The idea of the American Dream has been the cornerstone of the United States, the American way of life and experience. It has been an enduring emblem representing hope for the future, prosperity, and success for its hard-working citizens, and an ideal to reach for ardent new-comers, believing in the variety and richness of opportunities on offer in their new home-land. But, what does this concept really mean, and how it has been transformed in changing times? Also, what happens when it all goes wrong?
The US Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal”, with each person having a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. However, as the Great Depression (1929-1941) showed, millions of even hard-working men and women of steely determination are not immune to sudden poverty, horrid destitution, and utmost ruin. Moreover, the grind of the wheels of capitalism can produce ruthless behaviour, resulting in the emergence of inhumane and horrendous-for-people environments, as Sinclair wrote in The Jungle. Nevertheless, though facing poverty, people could still have their “American Dream”, as in “hope”, in their hearts. All that began to change from the mid-1940s, when the concept of the American Dream started to be equated with monetary success only. It is at this point that both of its definitions began to crumble for good, as disillusioned people started chasing their own tails, as, in turn, their ideals turned out to be well-constructed mirages.
Many stories were written from various perspectives that detail the so-called “Fall of the American Dream”, both before and during the 1920s, during the Great Depression, and also after the World War II. Below are some classic story examples (with some plot spoilers in their descriptions) that feature this symbol meeting its demise under the pressure of stark reality. Some falls are self-induced in these stories, some unjustly inflicted, some dramatic, and some just quietly devastating (similar to the experience of James Tyrone Sr. in Long Day’s Journey into Night or of Esther from The Bell Jar), but all have one thing in common – their irrefutable tragedy, and its unfortunate continuation to the present day.
I. The Grapes of Wrath
Many Steinbeck’s classics centre on the Fall of the American Dream, but since The Grapes of Wrath deals with the immediate horrifying experience of the Great Depression, it tops the list. This is a resolute novel about the unattainability of the American Dream, as the story focuses on one family fleeing destitution of the mid-west only to arrive at California’s very own “human slaughterhouse”. “How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him – he has known a fear beyond every other.”
II. Revolutionary Road
There isn’t a novel in existence which I feel and understand as much as this one. Yates transports us to one quiet community in Connecticut in the 1950s, a place of conformity and order, where one couple (the Wheelers) suddenly decide to take a drastic action to change their lives for good – before it is too late. However, it turns out that it is not so easy to escape one’s day-to-day, monotonous existence in suburban America, and dash to Paris for permanent settlement. April and Frank’s journey of “rebellion” (that will to do something brave and different to reach the full potential of the American Dream) is sympathetic, and that only makes their fall all the more devastating.
III. The Jungle
“…nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good work”. In Sinclair’s powerful novel, there is no demise of the American Dream, there is only its brutal extermination. The story concerns a Lithuanian family who arrive to work in stockyards of Chicago at the turn of the century. They have hopes of achieving the true American Dream: getting a job and own their own house. But, their toughness of spirit and willingness to work their skin off are nothing in comparison to the merciless, profit-driven and inhumane regime in place. This is a powerful indictment on the dangers of unbridled capitalism.
IV. Death of a Salesman
Willy Loman is a strong believer in that American Dream whose success depends on superficiality, outward presentation, and gossip. He is already an aging salesman, whose usefulness to the capitalistic world is disappearing with each passing day. His two adult sons are yet to find their place in life, and he is slowly being crushed by the unfulfilled promise that the American Dream still holds in his mind. This is a classic play that stood the test of time, about opportunities squandered, high expectations being too much to bear and, thus, crippling the soul, and dreams irreversibly lost.
V. The Great Gatsby
It is ironic that a novel set during the roaring 1920s should also have a strong theme of the Fall of the American Dream, but here we go. One of the prime examples of this concept being dashed and burned is through the character portrayal of elusive Mr Gatsby, whose high, but rootless standing in society does not quite match that hard-working, innocent image of the American Dream undoubtedly envisaged by many. Gatsby’s relentless pursuit of his illusionary ideas of happiness are embodied in forever-unreachable-to-him Daisy Buchanan, his cousin, who signals throughout the novel the death of a dream fathomed solely on one single, shaky promise.
VI. The Bonfire of the Vanities
In many ways, Wolfe’s 1987 novel is the re-working of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s above. It also concerns one powerful and influential man Sherman McCoy (the self-proclaimed “Master of The Universe”), whose arrogance and vice eventually lead to his un-doing. The American Dream, in its fake, illusionary form, was reached, only to be followed by the epic downfall. Wolfe also uses Fitzgerald’s symbol of a fast-moving vehicle being a catalyst to the tragedy, representing the modern man’s fall from grace in times of immense uncertainty and great economic divisions.
VII. The Glass Menagerie
A number of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill’s plays can be spotlighted as making some dramatic statements about the American Dream and where it all goes wrong. Williams’s Great Depression play The Glass Menagerie makes some damning conclusions in this respect, but in an unassuming manner. Here, the Demise of the American Dream befalls a number of characters, but, notably, “hopeless” and submissive girl Laura, who has been dominated by her overbearing mother Amanda. The American Dream presupposes confidence, freedom, and choice, but Laura is isolated, tied down by her fears and insecurities, and trapped in her own world of glass figurines. Her American Dream ideas of marriage, independence, and societal success get quietly crushed in this devastating masterwork of a play.
VIII. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Mohsin Hamid’s tender novel of one doomed love and the ultimate disillusionment about the American Dream shook the literary world in 2008. This is a tale of Changez, a Pakistani young man, whose meteoric rise in the upper financial echelons of New York is played out in the background of his tormenting relationship with pretty girl Erica. The year 2001 would change Changez’s perceptions of the country and his own identity.
IX. If He Hollers Let Him Go
In the tradition of Richard Wright (Native Son) and Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man), this Chester Himes’s story is about a black man who seemingly does everything right to get ahead in America. Bob Jones has a job in a shipyard in Los Angeles, and seems to be doing fine with the new promotion. However, behind the façade, the racism is rampant, and Bob’s anger at the white-dominated world soon turns him into a vivid anti-hero, whose American Dream may only come at the expense of bowing to the perceived oppression.
X. Sister Carrie
Theodore Dreiser was definitely one of the first writers to lay down the falseness of the beloved American concept so vividly in fiction. He virtually turned the American Dream into the American Tragedy. This 1900 novel follows small-town girl Carrie Meeber, who falls “upwards”, rising to stardom in a big city, which is ultimately framed as a tragedy, because there is no true personal happiness underpinning it. Carrie does not realise this fully – and that is another tragedy. Hurstwood, her ex-lover, falls “downwards”, from influence and power into the gutter, but still holds on to the same societal values. There is no personal escape, neither in success nor in failure, if you fall for the deceits of the American Dream, the novel says. For the lovers of film, I also recommend film-adaptation Carrie with Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones.
