Symbols Of The American Dream

In the stories, “The Scarlet Ibis,” “Two Kinds,” and “The Blue Brick Bridge Baptist Women’s Bake-Off,” the authors employ different symbols by detailed imagery and figurative language to exemplify a theme of how the American Dream is viewed and how it is expected to be. According to the Dictionary, the American Dream is defined as, “the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative,” and this means that many immigrants and people come from all around the world to come to this country so they can have more opportunities. The three stories all portray the theme through different symbols and different meanings.

In James Hurst's, “Scarlet Ibis,”

In the story, the daughter exclaims, “you want to be someone that I am not,” showing that it was the break of how not all people can fulfill the expectations of what America is. America is seen as a holy grail for immigrants who have experienced trauma in their homeland and in this story it was her mother. She had the expectations that America is where anyone can be anything that they want to be, but her daughter hit her with reality like a truck. . For example, the piano represents the hard work and grit most Americans need to have to reach the expectation of what the American Dream. The daughter needed to show more “you need more practice,” towards the piano, meaning she needed to put more work into it and improve so she can be a success that her mother wanted her to be. Most people don’t have the grit to power through the hard things to reach success which is the American Dream, and people don’t just become anything when they move

Although he is just an average man, he is a gay man who loves to bake. Most people don’t open up to their sexuality because it is such a controversial topic, and they don’t want to lost anything they have. America is the “land of Opportunities,” and “The Land of the Free,” and people should be open to whatever they want to do, and do whatever they want to do. Emmett opened up and came out about his sexuality and this shows that America is where most come to be themselves than rather putting on a mask to fit the expectations of