Money is an important aspect of the American Dream because it is often associated with achieving your dream and for many people, it is a big part of their dream. Money is also what paves the way for people to achieve their American Dream. Money helps inspire the American Dream because it provides the necessary resources, opportunity, and security to pursue your dream. In The Great Gatsby, Jay can’t pursue his dream of marrying and creating a life with Daisy until he has built a life where he has money to support his dream. We see money inspire in another way in Behold the Dreamers, money is part of what Jende wants as his dream, and that is what helps motivate him to work hard to be able to provide a good life for his children. Adversely, we …show more content…
We also see money destroy the dream in the “Let America Be America Again”, this destroys the dream because it mentions how the people who did the hard work and built the country never achieved their dream while the people who didn’t work and just relied on money often get many of their dreams. The next key element of the American Dream is what you are willing to sacrifice. What you are willing to sacrifice plays a major role in the American Dream, because everything we want has a cost, and you must be willing to pay the price of your dreams. In the Pixar short “Alike” there is a man and a child, and the child experiences joy, but the man is unable to because he is doing what everyone else is doing. When he does like the child and sacrifices fitting in and being accepted and the same as everyone else, he feels joy too. The sacrifice he made is like the sacrifice everyone has to make to achieve their …show more content…
Sacrifice can destroy your dream because it is hard to give up something to get something else and this can deter people from following their dreams. Another important part of the American Dream is opportunity. Without opportunity, nothing can happen. Opportunity inspires the American Dream. Because if you can take your opportunities and circumstances and make the best out of them, they can help lead you to great things. We see this in Gatsby when Jay takes the opportunity of meeting Dan Cody, and this leads him to many things that help him to achieve his wealth and work towards his dream with Daisy. We can also see how some opportunities destroy the American Dream. We see opportunities destroy the American Dream because opportunities aren’t always fair, and this can lead some to not be able to achieve their dreams. In Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo, Mbue Jende seizes his opportunity and works hard with everything he has but is still unable to get his dream. The final element of the American Dream is how hard you work to achieve your
Gatsby pursue wealth to get daisy. Gatsby desires to have everything (money, power and daisy) no matter the cost of the situation. He engages in illegal activities to get rich quick. Daisy says to Gatsby “oh you want too much”. Gatsby will sacrifice anything to have what he wants a live out his dreams. “On the sacrifice, Fitzgerald has written parable on the American theme of outsized dreams and bitter ruin” (Tom Collins 3).
The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God-- a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that-- and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end (99).
To begin with money is the main thing people think of when they hear american dream. People wish to be rich and no one wants to be poor but not everyone can be rich. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” The main character of The Great Gatsby said that about the couple, Tom and Daisy, because they had problems but would go back to their old ways of buying things to make it better. In the end the money never really made it better when Daisy knew she was being cheated on and that’s where love comes in. People think money can buy everything they want to make them happy but that's where they're wrong.
Noel Coward said, “The higher the building, the lower the morals.” In the book The Great Gatsby this is the case. The individuals that are considered “upper class” are more willing to sacrifice their morals then the people that are in the “lower class.” However, the lower class is not perfect either. A theme for The Great Gatsby is people may be willing to sacrifice their morals to achieve what they think they want. Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchannan and Nick Carraway are just four examples of people that are willing to sacrifice their morals to get what they want.
The phrase the American dream is contradictory to it’s meaning. The American dream was for most people just that, a dream. However, these very people had their hopes dashed and were forever lost. One could argue that a much more fitting and appropriate name for the American dream might as well be the American nightmare. In the 1920’s and early 30’s, the American dream was a beacon of hope as well as prosperity for anyone unfortunate enough to fall under it’s alluring curse, with an exception of a handful of people. What was given instead of this promise of wealth and dreams, what was given was the deterioration of dreams, and usually lives. Sadly, Lennie Small, from Of Mice and Men as well as Jay Gatsby, from The Great Gatsby was not the exceptions.
The lie of the American dream is that it promises to fix humanity's problems with material gain – it promises happiness from things that are not capable of giving it. And so, followers are all left unfulfilled by the great American dream, left with a reality that is much different than what was so easily guaranteed. The reality that everyone experiences, whether it is the suburban soccer mom or the tired immigrant, is that the dream is mostly unachievable. The reality we think exists is only a myth – a true mythological reality.
The Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture defined the American Dream as “the idea that the US is a place where everyone has the chance of becoming rich and successful.”But those principles have changed. It has become something that is further out of reach for most people without facing misfortune. It has been tainted by greed, power, anger, and jealously. J. G. Ballard said “the American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. [It is] no more. It 's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.” The American Dream has causes destruction. The American Dream is disillusionment.
First, what is the American dream? According to David Wallechinsky, “the traditional American Dream is based on the belief that hardworking citizens can improve their lives, pay their monthly bills without worry, give their children a start to an even better life, and still save enough to live comfortably after they retire” (1). “The American Dream” states, “It has always represented the possibility for individuals to succeed and live a life of wealth and comfort, made possible by both the political and economic attitudes in the USA and the individual’s own hard work” (1). Daniella Nicole adds that “in years past, chasing the American Dream meant the sky was the limit. . .” (1).
John Steinbeck once said, “People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don’t dream at all.” For various individuals, there are different kinds of meanings of the American Dream. To Lennie, from Of Mice and Men, it was tending rabbits and owning a farm with George. To someone in a war-torn country, it is to obtain freedom. Although many believe that the American Dream is unachievable, the truth is it is accomplishable because there are numerous opportunities, all it takes is determination, and to obtain an education.
Doing what it takes to be happy is the new dream. Realizing that there is an American Dream is what makes the American Dream. People strive for greatness, but on their own terms. The American Dream influences everyone, but all in a different way. The American Dream for most is personal. Not everyone wants to tell the world how they were able to achieve their version of the American Dream and that is okay.
First, money is very important in my American Dream for obvious reasons. Money gets you food. Money gets you shelter. Money gets you nice things. I believe that money, lots of money, is a big part of everyone?s American Dream; everyone including myself. When most people think of money the first thing that comes to mind is luxuries; however, money is needed for the bare necessities such as food and shelter. But how do you acquire money? Through a good job of course. Having an enjoyable, good paying job is extremely important. I am a firm believer that if you enjoy what you do, you do not have a job, you have a career. Many Americans also include jobs and money in their American Dream: ?Throughout much of our nation?s history people pursued the American Dream by...
The American Dream is exactly what it seems to be: the chance for people to have hope of achieving something great. However, it demands pleasure of every victory one has earned, and the desire is always demanding one to work slightly harder and gain slightly more than someone else. Some may say The American Dream is no longer attainable because in many ways it is getting harder to find good paying jobs and harder to get noticed for skills one possesses. But to the majority of people, the American Dream is still attainable, it just isn’t the American dream one is taught to pursue at an early age.
The main ideas of the American dream as well as the way we are exposed to them is ever-changing. Nowadays, to a large portion of individuals, the American dream is to own a big house and a nice car. . Though the term the “American Dream” was not introduced until 1931 by James Truslow Adams it was birthed with the signing of the Declaration of Independence (Where Is the American Dream?). Founding fathers did not conjure this dream in means of monetary success but the ability and freedom to be as equally successful as how hard you work and not of what or who you are. The byproduct of such freedom could then be to own a big house and a nice car. One of the most infamous phrases in the Declaration of Independence,
The American Dream was and always will be something that makes America great. It allows those with aspirations to make them come true. In America alone needs is a dream and the motivation to carry out that dream. Ambition is the driving force behind the American Dream. It allows any one that has an aspiration, a desire, a yearning, to carry out the individual dream. It knows no bounds of race, creed, gender or religion. It stands for something great, something that every one can strive towards. A dream can be a desire for something great. In America, the American Dream allows dreams to become realities. According to Webster's New World Dictionary, the American Dream is defined as "An American social ideal that' stresses egalitarianism and especially material prosperity". To live this dream is to succeed. It allows anyone, rich or poor to have the opportunity to succeed. It is the ability to come from nothing and become so me thing. To succeed at any thing you do, you must have patience and persistence. It requires hard work, persistence and a desire for something better. To have these qualities and the desire and ambition to carry the moutis part of the American Dream.
A lot of the time people visualize the American dream as having money; being rich and wealthy. However this may not work for people. They can have all the money in the world but they will never have obtained or reached what they believe is the American dream. A testament to this idea is Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald: