American Dream Achievable In The Grapes Of Wrath

Was the American Dream Achievable? In The Grapes of Wrath, the attitude is that the American dream keeps getting harder and harder to reach as time goes on. This novel was set during the Great Depression, which means that wages were very low at the time and everything was very expensive. The definition of the American dream is to achieve success and prosperity through hard work. During the time, it was pretty much impossible to achieve this because no matter how hard they worked, they would not gain success or become prosperous (Steinbeck, 1939). During these times, the American dream seemed to not be achievable for the migrants. This was true for the most part because they would work very hard for low pay and they would not have much success. With these low wages, they could not afford much due to everything being so expensive. Although it was not

Reaching the American dream was definitely threatened by the dehumanization of the migrants. They were treated very badly by the bigger businesses. Most of their freedom was taken away because they were forced to work at jobs they did not want for low wages. They did this just so they could keep their families alive and even then they could not usually afford enough food to feed them. The migrants not having freedom took away the thought of reaching the American dream at the time. There was not much success for the migrants, but they were trying to find jobs by moving to California. Many of them found these jobs but still did not have success. They would be getting paid so little that they still could not afford clothing and food. For the wealthy and big business owners, there was quite a bit of success. They were getting so much