The American Dream. This concept is well known as the picture perfect family, nice house and the white picket fence. As well as succeeding and excelling in life and making the future generations lives better than the current one. This concept has contributed much of the immigration from as early as 1931 to present day. However, many immigrants immigrate to the United States in order to escape oppression as well as uprising and turmoil which may reside in their home country. Though society often places people none the less immigrants into categories from social class, heritage, and prejudice they share a common thread of hope as well as facing obstacles in their journeys and once they arrive to the states. An example of this common thread of escaping their homeland in order to pursue new experiences and hopeful new life yet experiencing different hardships are shown when looking at both the Mexicans and the Irish. Between the years of 1845 and 1850 a fungus swept through Ireland’s crops. During these turbulent times starvation, and diseases set in and claimed millions of lives. While starvation and diseases spread 500,000 immigrated to the United States. These large waves of Irish immigrants accounted for more than half of all immigrants in the 1840s. In addition between “1820 and 1975 4.7 million Irish settled in America claiming it as home”. (PBS.) Many of these Irish immigrants had no skills, no previous experience and no money. They also had only a few clothes and little hope as well as little education. In hopes to finding better times and opportunities, however, instead they encountered times no better than the conditions they left behind in Ireland. The living conditions were not glamorous or even comfortable. Often times t... ... middle of paper ... ...esentation | Teacher Resources - Library of Congress." Irish - Adaptation and Assimilation - Immigration...- Classroom Presentation | Teacher Resources - Library of Congress. Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2014. . "Irish Immigration." Irish Immigration. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2014. . "Mexican - A Growing Community." Mexican - A Growing Community - Immigration...- Classroom Presentation | Teacher Resources - Library of Congress. Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. . PBS. PBS, Sept. 2005. Web. 26 Feb. 2014. .
Immigration to America from Europe was at an all time high in the mid-1800s. After the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840s, a large group of Irish immigrated to the United States. Since then, increasing numbers of Irish people have been moving to the United States, especially in Chicago. The Irish had come to realize that the United States really is the land of opportunity. With jobs being available to the immigrants, many more shipped in to start new lives for their families. However, for quite a while they did not live in the nicest of areas in Chicago. Many of the Irish resided in low-class areas such as overcrowded parts around the Loop, and out in the West Side. Not only did the West Side shelter the Irish, but many Germans and Jews lived in that area.
Starting in the 1830s, many immigrants came flooding into the United States of America due to hard times, famines, and economic opportunities. Everyday, thousands of underprivileged citizens would take on the task of being an American. To begin, many immigrants were Irish due to the Irish Famine in the late 1840s (Doc 2). According to Catherine Moran McNamara, “The Irish lived under awful stress. I’ve seen the family thrown out (Doc 2).” Meanwhile during the Irish Famine, many potato crops died, leaving families without a source of food or income(OI). However, the Irish were not the only culture going through tough times. In Greece, the pay was unbearable with only five dollars a day(Doc 3). Also, George Kokkas explains that Greece lacked education for the youth. He stated that “I was concerned for the education of my kids.
The Irish began immigrating to North America in the 1820s, when the lack of jobs and poverty forced them to seek better opportunities elsewhere after the end of the major European wars. When the Europeans could finally stop depending on the Irish for food during war, the investment in Irish agricultural products reduced and the boom was over. After an economic boom, there comes a bust and unemployment was the result. Two-thirds of the people of Ireland depended on potato harvests as a main source of income and, more importantly, food. Then between the years of 1845 and 1847, a terrible disease struck the potato crops. The plague left acre after acre of Irish farmland covered with black rot. The failure of the potato yields caused the prices of food to rise rapidly. With no income coming from potato harvests, families dependent on potato crops could not afford to pay rent to their dominantly British and Protestant landlords and were evicted only to be crowded into disease-infested workhouses. Peasants who were desperate for food found themselves eating the rotten potatoes only to develop and spread horrible diseases. ¡§Entire villages were quickly homeless, starving, and diagnosed with either cholera or typhus.¡¨(Interpreting¡K,online) The lack of food and increased incidents of death forced incredible numbers of people to leave Ireland for some place which offered more suitable living conditions. Some landlords paid for the emigration of their tenants because it made more economic sense to rid farms of residents who were not paying their rent. Nevertheless, emigration did not prove to be an antidote for the Famine. The ships were overcrowded and by the time they reached their destination, approximately one third of its passengers had been lost to disease, hunger and other complications. However, many passengers did survive the journey and, as a result, approximately ¡§1.5 million Irish people immigrated to North America during the 1840¡¦s and 1850¡¦s.¡¨(Bladley, online) As a consequence of famine, disease (starvation and disease took as many as one million lives) and emigration, ¡§Ireland¡¦s population dropped from 8 million to 5 million over a matter of years.¡¨(Bladley, online) Although Britain came to the aid of the starving, many Irish blamed Britain for their delayed response and for centuries of political hardship as basi...
