Rebelling Against the American Dream: Identity and Expectations

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The American Dream; something all American citizens want, right? We want to graduate highschool, go to college, find a person of the opposite sex to marry, settle down, buy a house, and have kids. We want to watch our kids have kids as we grow old with our husband or wife, never going out of our comfort zone. Never experiencing the world. Society expects us to do this; we're expected to not act up, be "normal." Suprisingly, not everyone wants to live this way. American Childhood and "Identity." are two texts written about this topic. The authors metiphorically and symbolically express their attitudes toward the expectations of society and why they don't want to follow them. These two authors' attitudes on this topic are not identical, seeing as how they are diverse thinkers, and the differences of these two are going to be discussed throughout this piece. The two stories are similar with their want to rebel from …show more content…

The authors of both American Childhood and "Identity," are using symbols and metaphors as a way to get the point across to the reader, which expresses their almost identical moral of the story. Although the metaphor in American Dream is a crippled moth and in "Identity," it is a free growing weed, they both are telling their readers that they don't have to conform to society's version of normal. In American Childhood, the moth taught the lesson symbolically, causing the author to become, " I suppose, an early version of a runaway, a scapegrace." (paragraph 1,) And, similarly, in "Identity," the author wants to be a "tall, ugly weed." (stanza 22.) These correspondingly make the reader realize that they can be free from society's standards, they don't have to stay the way they are. The two authors write in a similar way that inspires young people, and they have incredibly similar opinions on the world and the way people live their lives in the

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