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Character analysis hester prynne
American dream literature
American dream literature
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Many years ago, people have immigrated to a new world where they can hope for a more beautiful existence, for the wealth, for the freedoms, for the better opportunities and most importantly, for the American Dreams. As each new era of foreigners migrate to America, they face the obstacle of conforming to mainstream America. As “Hester Street” and “Eat a Bowl of Tea” portrayed, immigrants come to this land of opportunities with the hopes and dreams of a better life for themselves or their families. In “Hester Street”, Jake, a Russian Jewish immigrant who lived in New York's Lower East Side for five years, leaving his wife behind, and taking up with a new woman and earning enough money to support his dance hall ways. On the other hand, in “Eat a bowel of tea”, Wah Gay is a traditional Chinese immigrant who owns a club in Chinatown, and sends all his money to his wife back in China, who he has not seen in 20 years because of the inequitable immigration laws that had prevented Chinamen bringing their women into the country. These immigrants fall within a lower social class, as a result they strive to conform to a more facilitating and suitable lifestyle. As they begin to build a new life in America, they face the process of assimilation. America holds an idea of a mainstream society; consequently those individuals not fitting this image are left with feelings of abandonment and insecurity. As a result, they feel pressured in achieving the American dream. Let’s look at the examples the movies give us. In “Hester Street”, Jake, a self-made Yankee, has abandoned the traditions of his culture by cutting off his beard and earlocks, and he has adopted the mannerisms of his new country, including a new girlfriend who runs a dance hall. When his wife Gitl and son Yossele join him from the Old World, Jake was embarrassed. He looks down his wife because she retains her religious ways, wearing the wigs and scarves. He even insists on calling their son Joey and trying to modernize them both. Jake is a typical immigrant who wants to be assimilated as soon as possible, once they gain acceptance and recognition, they begin to look down upon the new immigrants coming into the country, sometimes even family members. Its ironic how quickly one forgets the past and repeats history in terms of the mistreatment and hostile hospitality a new immigrant once received. In “Eat a... ... middle of paper ... ...against foreigners, but the problems of the dislocated immigrants struggling to preserve their culture while adapting to a new one still exist. New immigrants who desire to conform still have to deal with the way they talk, dress, and behave. Most immigrants have attempted to learn the English language, with their accents barely noticeable at times. In addition, they are willing to take any job available to support the family, and they work in many different jobs that are as physically demanding as they are diverse. The American Dream, is about becoming something, to the best way to achieve fulfillment of ones life. The dream is and always has been a reality. The more that Americans and immigrants insist on the dream as a right, and pursue it with determination, the more likely it will be to remain a live option accessible to all. The dream does not originate from America; it derives from us, the people. If we exert all our efforts, we at any moment in American history are more likely to be what the country had intended to become. With that predicament already visible, every advance we make may very well lead to another, and every realization of the American Dream will evolve.
Immigration is a large aspect of American history. In the book Breaking Through by Francisco Jimenez, we are able to see the struggles of one Hispanic boy immigrating to the United States from Mexico. Many of the people in the community that Francisco lived in didn’t really accept Hispanic people. It was really depressing that he would make friends, go over to their house and their parents wouldn’t let him come over again, simply because he was Hispanic. In Diversity Matters the text states, “Unique stresses created by the process of immigration to another country and discrimination faced in the new country can create psychological distress for many immigrants” (Spradlin 126). During this time in America, there was still a lot of discrimination going on not only with Hispanics, but other minority races like African Americans. This really goes to show how far our country has come over the years. There is still a long way to go, but I think that if people are more educated and aware of the discrimination people face on a daily basis they will be more open-minded. The United States is becoming more open to diversity, but first we will look at the struggles of one Hispanic boy growing up here illegally in Breaking Through.
Immigrants' lives become very difficult when they move to a new country. They are often discriminated against due to their race and/ or nationality. This problem occurs many times throughout Dragonwings, a book by Laurence Yep. In his book, the Chinese characters who immigrate to America face many challenges in their new lives. They are thought of as inferior, have to endure many hardships, and become lonely due to the fact that they must leave the majority of their families in China. In this book, the immigrants face multiple difficulties and challenges in the new world they know as the Land of the Golden Mountain.