In A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki's sixth chapter Fleeing “The Tyrant’s Heel”, he describes the experience of the Irish immigrants who came to America during the Jackson era. They left their homeland to escape the harsh conditions and famine, but ended up struggling just as much in America. Their plan was to find jobs, a mode of survival, and an overall better life. The Irish were going through a hard time back home, due to the increase in British occupation and the horrible famine that was a result of a disease that wiped out their crops that was their main food source for the Irish. When they arrived, they were forced to compete with many of the African and Chinese laborers that were already in America.
Cartwright implicates the tyrannical European governments for cruelly oppressing and exploiting their people, thereby instilling actions that predispose the Irish immigrants prior to arrival in America. In these European cities “where bread is dear, fuel scarce, the winter cold, and wages low,” the poor are forced to take measures to ensure their survival (Cartwright 298). Cartwright points out that the Irish continue some of these habits once in New Orleans. Behaviors such as “crowding together in small confined rooms,” and “closing the doors and windows to keep the cold out,” are inappropriate given their ability to breed and help spread yellow fever (307). However, they are not faults of the immigrants themselves, but ramifications of the immigrants’ homeland governments. Unable to afford fuel to heat their homes due to the excessively inflated rent, the Irish relied on shielding themselves from the cold in these confined and unventilated spaces to maximize body heat. True products of their abusive political system, the Irish are not the sole guilty party as Brennan argues, since many incriminating and explanatory factors are outside of their
INTRODUCTION The history of Ireland "that most distressful nation" is full of drama and tragedy, but one of the most interesting stories is about what happened to the Irish during the mid-nineteenth century and how millions of Irish came to live in America (Purcell 31). Although the high point of the story was the years of the devastating potato famine from 1845 to 1848, historians have pointed out that immigrating from Ireland was becoming more popular before the famine and continued until the turn of the twentieth century. In the one hundred years between the first recording of immigrants in
In the beginning, life was not easy for the numerous Irish - Catholic immigrants who fled the Great Potato Famine of 1845 and, “. . . Protestant ascendancy, British colonialism and turbulence in their own country. . . “(2) Because of their lack of funds many Irish immigrants landed in less expensive Canadian ports, and then walked down into the United States.(3) Not only was the ocean voyage difficult, but once reaching the United States, most immigrants found that they were not welcomed with open arms, but rather pushed away because of their religious affiliations. Catholics found themselves the minority and targets of discrimination.(4) Settled Americans saw the new influx of Irish immigrants as a plague, dirtying their streets and neighborhoods, filling their jails and sanitariums, creating public disruption. “Negative stereotypes imported from England characterizing the Irish as pugnacious, drunken, semi-savage, were common and endured. . . “(5) A...
The Irish before they came here stood up for injustice, but when the first Irish came over started to have babies they had forgotten and succumbed to the lure of being an American by supporting slaveholders that would help and protect them. “ To the extent color consciousness existed among newly arrived immigrants from Ireland, it was one among several ways they had of identifying themselves. To become white they had to learn to subordinate county, religious, or national animosities, not to mention any natural sympathies they may have felt for their fellow creatures, to a new solidarity based on color-a bond which, it must be remembered, was contradicted by their experience in Ireland.” (Ignatiev 111) As soon as that got here everything they knew in Ireland they had to throw must of it away to integrate into American society. “America was well set up to teach new arrivals the overriding value of the white skin. Throughout the eighteenth century, the range of dependent labor relations had blurred the distinction between freedom and slavery. The Revolution led to the decline of apprenticeship, indenture, and imprisonment for debt. These changes, together with the growth of slavery as the basis of Southern society, reinforced the tendency to equate freedom with whiteness and slavery with blackness.” (Ignatiev 111) The Irish had to learn these barbarous things to be seen as white others wise they would be viewed even more differently than they already are. They had to let go of there values which is terrible to have the privileges that every white man has or be a white man. “"It was not in Ireland you learned this cruelty," he declared. "Your mothers were gentle, kind, and humane .... How can your souls have become stained with a darkness blacker than the negro's skin?"” (Ignatiev 35) This was probably one of might favorite lines in the book. This shows just
The introduction of transoceanic steam ships also meant that the immigrants could come speedily, in a matter of ten or twelve clays instead of ten or twelve weeks. For a generation, from 1793 to 1815, war raged across Europe. Ruinous as it was on the continent, the fighting brought unprecedented prosperity to the long-suffering landsmen of Ireland. After 1815, war-inflated wheat prices plummeted by half. Hark-pressed landlords resolved to leave vast fields unplanned. Assisted now by a strengthened ...
