Persuasive Essay On The American Dream

During the twenties, there was this romanticized idea that with a lot of wealth and possessions came a lot of happiness, otherwise known as the American Dream. The American Dream not only flourished during this time, but redefined itself. It went from people wanting to be able to sustain themselves and have land, to having exuberant amounts of money and a happy healthy family. But how were people supposed to achieve this? The minimal amounts of people who did achieve this dream, achieved it through illegal activity. We see this idea in the Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gatsby was not only a young, wealthy man, but a bootlegger. But there were also those who couldn’t achieve it due to their place in society. The vision of the American Dream was perceived to happen with hard work and persistence; however, it was mobsters who got the money with little effort and the poor and African Americans who worked hard to make ends meet with little left over.
The American Dream has no set definition, but the ideas are all generally the same. The American Dream isn’t about having all

African Americans were still being discriminated against. People didn’t want to hire African Americans, therefore they had a hard time getting a job (Problems in the 1920s). “There ain’t no job in this country can make a white man wait on a N*****” (Wilson 75-87). The Ku Klux Klan became popular again among many young, white activists. Threatening and scaring those who didn’t join the Klan, made it grow to one of the largest of its time. The klan would scare, threaten and torture African Americans so much that they wouldn’t speak out, and would stay at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The president during this time, Coolidge, did nothing to stop these acts. He didn’t even acknowledge its existence. African Americans had an extremely rough life during this time period; they were either scared for their life or struggling to make ends