American Dream.

For many centuries, and still existing in modern times, the illusion of an American dream has enchanted and haunted people, drawing them from all corners of the earth to seek their own fortune and opportunity – an opportunity and hope that more often than not was dashed to the ground. The American Dream was a shining image of wealth, happiness, and prosperity, misguiding people with whispered promises of gleaming opulence. However, due to the circumstances of new times, the failure of the utopian so called perfect societies established on that principle, and the continuing unhappiness of those who had supposedly achieved it, the American Dream was a futile theory, for the social and economic perfection of American Dream has been proven time and time again, as simply unattainable.
As defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the American Dream is an American social ideal that stresses egalitarianism and especially material prosperity, and the prosperity or life that is the realization of this ideal. However, as seen in Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, such a dream is only that- a dream. Gatsby is the physical manifestation of a succeeded “American Dream”, rising from rags to riches and through the social ranks to reign on top. Yet the happiness supposedly promised evaded him, as even after he had attained material wealth, Gatsby could not attain what he desired most, Daisy. As Nick so eloquently describes, “I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.” The loss soured and twisted his other triumphs, minimalizing their significance until they were nothing more than small comforts dwelling in the dark recesses of his mind. Therefore, although Gatsby had acquired all the American Dream claimed was necessary for happiness, he was still unsatisfied, exemplifying the sheer unattainability of the Dream.
Wealth and Opulence aside, many who came to America came in search of a religious haven, a land in which god could rule supreme and create a religious utopia for his people. Yet the seeming perfection of the theory was betrayed by the lack of existence of said society in modern times. The idea of a utopia worked – but only in the theory nestled in the minds of those who were foolish enough to yearn for it. This claim is epitomized in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, in which Hester’s seemingly perfectly chaste and conservational society was in reality riddled with doubts, insecurities and the very sins that it had been founded to prevent. In the frigid Puritan society, its occupants were unable to divulge his or her innermost thoughts and secrets. The society failed to meet the needs of its people and thus they were driven to relieve their personal anguishes and desires in their own ways, sinful or not. Moreover, America was based on the idea of tolerance and equality, where people from all around the world with differing races, cultural backgrounds and traditions could mingle and in a sense, start again. The Irony in this is that though the Puritan society had been formed to escape the confines of England, it enforces the same restrictions on Hester by branding her as intolerable and exiling her and Pearl. The Reverend Dimmesdale preaches tremulously from his pulpit, as the very cause of Hester’s shame, hypocritically lecturing, “Be not silent form any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high lace, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him – year, compel him, as it were—to add hypocrisy to sin?” Dimmesdale, represents the eyes of society on this particular occasion. He was a coward, fearing public exposure as a blind mole rat fears the rays of the sun, letting Hester suffer for his own sins. This embodies the flaws of the American Dream, that even the most supposedly holy and pure creature could have betrayed his own principles, and that the society engineered to obviate sin in fact bred the very thing.
Though literature, it has been shown how inane and impossible the America. Dream truly is. Moreover, going back to the root of the matter, the first thing one calls to mind when pondering the dream is materialism. Due to the poverty of most people during the Jazz age, the obsession with matter was strongly sown into the soil of American culture. However, this fixation with materialism has consumed modern society. Material, for lack of a better word, is simply much easier to attain today than seventy years back, and thus, is not worthy is being attached with the same antiquated values. A home today is almost taken for granted, and railed upon in the form of taxes, bills, rents, and many other pressures. Bambi L. Haggins calls that "In a country where globalization, technological innovations, and the destabilization of the nuclear family are reshaping our senses of time, space, and identity, the desire for a timely definition of "home" is being expressed with even greater fever." I disagree, for throughout my life, I have noticed that in this new age of throwaway convenience items and the simple ease of relational infidelity through divorce, the attachment to materials in years past has dwindled to a shadow of its former self. Marshall Fishwick so eloquently notes, "Wrapped in an ethnocentric cocoon, we find ourselves acting as if today's values were permanent fixtures. We are serious about trivialities (electric toothbrushes, sports cars, hair-dos), trivial about reality (life, encounter, death). We insist on convenient categorical pegs on which to hang every conception; despise uncertainty and disorder; and impose both certainty and order where none exists." The American Dream of the roaring twenties was based on a shallow assumption that material wealth equals happiness, a fact that though may be true for many, is not at all universal.