Jack Suchodolski
AP Language and Composition
Mr. Jon Weller
27 October 2017
Rough Draft of American Dream Essay
The American Dream is among the United States’ most recognizable and revered symbols of our national heritage. Celebrated in popular culture, this statement of national purpose has been analyzed by commentators across the broad range of humanistic and scholarly disciplines, including American sociology. While sociology has developed a lengthy history of studies dedicated to ‘the American way of life’ and – to a lesser degree – the role of the American Dream in society, the work of sociologists from earlier eras arguably overshadows many of the efforts undertaken since the millennium. The present paper argues that sociology is especially well suited to investigations and analyses of the role and impact of the American Dream and urges a re-dedication of sociological efforts to chart its meaning and influence.
The American Dream is perhaps the most well-known, shorthand summary of a nation’s collective aspirations ever devised by man. As an advertising slogan it is pithy, peerless and evocative. Presidents of both parties have found it invaluable as a patriotic rhetorical device capable of moving the masses of Americans to harbor positive thoughts of their country’s destiny. Moreover, the concept has demonstrated that it travels well overseas: while citizens of other nations do not always identify their aspirations linguistically as constituting the ‘American dream’ there is widespread evidence that similar cultural goals, and lifestyle practices, to those that undergird American society are now adopted.
The question of whether to capitalize ‘Dream’ or not capitalize 'dream' in the phrase perhaps should not detain us long. An argument can be made that the phrase has become so ubiquitous, stylized, and nearly sacred that like other names, titles and labels we deem significant, we should grant the entire phrase the honor of capitalization. At the same time, the phrase appears so frequently in the text that capitalization becomes somewhat distracting and perhaps acts to reify the concept to the detriment of the analysis. Therefore I have capitalized the phrase in the Abstract and here but hereinafter the word ‘dream’ will appear in lowercase, except where I am quoting from a source.
They are pursued in many nations abroad. Indeed, the recent collapse of the housing markets and financial institutions in other nations in the lee of the 2008 ‘Great Recession’ in the United States suggests the American dream may be the United States’ primary ‘export’ to other nations in the modern world economy (Hauhart 2011). In 1931 James Truslow Adams, an author of American history written in a popular vein, published The Epic of America. In his book, Adams summed up his capsule history of the American experience by noting: If, as I have said, the things already listed were all we had had to contribute, America would have made no distinctive and unique gift to mankind. But there has also been the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.
Adams went on to say that many Americans appeared to have become ‘weary and mistrustful’ of the promise of the American dream. Adams attributed this attitude to his belief that Americans misunderstood what was meant by the dream. For Adams, a life that was better and richer and fuller^ did not mean a life that was conceived solely in materialistic terms. Rather, Adams meant a life in which personal fulfillment – or success as one personally defined it – could be pursued. In his view the crucial factor underlying the dream was the opportunity for every American to realize his or her personal vision within the confines of American society. In his original conception, one could achieve one’s American dream through natural ability, hard work, perseverance and the achievements that would thereby follow.
In recent decades many have argued that the American dream has been reduced simply to the goal of economic success (Messner and Rosenfeld 2007). As an ideological buttress for twenty-first century American democratic capitalism, however, the concept has built in limitations. The key limitation acknowledged by most commentators that presents a potential danger for the concept’s continued viability is the gap between promise and fulfillment. As a number of writers have recognized, the American dream’s promise of equal opportunity for all to achieve monetary success becomes hollow without a reason- able chance within the competitive labor and financial marketplaces.
There are other shortcomings to defining the American dream solely in economic terms. A second limitation is the social malaise that reliance on the economic version of the American dream can generate even where the economic system reasonably supports widespread economic opportunity. This latter shortcoming arises because of the nebulous meaning of the concept and the inability of any cultural system to satisfy every imaginable human craving and need. While Americans may publicly espouse the monetary success ethic, economic success seldom satisfies fully. Various studies have suggested, for example, that beyond a baseline amount, increased income does not produce an increase in satisfaction (Kahneman and Deaton 2010). Yet abandoning the economic conception of the American dream leaves many Americans un-anchored in the modern era where the institutions of religion, family, and community have suffered diminution in their ability to generate and sustain social engagement and commitment. This raises the culturally complex question of the American dream’s relationship to what is often colloquially called ‘the American way of life.’ It is apparent the two are complexly inter-related yet the precise manner in which the two are intertwined has never been satisfactorily elucidated.
One consequence of these forces is that the American dream, with its undefined and boundless character, can generate an endless number of goals once it is embraced in a vaguely defined state, creating a bottomless cultural lure for the unwary and naively optimistic. The result is often an open-ended cultural maze of conflicted desire that perpetuates atomistic individualism in a country known for its emphasis on the individual. Under these circumstances, individual aspirations fostered by the American dream can perhaps more often produce disorientation, stasis, and discord than consti- tute a guided pathway to satisfaction and success. Ungrounded in his or her self-absorbed goals, Americans can toil alone fruitlessly in pursuit of an illusory and empty promise – the American dream.
These reflections raise a number of troubling questions about the contemporary American experience and the American dream. Recent economic difficulties for many Americans inspire one to ask whether James Truslow Adams’ American dream promise can survive economic system failure like the Great Recession of 2008. Equally to the point, even if the American dream can survive widespread economic adversity, can the dream’s effective delivery of economic success substitute for delivering a life worth living? Can the economic conception of the American dream be saved from foundering on an endless round of chasing success but experiencing failure that the American way of life has become for many in the throes of cyclical capitalist eras of boom and bust? Finally, just what is understood by ‘the American dream’ by Americans today? How do Americans view it and what do they hope to achieve through its promise? These questions about the American dream, and many others, warrant serious answers as we push ahead further into the ‘next American century’.
Importantly for our present purposes, these questions suggest that the American dream is well-suited to both theoretical and empirical examination by American sociologists. Indeed, American sociology arguably has a long history of examining the social factors that bear on one version or another of the American dream, including class, stratification, status, intergenerational mobility, individualism, community commitment, ideology, race, and work and family life balance issues. Yet, the American dream itself has only occasionally warranted sustained, direct investigation by American sociologists; rather it has most often been approached obliquely. Many of the sociological studies that have explicitly acknowledged an interest in the American dream are, by now, somewhat dated. For example, W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki’s careful research into the lives of Polish peasants is now nearly a century in print although it is true that other sociologists have conducted studies of more recent immigrants’ American dreams. Likewise, Robert Merton’s well-known middle range theory of the American success ethic dates from 1938. In place of direct and explicit investigations of the American dream, many of the more recent sociological analyses have been tied to a particular theme, impact, niche or facet of American society rather than its totality; constitute merely an extension of or addendum to earlier work; or, simply, consist of a mere collection of readings about the American dream.