Mschian
The “American Dream” is a deeply rooted delusion in our culture that afflicts countless individuals, and has both positive and negative effects on society. It can be a respectable wish for better living conditions, and perhaps followed up by some endeavors to accomplish that. But it can just as well take over a person’s mind, and send them plundering into an abysmal irrationality complete with a never-ending dissatisfaction with virtually everything in life.
Historically, the “American Dream” was first a creation of the European imagination. Their conceptions were slowly shaped from the accounts of the first explorers and settlers. For example, Christopher Columbus strongly believed that he had discovered a terrestrial paradise and people of all races dreamt of an imagined America, a land projected into myth, a space of all possibilities, comparable to any other unknown land with the prospect of great opportunity i.e. (New Canaan, El Dorado, Mecca, and Arcadia). Before Americans even began to speak about the American dream as their own national motto, Europeans of all origins conceived the idea of a distant land with immense opportunity known as “America”. The prospect of a New World, a place where one could begin anew, and have the freedom to “create their own destiny”, attracted all kinds of people. And so, even back to the first conceptions of the “American Dream” the definition was vast and extremely vague. Once there, some immigrants’ expectations were challenged. Their “reward” was not just sitting on the coast of the New World, waiting for them. They soon found that the New World was filled with opportunity to make a new life—success was something they had to work for.
Upon settling, Europeans had vastly differing objectives for success in the New World. The “American Dream” is so obscure and subjective that by nature it is essentially unattainable. Nevertheless, the Pilgrims sought the New World for the freedom it offered. For it was a place where they
Historically, the “American Dream” was first a creation of the European imagination. Their conceptions were slowly shaped from the accounts of the first explorers and settlers. For example, Christopher Columbus strongly believed that he had discovered a terrestrial paradise and people of all races dreamt of an imagined America, a land projected into myth, a space of all possibilities, comparable to any other unknown land with the prospect of great opportunity i.e. (New Canaan, El Dorado, Mecca, and Arcadia). Before Americans even began to speak about the American dream as their own national motto, Europeans of all origins conceived the idea of a distant land with immense opportunity known as “America”. The prospect of a New World, a place where one could begin anew, and have the freedom to “create their own destiny”, attracted all kinds of people. And so, even back to the first conceptions of the “American Dream” the definition was vast and extremely vague. Once there, some immigrants’ expectations were challenged. Their “reward” was not just sitting on the coast of the New World, waiting for them. They soon found that the New World was filled with opportunity to make a new life—success was something they had to work for.
Upon settling, Europeans had vastly differing objectives for success in the New World. The “American Dream” is so obscure and subjective that by nature it is essentially unattainable. Nevertheless, the Pilgrims sought the New World for the freedom it offered. For it was a place where they
Cited: Ştiuliuc, Diana. "The American Dream As The Cultural Expression Of North American Identity." Philologica Jassyensia 7.2 (2011): 363-370. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Dec. 2012