A lecture delivered online under the aegis of Karimpur Pannadevi College, Karimpur, Nadia, West Bengal on 22nd July 2020
This is a difficult time for dreamers. This is a suitable time to asses that what has happened to those dreams that were envisioned for the humanity at large.
Much has been said about the American Dream. Over the years, or centuries rather, the American politicians are talking about it, the American philosophers have propounded its several theories, and the nation builders of America attempted to turn this dream into reality. The singers, from Neil Diamond to Tania Tucker celebrated it. Hundreds of writers referred to it and some like Suze Orman wrote guide books like The Money Class: Learn to Achieve Your American Dream.
Though Americans are enamoured by it but there is hardly any agreement about what it means. To some the American Dream is about the potential to prosper and become rich. Some saw it as an opportunity to pursue the passion while for others like Martin Luther King Jr. the American Dream meant equality and freedom.
But there are sceptics too, who look at the American Dream with doubt. For them it has degenerated and denigrated America into a nation to amass wealth, to become materialistically successful at any cost resulting into the ruin of a national character. John A. Quelch, a professor of business at Harvard University opines that the political leaders of America defined the American Dream in material terms and encouraged the Americans to live beyond their means and pursued policies, national and international both, to ensure and accumulate wealth for America and Americans. The opponents dismissed the American Dream as myth keeping in view the ethnic and economic inequality (that still persists in America today). Famous American comedian, author and social critic George Carlin once said, “it is called the American dream because you of have to be asleep to believe it”.
As we all know that the historian James Truslow Adams has been given the credit of popularising the term‘American Dream’. In his book The Epic of America (1931) Adams wrote, “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”
However the vision of this American dream existed long before Adams. In 1630 John Winthrop gave his famous ‘city upon the hill’ sermon to his co Puritans when they landed in Massachusetts. Though he didn’t use the word ‘dream’ but he envisioned a nation in which everyone would have a chance to prosper as long as they all worked together and followed Biblical teachings. The rest is in history when this vision gradually became a God-given right for the British or you can say, the European immigrants to rule America.
In the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote that everyone in America was entitled to “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”.
Throughout the 19th century America grew and with this grew the belief that it was a different nation. It was a country of opportunities for those who could dare to dream big. Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman, in his visit to America in 1830 called it ‘the charm of anticipated success’. The famous transcendentalist philosopher and writer Thoreau expressed this American dream in his book ‘Walden’ when he says “if one advances confidently in the direction of his dream, and endeavours to live the life he has imagined, he will meet a success unexpected in common hours.”
The phrase ‘American dream’ gradually began to appear in books, magazines and newspapers in the mid and late 19th century. By the early 20th century it became a euphemism for material success and upward economic mobility. In his 1916 novel titled Windy McPherson’s Son, the novelist Sherwood Anderson described his hero as ‘an American multi-millionaire, a man in the midst of his money making, one who had realised the American dream’.
When, in 1931, Truslow Adams wrote about this American dream, he, along with many others, believed that the dream was under threat. It was the time of the Great Depression that had destroyed the American millionaires and compelled the common Americans to live in ‘hobo camps’ and beg for spare change on street corners. Nobody believed in the promises of prosperity by the American president Herbert Hoover.
The vision of the American dream was revived by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of America at the time of World War II. In his address to the American Congress in 1941 Roosevelt announced his vision of a new government assisted dream which included full employment, government help for the elderly, and to those unable to work, and the enjoyment of the fruit of scientific progress in a rising standard of living.
Thanks to World War II the economy grew massively due to military spending and America emerged as the wealthiest, the most powerful, the most envied and the most sought after nation of the world. The beaming citizens of this beaming nation believed in this seemingly perpetual upward mobility. They believed that their devotion and ability to work harder and harder will result in making their lives and the lives of their off springs better.
??????? BUT IS THIS THE REALITY …
(Can you recall the incidents of racism that happened with Jesse Owens and Cassius Clay. If not, you may google this please.)
There were social critics who saw this dream as overly materialistic hence spiritually empty. For them this American dream was intellectually stifling hence destructive. It was pointed out that America was not necessarily a land of opportunity and justice for everyone particularly those who were the other.
AND WHO WERE THE OTHER … THE RACIAL & ETHINIC MINORITIES .. The African-Americans, The Native Americans ….