Money, fame, and promiscuity are the three main components of the American Dream, and what better way to get to that level than through music? The truth is, almost any other profession has a higher statistical chance of achieving this goal. Musicianship is a nearly impossible career plan to survive with. An artist will spend incalculable hours learning and mastering their craft, only to be oppressed by the community. No matter how much time or money a musician spends on his/her creations, the world will typically find a way to avert their success.
To do what makes oneself happy. The American Dream is represented in many different ways and every person lives and chases a different version of the American Dream. Chris McCandless lived his American dream by walking alone into the wilderness of Alaska. The song written by Toby Keith, “American Soldier”, shows the price some pay for their dreams and ours to come true. Jay Gatsby died trying to acheive his dream and get the girl he loved, but died happy because he had pursued her until his death. The band All Time Low wrote a song called “The Reckless and The Brave” that brings a new light to how we go about achieving our dreams. So I believe that the American Dream is all about doing what will make you the happiest in the end.
The American Dream can obliterate any prospect of satisfaction and does not show its own unfeasibility. The American dream is combine and intensely implanted in every structure of American life. During the previous years, a very significant number of immigrants had crossed the frontier of the United States of America to hunt the most useful thing in life, the dream, which every American human being thinks about the American dream. Many of those immigrants sacrificed their employments, their associations and connections, their educational levels, and their languages at their homelands to start their new life in America and prosper in reaching their dream.
What is the American Dream, and who are the people most likely to pursue its often elusive fulfillment? Indeed, the American Dream has come to represent the attainment of myriad of goals that are specific to each individual. While one person might consider a purchased home with a white picket fence her version of the American Dream, another might regard it as the financial ability to operate his own business. Clearly, there is no cut and dried definition of the American Dream as long as any two people hold a different meaning. What it does universally represent, however, it the opportunity for people to seek out their individual and collective desires under a political umbrella of democracy.
The ‘American Dream’, as was once known has ceased to exist in the United States and it could just be something that is not guaranteed anymore. We are merely allowed just the pursuit of happiness, as stated in the Declaration of Independence “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. We are told that all men are created equal and independent of one another, but are we really? In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness Chris Gardner goes from rags to riches displaying what it means to live the ‘American Dream’ as an African-American male in the United States. The story line ultimately suggested that you need to have a certain amount of money and stand in a certain class to be deemed successful in life as an African-American. The Pursuit of Happyness illustrates through the examples of Chris Gardener that anyone has the chance to achieve happiness if they devote a great amount of effort and time. However, in today’s world our socioeconomic factors define our meaning of happiness. Society realizes that the key to happiness is not actually determined by how much money you have, once you finally obtain wealth, money will just keep raising our bar of happiness. On the surface, this dream appears to the best thing people hope for offering the chance to better themselves, and accomplish success despite of some one’s race, religion, or family history. What Chris Gardner went through is a struggle made by socioeconomic factors which played a huge role in his ideal image of the ‘American Dream’. Money meant success to him and this is where my sociological lens becomes significant to my primary text. As an African American male, Chris Gardner, in The Pursuit of Happyness overcomes the socioeconomic factors he faced by defeating the odds and la...
The figures for emigration in Irish is alarming and dramatic and can often be taken for granted. By 1890 there were 3 million Irish people obtaining residences outside of Ireland. In the time frame in which Annie emigrated, she was among 4 million other Irish natives who went overseas to seek. The mass exodus and the staggering emigration levels along with the infrequent and late marriages produced a drastic decline in the Irish