1920s American Dream Essay

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The American Dream The American Dream summarizes a belief in opportunity for success in America and much of it was reached in the 1950s. It was the belief that everybody was equal, and everybody had an equal opportunity to have a career, raise a family, and live successful and comfortable lives. It was a dream of equality and free enterprise above all else. The American Dream originated in 1931, during the early days of American settlement, with mostly poor immigrants searching for opportunities. It was manifested in the Declaration of Independence, which describes an attitude for hope. The Declaration of Independence states that “all man are created equal and that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty …show more content…

The 1920s was an age of dramatic social and political change, and because of this received the name the Roaring Twenties. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation’s total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and this economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar “consumer society.” Before World War 1, the country remained culturally and psychologically rooted in the nineteenth century, but in the 1920s America seemed to break its wistful attachments to the recent past and usher in a more modern era. The most vivid impressions of that era are flappers and dance halls, movie palaces and radio empires, and Prohibition and speakeasies. Scientists shattered the boundaries of space and time, aviators made men fly, and women went to work. The country was confident and rich. Nevertheless, the 1920s were an age of extreme contradiction. The unmatched prosperity and cultural advancement was accompanied by intense social unrest and reaction. The same decade that bore witness to urbanism and modernism also introduced the Ku Klux Klan, Prohibition, and religious fundamentalism. America’s outrageous extravagance was reflected upon art, music, and literature. The author who best represented this trend was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote …show more content…

Willy believes that, "the man who creates personal interest is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want." (Death of a Salesman) Willy equates success with being wealthy and having a great deal of money and thinks that true happiness relates to what you have in your wallet. Willy has a materialistic view of the American Dream, and he refuses to give up on the idea even when presented with proof that he is wrong. For example, Willy believes that, in accordance with his theory that success comes from being liked, Biff should be successful; however, Biff is not. When Biff was playing football, Willy saw him as popular and wanted by colleges. This image supported his distorted view of the American Dream in that being liked can make one successful. However, now that Biff has come home a "bum," Willy has a much harder time justifying his idea. When Willy gets upset after Biff comes home, Linda tells Biff that, "when you write you're coming, he's all smiles, and talks about the future, and- he's just wonderful. And then the closer you seem to come, the more shaky he gets, and then, by the time you get here, he's arguing, and he seems angry at you." Biff was always popular, but when he comes home, he is not successful, contrary to what Willy believes. Willy, because of his ego, has trouble dealing with the

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