The factor of racial profiling comes into play as federal grant programs award police for rounding up as many people as possible. This very tactic was demonstrated by the CompStat system in New York City and further expounded by Victor M. Rios’s analysis of the themes over-policing and under-policing. These themes focus on how officers, police certain kinds of deviance and crime such as, loitering, or disturbing the peace, while neglecting other instances when their help is needed . Rios also stresses how the accumulation of minor citations like the ones previously mentioned, play a crucial role in pipelining Black and Latino young males deeper into the criminal justice system. Rios implies that in order to decrease the chances with police interaction one must not physically appear in a way that catches the attention of a police or do anything behavior wise that would lead to someone labeling you as deviant . Unfortunately, over-policing has made it difficult even for those who actually do abide by social norms because even then, they have been victims of criminalization . However, since structural incentives like those that mimic CompStat are in place, police simply ignore constitutional rules and are able to get away with racial profiling, and thus interrogate, and search whomever they please. Since these targeted minorities acknowledge the fact that the police are not always present to enforce the law, they in turn learn strategies in order to protect themselves from violence that surrounds them. Young African American Americans and Latino youth thus become socialized in the “code of the street”, as the criminal justice system possesses no value in their
In America, it is a common misconception that all foreigners are similar; it is believed that they all have similar dreams and each of them end up chasing after the same jobs. However, this is not the case. Not only do immigrants from different countries hold different dreams, but those with a shared background even have varying hopes and dreams for the future. This is evidenced in Bharati Mukherjee’s essay, “Two Ways to Belong in America.” She utilizes several rhetorical strategies in order to show that immigrants have the ability to be assimilated into the American culture, but that they should not be deported if they choose not to conform to said culture.
Many people claim that racism no longer exists; however, the minorities’ struggle with injustice is ubiquitous. Since there is a mass incarceration of African Americans, it is believed that African Americans are the cause of the severe increase of crimes. This belief has been sent out implicitly by the ruling class through the media. The media send out coded messages that are framed in abstract neutral language that play on white resentment that targets minorities. Disproportionate arrest is the result of racial disparities in the criminal justice system rather than disproportion in offenders. The disparities in the sentencing procedure are ascribed to racial discrimination. Because police officers are also biased, people of color are more likely to be investigated than whites. Police officers practice racial profiling to arrest African Americans under situations when they would not arrest white suspects, and they are more likely to stop African Americans and see them as suspicious (Alexander 150-176). In the “Anything Can Happen With Police Around”: Urban Youth Evaluate Strategies of Surveillance in Public Places,” Michelle Fine and her comrades were inspired to conduct a survey over one of the major social issues - how authority figures use a person’s racial identity as a key factor in determining how to enforce laws and how the surveillance is problematic in public space. Fine believes it is critical to draw attention to the reality in why African Americans are being arrested at a much higher rate. This article reflects the ongoing racial issue by focusing on the injustice in treatment by police officers and the youth of color who are victims. This article is successful in being persuasive about the ongoing racial iss...
When most people think about immigration to the United States, they think of the U.S. as being the “land of opportunity,” where they will be able to make all of their dreams come true. For some people, immigration made their lives richer and more fulfilled. This however, was not always the case. A place that is supposed to be a “Golden Land” (Marcus 116) did not always welcome people with open arms. Even after people became legal citizens of the United States, often times the natural born Americans did not treat the immigrants as equals but rather as outsiders who were beneath them in some way. In some situations, people’s lives were made worse by coming to the “land of opportunity.” Often times people were living no better than they were in their own countries not able to make ends meet, just to live in the United States. Virtually all immigrants during the 1900’s had the same dream, to become successful and provide for their families as citizens of the United States, but they soon found out that the life in their new country was not going to be easy.
From centuries ago, our society of melting pot coexisted with meanings of the American dream. It still held truth from generations ago, when immigration was a natural cause for immigrants to migrate to the land symbolized as freedom. Upon this, immigrating into the United States was not as complicated as it was today in terms of national immigration policies in place. Such examples concluded on Ellis Island when waves of immigration
Immigrants leave their countries in search for a better life and improvement of their situation. There is no singular reason for immigration; motivations range from better economic prospects to political safety. As of late, the number of immigrants living in the United States is an estimated 11 million. Those who immigrate are expected to contribute to the United States culturally, politically, and economically. Yet, full assimilation becomes difficult to achieve when the immigrant is made into “the other” by the country of reception.