The African Americans and the indentured workers, who had long been denied the rights of equality and liberty increasingly became agitated and demanded their humane treatment and human rights. In his 1963 speech titled ‘American Dream’ the American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared that America was yet to achieve its dream because of racial discrimination, poverty and violence. He said that instead of amassing more wealth the American dream should be to make true the statement of American declaration of independence that ‘all men are equal’.
The America of 1970s was torn by stifling economy, inflation, racial divide and the Vietnam War. In such a scenario the call of Martin Luther King for equal rights, equal opportunities and liberty to the ethnic and racial minorities and to reconsider the American aspiration for wealth seemed prescient and prophetic.
In 1974 the French historian Ingrid Carlander in her book titled Les Americaines declared that American Dream is dead and the Americans, standing in the queue of unemployment allowances wondered if she was right.
In the 1980s the American concern for the American dream resulted in the grand victory of Ronald Regan who promised to restore it. Regan proclaimed that America was still a place where “everyone can rise as high and far as his ability will take him”.
Regan, on one hand cut the taxes, but reduced the government social programmes too, which he believed, discouraged self-reliance. He gave free hands to the business conglomerates and the corporate-capitalist economy. The ambitious star war programme, American presence not only in the space but also across nations, its ambition to effect the geo politics of the world, its interest and interference in the global political affairs not only to safeguard the American interest but also to become the undisputed global power in the times of the presidents after Regan is better known to all of us.
NOW LET US LOOK AT HOW AMERICAN LITERATURE DEPICTS THIS AMERICAN DREAM.
The American myth of happiness pursued and won has mostly been contested in American literature. American literature has mostly taken a complicated but direct stance on it. Beginning from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, almost all American novels talks about this quasi noble pursuit and its failure. The rot inside the picture-perfect America has always been an important theme in American literature.
Benjamin Franklin, an important name among the founding fathers of America, embodies the American dream. In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1793), he chronicles his emergence as one of the most influential men in the then-fledgling American nation. Through his diligence, Franklin transformed himself from a poor teenager into a successful businessman, inventor, and ambassador. He established the first library and first fire station, and he initiated the process of harnessing the power of electricity, so it could later be used for the public good.
If the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin established and expressed the intrinsic relationship between the American dream and American letters during what he called a “rising nation,” then Emerson’s essay Self-Reliance expands the notion of the American dream by boldly defining an image of the self-reliant American of the 19th century that believes in the unfailing sanctity of the individual who seeks to manifest his or her personal destiny in a nation filled with opportunities.
Emerson’s essay Self-Reliance, emphasizes the essential uniqueness which resides in each individual and asserts that true fulfillment transcends rationality, science, and societal customs. True fulfillment and enlightenment is only accessible through individual experience and intuition. Championing one of the pervasive tenets of the American dream, Emerson claims that cultivating and realizing one’s genius comes from seeking individual freedom and truth.
On one hand Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson createan idyllic and tangible vision of the American dream towards which all can seemingly aspire, while on the other, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twainexposes the hypocrisies and highlights the limits that prevent some individuals from achieving the American dream because of their race.
- Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby depicts the lure of the American dream as being a destructive force rather than a beneficial one. The protagonist Jay Gatsby believes that if he can move up in society by obtaining as much monetary wealth as possible, then he will be able to achieve the happiness he has always desired. Unlike Franklin, Gatsby is accused of having acquired his money through unfair means. By the end of the novel, despondency leads to despair, and the greed that overruns the novel leads to Gatsby’s murder.
In a similar vein, Arthur Miller’s 1949 play Death of a Salesman is also critical of the effects of American dream. Like Jay Gatsby, Willy Loman, the play’s protagonist, is obsessed with making money. Instead of going for a job as a physical laborer, which he enjoys, Willy devotes his life to selling. In other words, he devotes himself to the sole task of making money. Throughout the play, Willy experiences flashbacks in which he relives various incidents from his life. He is a constant daydreamer and therefore has a difficult time focusing on the reality of his current situation. Finally, Willy’s obsession with the American dream makes him forget that he has a family who loves him and has natural talents that he could employ. In the end, Miller’s depiction of the quest for the American dream is even more somber than is Fitzgerald’s: Willy kills himself, while his son Happy decides to follow along in his father’s footsteps, avenging what he sees as the wrongs society enacted against Willy. At his father’s funeral, Happy asserts: “Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have—to come out number-one man”.
