The American Dream.

Of all the American myths, none is more celebrated in the present day than the American dream. To accomplish the rags-to-riches story that defines this country in the minds of nearly all of its wealthiest individuals and many of its poorest is to reach the pinnacle of American society. Despite the fact that very few have ever truly made it on their own, the dream of wealth, success, social mobility and advancement is key to the American story. However, American literature is not always so kind to this dream. While one cannot deny that countless stories embrace the dream, the most classic American works reject it, using characters who seek to achieve the dream and fail, or even characters who reject outright the entire materialistic premise of the dream.

Failed Attempts.

The first set of stories to examine consists of those with more or less characteristic American heroes that seek to accomplish the dream and fall short. Their failures are never the result of personal shortcomings or an inability to do what is required to be successful and profitable; rather, they are the result of the inherent bankruptcy in the dream itself.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is considered by many the greatest American novel, perhaps because it deals so directly with the idea of America (Huck Finn does the same, of course, but teaching Gatbsy avoids the problems of explaining racism to middle schoolers). All of Gatsby’s main characters – Nick, Tom, Daisy and Gatsby himself – came from the Midwest to the east coast, and all but Nick did so in an attempt to live the dream. Gatsby is self-made, but he is unable to earn the respect of his neighbors, who suspect that he made his fortune through bootlegging (which he did). Tom and Daisy come from old money and are living the dream, but their actions make clear that the dream is bankrupt. By the end of the novel, the inescapable conclusion is that all of these characters should have chosen a quieter, more moral life in the Midwest – in particular, Jay Gatsby.

We learn at the very end of the novel that Gatsby’s dream started as a young man, when he drew out a list of tasks to accomplish each day. After years of trying, after the invention of a wild story about his past, and after finally making his fortune, Gatsby gets his house in West Egg and promptly discovers that Daisy lives across the water from him and spends years staring at the green light at the end of her dock. Then, after years of trying to secure Daisy’s love, she gets him killed. Gatsby, who never wavered in his faith in the dream, never finally accomplishes it – no matter how far he comes, it always recedes into the horizon. (As an side, it is not for nothing that rapper Sean Combs identifies himself with Gatsby). This is not how the dream is supposed to work.

In a similar sense, Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” tells the story of a woman, Amanda, who has spent her life attempting to recapture her past through her children – Tom, who she would see successful in business, and Laura, who she would like to marry well. Neither child has much interest in the life set out for them by their mother. Tom seeks to make himself famous as a writer, not proceed in the world of business. And Laura is a nervous, shy girl with a physical handicap, who does not believe she has the physical or mental requirements to attract any gentlemen callers, let alone several. However, Amanda has her own failures. Despite the diverse set of gentlemen callers from which she could select, Amanda chose the one that would eventually leave her alone with her two children. As in Gatsby, this is a rather bleak state of affairs.

Eudora Welty’s ” Death of a Traveling Salesman” also examines the lack of fulfillment that comes from material success in the model of the American dream. After a traveling salesman laid up with the flu gets back on the road and promptly puts his car in a ravine, he finds himself seeking help in a farmhouse. There, he is helped by an old and simple couple who he eventually comes to realize are neither that old nor that simple. After slowly coming to understand the merit of the life this couple had chosen, he runs out from the farmhouse in the middle of the night and suffers a heart attack alone on the road, where nobody is around to hear him. Though this is a clear celebration of the farm life, there is little to be optimistic about.

Rejections of Materialism.

There is not much more room for optimism in the second set of stories to be examined: those with heroes that openly reject the premise of the American dream. The one bright spot is that there is at least a much stronger sense of correctness in what these heroes are doing, though they too suffer tragic endings.

Herman Meville’s “Bartleby” is the story of an eccentric scrivener as told by his employer. Or rather, it is the tale of the most eccentric scrivener in an office filled with them. The narrator explains that each of his employees is dysfunctional in his own way, but that Bartleby is far stranger than the others. Unlike Turkey, a drunk good only in the morning, or Nippers, a nervous stomach worthless until the afternoon, or Ginger Nut, whose main purpose is to get cakes for the others, Bartleby refuses to rely on a particular trait or malady to get through his day. Instead, when faced with an undesirable request, he elects to politely refuse. He does this so consistently that it ultimately leads to his death. In closing, the narrator cries out, “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” That Bartleby’s plight is humanity’s plight is certain, but to which part does the narrator refer? Is Bartleby to be commended for his refusal to subscribe to the falsehoods of the American dream? Is he to be mourned for his ultimate loneliness? Probably the answer is both, and the reader is left once again with a sense of hopelessness – but at least in “Bartleby” the hero understands what he is doing.

Finally, in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, our protagonist, Edna, blatantly rejects the American dream. As her husband travels from the South to New York to earn the money required to support their lifestyle, Edna abandons the social niceties required to maintain their standing at home. She seeks ‘a room of her own,’ where she can be free to be artistic and pursue her true goals – not the accumulation of wealth, or even really its exploitation, but rather to paint and be artistic. The closest thing she seems to have for a model in this effort is an eccentric old woman, Mademoiselle Reisz, who plays the piano beautifully and seems to find Edna a bit of a protégé. It is ultimately the married Edna’s love for a younger man is what brings her out of her shell and leads her to embrace these creative impulses, and that love also drives her to her own destruction. As in “Bartleby,” it appears that the only thing more hopeless than attempting to pursue the American dream is recognizing its futility and rejecting it.

Conclusion.

Unlike the myths of the American individual or the American hero, the myth of the American dream is shown in the most famous American stories more in its rejection or failure than in its acceptance or success. This is a strange and rather depressing departure from the normal literary tradition in a country that prides itself on its exceptionalism. But it is also perhaps the most honest treatment of any of the myths we have examined.