by James Nagel
The American dream is a mythic structure underlying the founding of the colonies in America and the literature that emerged in the New World. In a sense, the concept has its origins in an essay written by John Winthrop aboard the ARBELLA in 1630. Soon to be governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Winthrop was pondering the nature of life in a new society, one filled with opportunity for social and financial advancement but one in which ambition had to be tempered with charity and decency, especially with regard to the poor. What his people needed, he argued, was the freedom to make the most of their lives based on the development of essential inner qualities, justice and mercy chief among them. He envisioned Boston as fulfilling the biblical vision of a "city on a hill" that would reward people who possessed the crucial virtues.
So was born the original American dream of boundless opportunity for material fulfillment as a reward for ambition, goodness of heart, and purity of soul, which is perhaps why Winthrop entitled his essay "A Model of Christian Charity." Such thinking lured immigrants from all the nations of Europe, offering the poor new possibilities, the oppressed freedom of expression, the downtrodden hope. A century later, Benjamin Franklin added to this ethic the idea of a disciplined life. In his posthumous AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1818), he revealed his boyhood program for personal advancement from utmost poverty to personal stature: a highly regimented day devoted to self-improvement through study, hard work, and the cultivation of social qualities. His outline quickly became the paradigm for social progress for millions of Americans, and in the 20th century
F. Scott Fitzgerald used it anew in
THE GREAT GATSBY (1925) as the protagonist's program for rising in the world. Earlier, in the latter part of the 19th century, Horatio Alger gave expression to the theme in scores of novels with a common plot: the rise from rags to riches. Alger's fiction emphasized not only financial advancement for "pluck and luck," determination and opportunity, but also the need for honesty, concern for others, and personal modesty. Notably, his characters in such novels as TATTERED TOM (1871) and RISEN FROM THE RANKS (1874) aspire not to fabulous wealth but to middle-class acceptance and security by earning the respect of their fellow citizens, and his program guided the early aspirations of generations of American young people.
Novels written for adults often stressed the same combination of inner qualities required for fulfillment of the American dream, which had sometimes been corrupted into a simple quest for riches. THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM (1885), by
William Dean Howells, shows the titular character moving from humble origins to the acquisition of wealth, yet remaining unsatisfied. He lives with the knowledge that he cheated a partner out of his share of the business, and the memory haunts him. He attempts to find solace in a new house in a fashionable neighborhood of Boston, but he has not grown internally. In the climactic moment of the plot, he must decide whether to deceive a foreign investor who wishes to buy his paint company, making Lapham rich, or reveal that a competitor can undersell the factory, making it essentially worthless. He speaks the truth, loses all his money, AND returns to the Vermont farm where he grew up, but he "rises" morally and psychologically. The underlying theme, oft repeated in the American novel, is that a strong ethical framework is crucial to the conduct of free enterprise. Money alone is not the realization of the American dream.
That concept is echoed throughout the novels of the United States.
Frank Norris's
MCTEAGUE (1899), for example, deals with raw avarice, revenge, murder, destruction, and the hoarding of money, which explains why the silent film made from it was entitled GREED. Totally absent is any development of decency, compassion, or generosity. In a more benign sense,
Willa Cather's
MY ÁNTONIA (1918) features a narrator who holds a law degree from Harvard, is married to a wealthy socialite in New York, yet finds his deepest satisfaction in his memories of the rustic farm girl he knew growing up on the prairie in Nebraska. When he visits her two decades after leaving the area, her life is rich in love of family, and he is profoundly moved by the simple domestic virtues that are totally missing in his sophisticated life in New York. In BABBITT (1922),
Sinclair Lewis presents a central character who achieves wealth but not the satisfaction he had hoped would come with it. Rather than developing internally, he searches the external world for something to fill the void he feels within, a hopeless quest. Sloan Wilson's THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT (1955) is built of similar materials, but in it the protagonist observes the personal cost of the unbridled drive for financial gain and administrative power in the life of his employer, and in the end, despite some sacrifice, he refuses a lucrative new position in order to share family life with his wife and three children. He is comfortable, not wealthy, but he is fulfilled in human terms. Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY has a related theme, that the titular character's acquisition of material wealth is empty without the woman he loves. Although she proves herself unworthy of the idealistic conception of her that has directed his adult life, Gatsby ends up dying for an act she has committed, a fitting, ironic conclusion for a novel set during decade of unparalleled economic prosperity in America.
Abraham Cahan's celebrated THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY (1917) emphasized another negative dimension to the American dream, that the acquisition of wealth comes at too large a price, especially when it involves cultural heritage. A Jewish immigrant, Levinsky works hard in his new country and is rewarded with growing material wealth, ultimately amounting to over $2 million, BUT he has lost his sense of cultural identity by giving up his native language, shaving his beard, and abandoning the traditions that had once given his life meaning. In the end, he feels empty, a failure; unhappy, lonely, and isolated, he finds his life "devoid of significance."
Often the inability to achieve upward mobility in the American novel is the result of factors external to the will of the protagonists. In
John Steinbeck's
THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1939), it is the depression and the drought that drive the Joads off their farm in Oklahoma, not the lack of discipline or ambition, and their difficulties in California derive from exploitive labor practices, not their own ineptitude. In
Richard Wright's
NATIVE SON (1940) and
Ralph Ellison's
INVISIBLE MAN (1952), poverty and racism, along with fear and indecision, circumscribe the opportunities for advancement. Ann Petry's THE STREET (1946) deals with a black woman attempting to raise a son amid the squalor and fear of 1940s Harlem.
Saul Bellow's SEIZE THE DAY (1956) deals with similar themes but in a Jewish context, as the protagonist strives for financial success while maintaining his feelings of love and compassion. He fails to achieve the American dream but grows as a person, recalling THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM in the previous century. In
THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET (1984),
Sandra Cisneros presents a character who dreams of a fine house on a safe street, free of the machismo threats that surround her and threaten to circumscribe her life by relegating her to motherhood and domination by a husband in a poor and violent neighborhood. She is determined to escape. In TYPICAL AMERICAN (1998),
Gish Jen deals with the members of a Chinese immigrant family struggling to understand how they fit into their new society while at the same time achieving much of the promise of America. Despite their difficulties, Ralph earns a Ph.D. and his sister, Theresa, an M.D., paving the way for them to contribute to society while being rewarded for their labors. They find both internal and outward fulfillment in their quest for advancement, the true meaning of the promise of America.
The American dream offered opportunity and dignity to the oppressed of the world, including minorities, and they flocked to the United States in such numbers that the population doubled in three decades at the end of the 19th century. The New World was truly THE PROMISED LAND (1912), the title of Mary Antin's autobiography. A Polish Jew who was brought out of poverty to Boston in her teens, she later attended Columbia and Barnard, married a college professor, and wrote about what America offered the most downtrodden. The title of her book, with its typological implications, gave a new term to the optimistic central myth of the nation.
James Nagel is the Eidson Distinguished Professor of American Literature at the University of Georgia. Among his many boooks are STEPHEN CRANE AND LITERARY IMPRESSIONISM, THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SHORT-STORY CYCLE, and HEMINGWAY IN LOVE AND WAR, which was made into a major Hollywood motion picture. A former president of the Hemingway Society, he is the recipient of both Fulbright and Rockefeller Fellowships as well as the lifetime achievement award from the American Literature Association.