Guns do not kill people, people do. The American Dream is being able to work towards and achieve whatever makes you happy, whether it be owning your own business, joining the military, or staying at home raising a family, but the only way to reach your dream is to do it without living in fear that your dream will be taken away. In the last couple years mass shootings and attacks on schools have sadly become a common tragedy. Those who have been victims of public shootings or any other life scarring event due to a criminal, along with anyone else who has watched the coverage of the tragedies on the news is somewhat living in fear, but if concealed carry laws were passed then living in fear would be significantly lowered along with crime rates. According to Mike Miller, author of What Happened to Chicago’s Murder Rate After Illinois Upheld Concealed Carry and Why it Matters, “three to four crimes are stopped by a handgun than are committed in the United States every year” (Miller). People would feel much safer knowing they would be able to defend themselves if the time ever arose. When we think or hear about guns most of us jump to the negative effects and stories we have heard. The only stories we hear about guns are how a person’s life has ended because of it, but we never hear how they save a person’s life. It is important to remember the commonly used phrase when talking about concealed carry, “Guns do not kill people, people do.” However, guns are an effective way of protection and states should not make stricter gun control laws because it is ineffective and creates additional problems in today’s violent society.
What exactly is gun control? This question is where much of the misconception begins. Many people would reply to this question simply by saying taking away guns. They are correct but this is just a small part of what gun control actually is. The authors of the article, "Does Gun Control Reduce Crime or Does Crime Increase Gun Control?” give a good definition for what gun control is. “Gun control is an umbrella term covering everything from laws prohibiting the ownership of defined classes of firearms to mandating the inclusion of gun locks with every firearm sold.”(Moorhouse) The first step to making a stance on any subject should be to fully understand what all is contained in the issue. In this case many people hear the term gun control and automatically start m...
Over the last decade, gun control has been one of the hottest political topics nationwide. Those who support gun control believe that stricter gun laws reduce crime, while opponents of gun control believe that firearms are essential for self-defense. Both sides possess passionate views, and are usually unwilling to compromise their beliefs. What exactly is gun control? Gun control is a series of laws that limit the availability and ownership of privately owned firearms. Cliff Stearns, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, claims that “Our society is a violent society. However, the innocent deserve access to the tools they need to defend themselves.” Gun laws should be relaxed in the United States because the 2nd Amendment prohibits the government from infringing on the right to keep and bear arms, a well-armed general population would deter the government from becoming abusive in the future, and finally, because access to firearms make it easier for people to defend themselves and their families.
A gun owner can be a responsible person but still anything can happen certain circumstances can come up where the gun can be used in a negative way. Nobody should be foolish enough to say that something bad could happen to them with a firearm. People saying that the answer is more guns less regulation isn’t the answer that obviously doesn’t work that would just lead to more chaos. Since 2009, three times as many pro-gun laws were passed in The United States as anti-gun measures this trend has only accelerated since then. A new demographic of people support the right to carry gun laws. Now more women support concealed weapon laws and now more women and moms are getting concealed weapon permits in states that allow them. Overall, 85 percent of Americans support the right to bear arms(Krieg,2016). Many americans believe that restricting gun rights anymore would be a complete violation of the constitution and would be severely fought by pro-gun activists if any sort of legislation was passed. Legislation has been passed in certain states to ban guns from certain areas like playgrounds and around schools if you are caught with guns anywhere around there stiff penalties will be put in place. In the late 1960s and into the early 70s, a gun control movement came about because
"The American Dream" is that dream of a nation in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with options for each according to capacity or accomplishments. It is a dream of social stability in which each man and each woman shall be able to achieve to the fullest distinction of which they are essentially competent, and be distinguish by others for what they are, despite of the incidental conditions of birth or stance. The American Dream is often something that humanity wonders about. What is the American dream? Many people discover success in a range of things. There are many different definitions of the American Dream. However, the American Dream embraces prosperity, personal safety, and personal liberty. The American dream is a continually fluctuating set of ideals, reflecting the ideas of an era.
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.
When the term ‘American Dream’ was first mentioned in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, he described it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” (Clark). When Adams mentioned the term, it had much more of an idealistic meaning, rather than the materialistic meaning it has in modern society. At the time of it’s mention, the dream meant that prosperity was available to everyone. In the beginning, the American Dream simply promised a country in which people had the chance to work their way up through their own labor and hard work (Kiger). Throughout history, the basis of the dream has always been the same for each individual person. It