Compare The American Dream By Kate Ellis And Ellen Guettler

When reading “A better life, creating the American dream” by Kate Ellis and Ellen Guettler, and listening to the podcast, we can find out that it describes how the American dream’s meaning has changed over the time. Every person and every generation give a different meaning to it, and these dreams serve as motivation for people to work hard and still believing than better times will come. For the pilgrims the American dream was freedom, nowadays in our generation, the term has changed, and for many of us, it means owning a home and the possession of material things. But, as time pass, the American dream is becoming harder to achieve. The reality for me, is that the most part of Americans are not achieving this desirable dream, and are being

left out. The people who control the system in which we live, also creates a model of what the American dream should be, and they do this through the mass media. The mass media is responsible for creating an idea of the American dream. The United States’ government in every generation, have tried to do things that will “supposedly” help Americans to have a better life but none of these things have worked, for example, the great depression, the economy inequality, etc. Why is the government allowing all these things to happen? Why is the government allowing rich people to get richer and the poor to get poorer?
I liked president’s Carter quote: “In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.” People are looking to fulfill their American dream in the wrong places with the wrong things, just to find out that it does not satisfy them completely, then, they look for more things to feel satisfy again, and the system goes on and on.