The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States.docx

1、The American Dream is a national ethos of the United StatesThe American DreamIntroductionThe American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work. This i

2、ncludes the opportunity for ones children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the prior restrictions that limited people according to their class, caste, religion, race, or ethnicity.This term was fi

3、rst used by James Truslow Adamsin his book The Epic of America which was written in 1931. He states: The American Dream is 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. It is not a dream of motor

4、 cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position. This idea of th

5、e American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.The meaning of the American Dream has changed ove

6、r the course of history, and includes both personal components (such as home ownership and upward mobility) and a global vision. Historically the Dream originated in the mystique regarding frontier life. As the Royal Governor of Virginia noted in 1774, the Americans for ever imagine the Lands furthe

7、r off are still better than those upon which they are already settled. He added that if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west. In the 19thcentury, many well-educated Germans fled the failed 1848 revolution. They welcomed the political freedoms in the

8、 New World, and the lack of a hierarchical or aristocratic society that determined the ceiling for individual aspirations. One of them explained:“The German emigrant comes into a country free from the despotism, privileged orders and monopolies, intolerable taxes, and constraints in matters of belie

9、f and conscience. Everyone can travel and settle wherever he pleases. No passport is demanded, no police mingles in his affairs or hinders his movements.Fidelity and merits are the only sources of honor here. The rich stand on the same footing as the poor; the scholar is not a mug above the most hum

10、ble mechanics; no German ought to be ashamed to pursue any occupation.In America wealth and possession of real estate confer not the least political right on its owner above what the poorest citizen has. Nor are there nobility, privileged orders, or standing armies to weaken the physical and moral p

11、ower of the people, nor are there swarms of public functionaries to devour in idleness credit for. Above all, there are no princes and corrupt courts representing the so-called divine right of birth. In such a country the talents, energy and perseverance of a person.have far greater opportunity to d

12、isplay than in monarchies.” The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought in a hundred thousand men looking for their fortune overnightand a few did find it. Thus was born the California Dream of instant success. Historian H. W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the Californi

13、a Dream spread across the nation: “The old American Dream . . . was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklins Poor Richard . . . of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twink

14、ling by audacity and good luck. This golden dream . . . became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutters Mill.” In 20th century, Historian James Truslow Adams popularized the phrase American Dream in his 1931 book Epic of America: But there has been also the American dream, that dre

15、am 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. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It

16、is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or po

17、sition. The American dream, which has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century, has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest developmen

18、t as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.Martin Luther King,Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham J

19、ail (1963) quest for the American Dream: “We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for what is best in the Amer

20、ican dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”The American Dream in different fiel

21、ds of the USALiteratureThe term is used in popular discourse, and scholars have traced its use in American literature ranging from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, to Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby (1925), Theodore Dreisers An Amer

22、ican Tragedy (1925). Other writers who used the American Dream theme include Edward Albee, John Steinbeck, The American Dream is also discussed in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman; the plays protagonist, Willy, is on a journey for the American Dream. The American Dream has been credited with helpi

23、ng to build a cohesive American experience, but has also been blamed for inflated expectations. Some commentators have noted that despite deep-seated belief in the egalitarian American Dream, the modern American wealth structure still perpetuates racial and class inequalities between generations. On

24、e sociologist notes that advantage and disadvantage are not always connected to individual successes or failures, but often to prior position in a social group. Since the 1920s, numerous authors, such as Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel Babbitt, and F.Scott Fitzgerald, in his 1925 classic, The Great

25、 Gatsby, satirized or ridiculed materialism in the chase for the American dream. For example, Jay Gatsbys death mirrors the American Dreams demise, reflecting the pessimism of modern-day Americans. A lot of people follow the American Dream to achieve a greater chance of becoming rich. Some posit tha

26、t the ease of achieving the American Dream changes with technological advances, availability of infrastructure and information, government regulations, state of the economy, and with the evolving cultural values of American demographics. The American Dream has been credited with helping to build a c

27、ohesive American experience, but has also been blamed for inflated expectations. In 1949 Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, in which the American Dream is a fruitless pursuit. The novel Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby,Jr., is an exploration of the pursuit of American success as it turns de

28、lirious and lethal, told through the ensuing tailspin of its main characters. PoliticsScholars have explored the American Dream theme in the careers of numerous political leaders, including Hillary Clinton, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. In 2006 U.S.Senator Barack Obama wrote a memoir, The

29、Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. It was this interpretation of the American Dream that helped establish his statewide and national reputations. Political conflicts, to some degree, have been ameliorated by the shared values of all parties in the expectation that the Ameri

30、can Dream will resolve many difficulties and conflictsPublicsRecent research suggests that the United States show roughly average levels of occupational upward mobility, and lower rates of income mobility, than comparable societies. Blanden et al. report, The idea of the US as the land of opportunit

31、y persists; and clearly seems misplaced. According to these studies, by international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than

32、 in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States. This challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity. To a majority of

33、Americans, the American Dream is more about spiritual happiness than material goods. Majorities state that working hard is the most important element for getting ahead. However, an increasing minority stated that hard work and determination does not guarantee success. On the pessimistic side, most Ame