American Dream in American Literature - Essay Example

American Dream in American Literature American dream is a reality and at the same time an illusion. It is a reality based on the proclamation in the closing line of the American National Anthem "the land of the free, and the home of the brave." American dream was a revolutionist idea. It took shape as aspirations for religious freedom, equality, and an opportunity to succeed. Its principles were upheld in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Bill of Rights. These were ideals expressed in Robert Frost's famous poem "The Gift Outright": The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England's, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become. Lionel Trilling once remarked about America that it is the "only nation that prides itself upon a dream and gives its name to one." Horatio Alger and Mark Twain were the epitome of American Dream. Through Huck in "The Adventures of Huck Finn," Mark Twain demonstrates the ideals of personal freedom. Hester Prynne in "The Scarlet Letter," George Milton in "Of Mice and Men," and Celie in "The Color Purple" struggle and realize their American Dreams. But as America prospered from the Old to the New World Order, the dream turned sour for many. Materialistic approach to life made it a nightmare. This materialism of American Dream is best exemplified by Carson McCullers' heroine Mick Kelly in "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." McCullers was in her early 20s when she wrote the novel. Like William Faulkner and other southern writers, she wanted to escape her birthplace. Her longings - the longings of an adolescent's American Dream - are reflected in her novel through the autobiographical character Mick Kelly. Mick's tomboyishness, her musical aspirations, and her dream to escape small-town life parallel McCullers' own life. To Mick, violin symbolizes freedom and opportunity. But when she feels that she cannot buy violin, she wants make one herself. This is the epitome of American Dream as seen from an adolescent's perspective, and the struggle to achieve it. But her tragedy comes from the obstacles she faces. The hot afternoon passed slowly and Mick still sat on the steps by herself. This fellow Motsart's music was in her mind again. She wished there was some place she could go to hum it out loud" ("The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. p. 53) Thus the idea of American Dream became an illusion. F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby manifests the decay of the values of American Dream. Gatsby is Fitzgerald's alter ego. They are self-made men. They achieve financial success for the love of a woman: Gatsby to win the hand of Daisy, and Fitzgerald for Zelda. But they realize that material success is not happiness. Both realize that wealth cannot buy you dreams. Gatsby dies chasing his dream, Daisy. In "Death of a Salesman," Arthur Miller's hero Willy Loman lives an American nightmare. Like Gatsby, Miller's Loman too feels that achieving financial success is the culmination of American Dream. He raises his two boys - Happy and Biff - teaching his version of American Dream as he learnt from society, but he fails to inculcate moral values. At one point, he defends Biff for stealing. "Loaded with it. Loaded! What is he stealing He's giving it back, isn't he Why is he stealing What did I tell him I never in my life told him anything but decent things." (Death of a Salesman. Pg 41. Act 1) Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" exposes how much the Americans have wavered from the ideals of freedom and equality as cherished by the early immigrants. Ona and Jurgis, two Lithuanian immigrants come to the dream of America, expecting good life from hard work but end up disillusioned. American Dream had special lure for the children who aspired for a brighter and better life. Some times this lure becomes a tale of personal triumph and on other occasions it results in tragedy. Sandra Cisneros' Esperanza Cordero in "The House on Mango," fulfills her American Dream through perseverance and reinventing herself. But for J.D. Salinger's hero Holden Caulfield in "The Catcher in the Rye" or Carson McCullers' heroine Mick Kelly the dream of freedom turns into a nightmare. Unlike Carson McCullers' "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," the events in "The Catcher in the Rye" unfold after the end of World War II and the Great Depression. Ironically, prosperity followed the war. The Gross National Product jumped to $500 billion after the war as against $200 billion in 1940. The sudden prosperity augured all the negative neo-rich aspects: materialism, hypocrisy, money-mindedness. That is why Virgilia Peterson called Salinger himself as the "catcher in the rye" for that period in American history. In fact, "The Catcher in The Rye" is one of the most important American novels which signals the end of the materialistic approach of American Dream. It exposes the superficial, money-driven and hypocritical adult American lifestyle. Holden Caulfield's adventures or misadventures in New York City resembles Huckleberry Finn's quest on a raft. Finn finds freedom, but Holden's quest ends in disillusionment at the 'phonines' of the adult America. John Aldrige says that both novels are "study in the spiritual picaresque, the joinery that for the young is all one way, from holy innocence to such knowledge as the world offers, from the reality which illusion demands and thinks it sees to the illusion which reality insists, at the point of madness, we settle for." - (Aldrige, John. "The Society of Three Novels." In Search of Heresy: American Literature in an Age of Conformity.) Holden has been expelled from his school Pencey. He avoids conversation with his classmates and teachers because of their boorishness. He lands in New York City to experience the superficiality and hypocrisy of American Dream as a 16-year-old teenager. His long conversation with his sister Phoebe is the high point of the novel where he explains the reason for his alienation. What he tells his sister are the dreams of a child who wants to realize them as an adult. But his encounters and experiences in the city sours them all. Holden is a rebel, who unlike other adolescent Americans, recoils from the thought of accepting urban decay, hypocrisy and perversion. In the novel's most famous passage, Holden says that he most wants to catch little children playing in a field of rye. "I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy." Alienation and isolation are the main points of Carson McCullers' novel "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter." The reasons for the alienation of the five main characters expose the hollowness of American Dream. The deaf-mute John Singer cannot communicate because he cannot speak; Mick Kelly cannot communicate with her family members because they do not share her intelligence and ambition; Biff Brannon is alone after his wife's death; Dr. Copeland is isolated because of his education and viewpoints; Jake Blount's viewpoints make him a pariah. They are misfits in family and society because of their dreams: one wants to fight for the rights of the black, the other wants to organize poor laborers. Their marginalization shows that issues which formed the backbone of American Dream are no longer valued. And those who cherish them feel alienated. "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" paints a realistic picture of racial tensions in the Depression-era South. As Richard Wright says, "With the depression as a murky backdrop, this first novel depicts the bleak landscape of the American consciousness below the Mason-Dixon line." Thus we see that modern American writers questioned the meaning that has come to be associated with American Dream. Edwards, in Conrad Cherry, ed., "God's New Israel. Religious Interpretations of American Destiny," even challenged Americans to restore the values of American Dream. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), p. 55. Hugh Swinton Legare's dream of "democratic utopia of liberty, prosperity, and public virtue" remains unfulfilled. In the backdrop of "The Catcher in the Rye" and "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" we see that historian James Truslow Adams' dream "In The Epic of America" "of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement" remains an illusion. But hope persists like Hawthorne's last novel "The Marble Faun" where the heroes return home with their illusion intact. Nick says at one point in Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" [Gatsby] talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was . . . ." Works Cited Adams, Truslow. "In The Epic of America." (1931) Aldrige, John. "The Society of Three Novels." In Search of Heresy: American Literature in an Age of Conformity. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1956, 126-48. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Great Gatsby." (1925). Edwards, in Conrad Cherry, ed., God's New Israel. Religious Interpretations of American Destiny. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), p. 55. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (New York: Viking, 1950), p. 251 Miller, Arthur. "Death of a Salesman." Pg 41. Act 1 Peterson, Virgilia. "Three Days in the Bewildering World of an Adolescent." Rev. of The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. New York Herald Tribune Book Review 15 July 1951, 3. Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Modern Library, 1951. Multiple reprints. Wright, Richard. "Inner Landscape." New Republic. 103 (Aug. 1940): 195.) Read More