The “American Dream” is the opportunity and hope to achieve success and become another story of rags to riches. Success in terms of the dream is to become wealthy through hard work in what you love to do or whatever career you choose to pursue. When I hear the words “The American Dream,” I immediately picture an immigrant in the early 20th century spotting the statue of Liberty for the first time. I picture a smile of hope coming across their face as they imagine their life with a loving family and a well-paying job. The hope that they can make their fantasized American Dream come true that has continually pushed them on from whatever past they felt lacked potential for the unending comfort, prosperity, and opportunity this country seemed provided.
The idea of the American Dream was that you didn’t have to stay in socioeconomic status that you born into and that through your hard work you could become something great because all Americans deserve the opportunity of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The American Dream, as established through the Declaration of Independence, has been a motivation for great success and a bearer of sorrow through inflated expectations. In many cases, the American Dream has left participants battered and lost in a swirl of failed dreams and false hopes because the reality is that the perfect life of the American Dream doesn’t truly exist and that even those who seem to have achieved it are left wanting more.
The key phrase is “the pursuit of happiness” because it encompasses what Americans have construed into their right to wealth. Wealth is having an abundance of money, possessions, and power that comes from an advanced social status that money often provides. Wealth encapsulates those who live beyond comfortable and have extreme excess after attending to their daily needs. This creates a culture of entitlement as well as the ironic judgement of the wealthy which I believe can be seen in The Great Gatsby. The irony lies in the desire yet distaste for those who are excessively wealthy. From the very beginning, Nick claims that he is just a nice guy who doesn’t judge anyone yet Gatsby is the only person of such wealth that doesn’t disgust him. This shows that Nick does in fact judge those of wealth as he lives in the irony of having moved himself to New York to hopefully become wealthy. The whole context of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is this Roaring Twenties-style pursuit of wealth, status, and making it big in the big city. Nick is just another man in the thick of the play: a tragedy of wealth, love, and power. It is my opinion that despite his pleas of being an unbiased third party: he is another soul wound up in the hope of the American Dream.
In our culture today, I believe the pursuit of happiness via wealth is still a reality. However, there is also a big push for doing what you love despite the pay. This mimics the irony seen in The Great Gatsby because although our culture openly praises people for doing what they love, it continues to glorify the life of the rich and wealthy over the humble and simple lifestyle of those who may not make it rich in what they love to do. I believe that I am wrapped up in an American Dream of sorts. My dream comes from my encouragement to dream as I reach the end of one chapter of life and the next stage of becoming who I want to be when I grow up (I liked this question much better when I was 8). School has been pretty laid out for us until this point and now we are presented with options and choices; very expensive ones at that.
If I’m being honest, beyond college my dream is to wake up in the morning (at a reasonable hour) to a family that I adore, in a home that is my own, and to a job that has a meaningful impact on the community. However, the one thing I never want to happen is to become so focused on a dream that I fall into the endless greed of wealth and miss the beautiful moments of “the pursuit”. My true dream is that I will learn to live each day fully without getting stuck in my “American Dream” and becoming so invested in the future that I forget to live in the present. I think the biggest thing to realize is that money doesn’t provide happiness but neither do your circumstances. The college I choose to go to, my future job, and even my current days as a student that often feel purposeless and mundane should not be deciding my daily happiness. I guess my real dream is that I will learn to live life in this way that has eternal treasures rather than banking my happiness on the possessions and circumstances that will fade away.
If I’m being honest, beyond college my dream is to wake up in the morning (at a reasonable hour) to a family that I adore, in a home that is my own, and to a job that has a meaningful impact on the community. However, the one thing I never want to happen is to become so focused on a dream that I fall into the endless greed of wealth and miss the beautiful moments of “the pursuit”. My true dream is that I will learn to live each day fully without getting stuck in my “American Dream” and becoming so invested in the future that I forget to live in the present. I think the biggest thing to realize is that money doesn’t provide happiness but neither do your circumstances. The college I choose to go to, my future job, and even my current days as a student that often feel purposeless and mundane should not be deciding my daily happiness. I guess my real dream is that I will learn to live life in this way that has eternal treasures rather than banking my happiness on the possessions and circumstances that will fade away.
