The American Dream - A historical overview (adapted from)
The American Dream describes an attitude of hope and faith that looks forward to the
fulfilment of human wishes and desires. What these wishes are, were expressed in
Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence of 1776, where it was stated:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.”
This search for freedom and happiness actually goes back to the very beginning of
American civilisation, to the time of the first settlers. The Puritan Fathers who first came to
New England (one of the first states to be settled), the Quakers who came to
Pennsylvania (another American state), and the Huguenots in Virginia were all religious
refugees who were driven to the New World by persecution. To these people, America
represented a new life of freedom, holding a promise of spiritual and material happiness.
For those settlers who were not so religiously inclined, America was still a fairyland, a
land of great possibilities. It was also a rich mine of natural resources. And so the first
thirteen colonies came into being, amidst the religious and materialistic hopes of the first
settlers. Material prosperity and progress kept pace with religious and spiritual goals
because the Puritans and the Quakers alike approved of industry and material
advancement. For, whereas physical pleasures were evil, hard work and achievements
were regarded as indications of inner goodness.
When the Eastern Seaboard, comprising the thirteen colonies, became overcrowded, this
pursuit of happiness and freedom shifted inland with the drive westward beyond the
Appalachian Mountains. The opening of the Middle and Western states increased the
sense of hope and faith. And this looking forward beyond the immediate present, this
belief in the future, has become a national characteristic that may partly explain the speed
of American advancement in so many areas of activities. The democratic system, first
voiced in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence in 1776, may be traced to this basic
attitude of hope and confidence.
This dream has however been paradoxical since the very beginning. European settlers
set about driving the Native American populations to the west, setting in motion a tragic
chain of events that culminated in the Trail of Tears in the middle of the 19th century. In
1619, meanwhile, a Dutch man-of-war brought African slaves to Virginia. And so while
white settlers built and dreamed, people of color were subjugated and exploited by a
rising nation that prided itself on the expansion of liberty.
It is striking that the symbolic high-water mark of the civil rights movement was framed in
terms of the American Dream. When Martin Luther King Jr. rose to address the March on
Washington in August 1963, he described his dream of an integrated America as "deeply
rooted in the American Dream." He was asking only for black Americans' rightful share of
the life that most white Americans had come to take for granted: a life in which whites
were judged by "the content of their character."
It was a writer who first coined the phrase “American Dream.” On Friday, May 1, 1931,
James Truslow Adams, a popular historian, was putting the final touches on the preface
to his latest book. It was a curious time in the life of the nation. Though the Crash of 1929
had signaled the beginning of the Great Depression that was to endure for years to come,
there was also a spirit of progress, of possibility.
What was new was the specific phrase Adams was using: the American Dream. From the
Puritan search for an earthly "city upon a hill" in the New World to Benjamin Franklin's
"The Way to Wealth" aphorisms, Adams' phrase had — and has — the deepest of roots
in the American experience.
The American Dream, however, originally relates to a desire for spiritual and material
improvement. What happened was that, from one point of view, the material aspect of the
dream was too easily and too quickly achieved, with the result that it soon outpaced and
even obliterated the early spiritual ideals. So there emerged a state of material well-being
but lacking in spiritual life or purpose. When The Great Gatsby was being written, the
spectacular prosperity of the Roaring '20s brought to the front the material aspect of the
dream as many young men became wealthy overnight thanks to the stock market. This
was however short-lived as a much darker reality was brought forth by the 1929 stock
market crash and ensuing Great Depression. However, when Fitzgerald produced
Gatsby, he was modelled no doubt on the writer's own faith in life, he seemed to have
created a character who represented an early American in whom the Dream was still very
much alive.
From another point of view, the American Dream has totally failed to bring any kind of
fulfilment, whether spiritual or material. For all the progress and prosperity, for all the
declaration of democratic principles, there is still poverty, discrimination and exploitation.
And as for values and morality, there is also hypocrisy and corruption. The Great Gatsby
is also a comment on this condition. Other writers have written about these hard truths
which have made the American Dream an illusion: John Steinbeck in The Grapes of
Wrath (1939) is an example.