American Dream

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American Dream

The American Dream is the freedom

Freedom (political)

Political freedom is the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression. The members of a free society would have full dominion over their public and private lives....
that allows all citizens

Citizenship

Citizenship refers to a person's membership in a political community such as a country or city. It has different legal definitions in different countries....
and most residents of the United States to pursue their goals in life through hard work and free choice (see Immigration to the United States

Immigration to the United States

American immigration refers to the movement of World population to the United States. Immigration has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of history of the United States....
).

The phrase's meaning has evolved over the course of American history. The Founding Fathers used the phrase, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It began as the opportunity to achieve greater material prosperity than was possible in their countries of origin.

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Encyclopedia

The American Dream is the freedom

Freedom (political)

Citizenship

Immigration to the United States

Education in the United States

Education in the United States is provided mainly by government, with control and funding coming from three levels: Federal government of the United States, State government, and Local government....
and its consequent career opportunities. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the restrictions of class

Social class

Social class refers to the hierarchy distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. Usually most societies have some notion of social class , but concretely defined social classes are not found in every known type of human societies....
, caste

Caste

Castes are hereditary systems of wikt:occupation, endogamy, culture, social class, and political power, the assignment of individuals to places in the social hierarchy is determined by social group and culture....
, religion

Religion

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of myth, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendence quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth....
, race, or ethnic group

Ethnic group

An ethnic group is a group of humans whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or presumed.Ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness and the recognition of common culture, linguistic, religion, human behaviour or Race traits, real or presumed, as indic...
.

Counterculture

It should be noted that the counterculture of 1960s' America introduced for the first time an American Dream directly opposed to the traditional "Dream". Whereas tradition stressed monetary gain, the hippie movement valued spiritual gain. Since then, the spectrum has continued to widen to include less generalized, more personal definitions.

A great deal of literature has been written in attempts to discover and define modern, counterculture variants of the American Dream. Examples include several Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Stockton Thompson was an United States journalist and author, most famous for his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas . He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of journalism where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories....
titles, such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was an American author, poet and Painting. Alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, he is considered a pioneer of the Beat Generation....
's On The Road
On the Road

On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957 in literature. It is a largely Autobiography work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America....
.

Others have been written to critique or ridicule the concept, such as John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck III was an American literature. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939 and the novella Of Mice and Men, published in 1937....
's Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize in Literature-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937 in literature, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant worker ranch workers during the Great Depression in California....
. F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an United States writer of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself....
wrote The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the United States author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, it is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922....
about the extreme selfishness

Selfishness

Selfishness denotes the precedence given in thought or deed to the self, i.e., self interest or self concern. It is the act of placing one's own needs or desires above the needs or desires of others....
of adultery

Adultery

Adultery is the voluntary sexual intercourse between a marriage and another person who is not his or her spouse, though in many places it is only considered adultery when a married woman has sexual relations with someone who is not her husband and in others it is only considered adultery when a married woman has sexual relations with someon...
, bootlegging

Rum-running

Rum-running is the business of smuggling or transporting of alcoholic beverages illegally, usually to circumvent taxation or prohibition. The term usually applies to transport of goods over water, over land it is commonly referred to as bootlegging....
and social climbing.

The dramas Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman is a 1949 Play by American playwright Arthur Miller and is a classic of American theater. The play ran for 742 performances, directed by Elia Kazan with Lee J....
and A Raisin in the Sun
A Raisin in the Sun

A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway theatre in 1959. The story is based upon a family's own experiences growing up in the Washington Park Subdivision of Chicago, Illinois's Woodlawn, Chicago neighborhood....
are examples of marginalized citizens striving to or failing to achieve the American Dream.

Countless films explore the topic of the American Dream. One such film is 1969's Easy Rider
Easy Rider

Easy Rider, a Cinema of the United States road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern and directed by Hopper, about two bikers who travel through the Southwest United States and U.S....
, in which characters make a pilgrimage in search of "the true America."

Origin

Historian and writer James Truslow Adams

James Truslow Adams

James Truslow Adams was an United States writer and historian.Born in Brooklyn, New York, Adams took his bachelor's degree from the Polytechnic University of New York in 1898, and a master's degree from Yale University in 1900....
coined the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book Epic of America: He also wrote:

American Dream

Counterculture

Origin

See also