the various issues going on at that time. The authors, John Steinbeck and Scott Fitzgerald offer the same negative point of view of the American Dream, as they both display through their characters the different ways in which it is unachievable or fictitious.

The American Dream is something every American family strives to achieve some families push too hard to get to the place where they feel that they have achieved this dream; this is the case in the life of the Lomen family. The Lomen’s are the typical American family in the 1940’s. Willy and his wife Linda are a middle class family with two sons named Biff and Happy. Willy is an ageing traveling salesman that is struggling to accept the fact that he is not as successful as he would like to be. His sons have also not lived up to the standers of Willy’s dreams either. In Willy’s eyes to attain the

Dreaming is essential for the human spirit, the reason homo sapiens sapiens wiped out the neanderthals was because we could believe in something bigger than ourselves. Even when our dreams are far from fruition, we as humans still believe in them as it is in our nature. S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders and in John Steinbeck’s book Of Mice and Men have certain characters that possess dreams that they believe in and work towards, whether they’re achievable or not. Many unique personalities such as Crooks the stable buck, Dallas Winston, Curley’s Wife, Darry, and other characters in both books are disenfranchised from a notion henceforth referred to as “The American Dream”. “The American Dream” is a very vague phrase. However, it can be amounted to being a lower-class citizen (frequently an immigrant) and then moving to America. Then (in America) they get a stable job with good income, buy a house, have a family, and live happily ever after. The frequency and large application for the term “The American Dream” is what initially drew a large amount of immigrants in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s because it was viewed as the land of freedom and most importantly, opportunity. “The American Dream” can be, and is a widely used phrase but in this essay shall be used to refer to many characters’ own hopes and dreams for their future. Characters in Of Mice and Men and in The Outsiders are frequently disenfranchised and held back from ‘The American Dream’ by an aspect out of their