The conclusion of the play is indicativeof Miller’s belief that the treacherous myth of the American dream will continually perpetuate itself. It will relentlessly cast its dark shadow on the future generations of young Americans.
Yet there were those also who feel slighted by the promise of the American dream. Most of them are minority groups—those who have been constantly disenfranchised by the American governmental system and who have been forced to view the inherent hypocrisy within the Dream their entire lives. In his famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, the African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, declared that his hope for the equality of all races in America was one “deeply rooted in the American dream.
Much like King, the Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes also lamented that minority groups were never given the opportunity to experience the hope that the American dream offers. In “Let America Be America Again,” Hughes juxtaposes the image of what privileged white Americans envision their country to be with his own experience in the country as an African-American citizen, remarking that “America never was America to me”. Likewise, in his 1951 poem Harlem, Hughes asks the question, “What happens to a dream deferred?”, ultimately suggesting that minority groups are denied the realization of their dreams in America.
In his 1993 short story collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the Native American writer Sherman Alexie shows that, like the African Americans, the Native Americans experience the idea of the American dream in a unique way. Unlike other minority groups, Native Americans are left out of the American dream because the ideal of white prosperity and “industriousness” led to the destruction and seizing of what was once Indian property and land. Rather than simply being unattainable, the American dream in this case takes on an even more sinister connotation.
Overall, whether they realize it or not, the American dream remains a fundamental factor in the lives of most of the Americans. Self-fulfillment through monetary satisfaction and whether or not that satisfaction was gained through sufficient hard work is constantly debated and discussed in literature. Just as Willy Loman passed on his way of viewing the world to his son Happy, the idea of the American dream will continue to sustain itself for countless future generations of America.
Reference can also be made Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women; Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents; Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street; Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy; S. E Hinton’s The Outsiders; Jack Kerouac’s On the Road; Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place; Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle; John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men; Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise; Edward Albee’s The American Dream;& Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, The Hairy Ape & Long Day’s Journey into Night.
Let us now take ourselves to the last part of our discussion. What Martin Luther King believed; that all Americans should be provided the opportunity to prosper to their fullest potential.
When you look at his speech the first half portrays not an idealised American dream but a picture of a seething American nightmare of racial injustice. It calls for action in a series of themed paragraphs: Let me wrap up by sharing two small paragraphs from the speech:
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
Likewise the theme “we can never be satisfied” sets some goals:
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “when will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
The second half of the speech paints the dream of a better, fairer future of racial harmony and integration. But it also talks of brutal realities …. Realities that led to the recent killing of
REMEMBER THE GEORGE FLYOD INCIDENT
The George Flyod incident and the subsequent Black Lives Matters movement is very compelling.
And look at the response of the American authorities against the protestors. They were being called ‘thugs’ and they were threatened with ‘the most vicious dogs and most ominous weapons.
This has not been new thing in America. In 2014 another African-American Eric Garner was killed in police custody in New York and huge protests erupted after that. Six years later we find no change in the situation.
A politics of polarisation and division is in fact on the rise.
Before the pandemic hit America the unemployment rate among African Americans was twice the national ratio.
But African-American issue is not the only one. There are many. Due to paucity of time we can’t go into the details but I would like to just underline the migrant or immigrant issue.
America’s handling of the refugees in general and the refugees from Syria in particular. And not to forget the Mexican immigrants and other Latin American refugees.
One cannot forget Hispanic racism …
Banning the citizens from specific Muslim countries and the overall approach of American leadership with regard to Islam and the Muslim countries.
Bias against Asians especially against Indians who are doing substantially well in America …..
These are just a few examples …. And you must have noticed that it is all related to migrants …. In a country which is made up of migrants …
In fact many in the US still love to see and call America a country of immigrants.
The dream is still in a choked state and rebooting is needed.
We talk about the American Dream, and want to tell the world about the American Dream, but what is that Dream, in most cases, but the dream of material things? I sometimes think that the United States for this reason is the greatest failure the world has ever seen. (Eugene O’Neill)
IN FACT THE AMERICAN DREAM IS ABOUT AMERICA’S SPLIT PERSONALITY.
IT IS THE DREAM OF A NATION WHERE LIBERTY IS STILL A STATUE.
©S. M. YAHIYA IBRAHIM
