The American Dream, as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, is the belief that everyone in the United States of America has the chance to be successful and happy if they work hard enough. This idea is one of the major reason why America is the place most people from all over the world want to travel to in order to pursue the American Dream. The American Beauty is a movie that tells a story of what it takes to pursue the American Dream. In the movie, many sides of the American Dream were depicted by different characters in different ways but with similar experiences involving the cost and challenges of pursuing success. Jane is a young lady in the movie who suffered from a dysfunctional family. The lack of love in her home, which was due to her parents’ drive for success, did not only make her an unhappy girl but also led her into seeking love and attention in the hands of a drug dealer.
Jane’s home is the definition of a dysfunctional home. In the movie, it is very obvious that Jane was not happy with her family as
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Just like many teenagers with wounded souls, the first sign of validation make them jump at it. When Jane noticed Ricky, who abused and sells drugs, was interested in her, she fell in love with him almost immediately. Jane had found someone who told her she was beautiful, and made her feel important by constantly filming her. She spent more time with the guy and soon she started abusing drugs like the boy. Innocent Jane agreed to go with Ricky to New York to start life together, even when her friend Angela tried to talk her out of it. Who knows what Jane’s life would turn into with a drug dealer? This a good example of what could happen to a person from a broken home or someone who has a low self-esteem. If Jane felt loved from her home, she would not have been seeking love desperately from others and she would not have agreed to follow a drug abuser to a faraway city without her parents
We learn that Jane is a young girl who is a victim of emotional and
At the novel's opening, Jane is living with the cruel Mrs. Reed and her horrid three children, Eliza, Georgiana, and John. Mrs. Reed makes her distaste for Jane very evident in all of her actions. She forbids her to play with her (Mrs. Reed's) children (Jane's own cousins) and falsely accuses her of being a "liar" and of possessing a "mean spirit." Mrs. Reed's attitude is subsequently passed on to her children who, in turn, treat Jane as bad, if not worse, than their mother does. As an unjustified consequence of these attitudes, Jane is forced to grow up in a home where she finds no love, even when she tries to be perfect. The only times she comes close to finding the semblance of love is when Bessie (a servant) is kind to ...
While being an undesirable resident at her Aunt Reed's house, Jane goes through instances that lead her to be very outspoken and intolerant for injustice. Jane gets treated like a repulsive cling on to the family and gets beat around by her cousin John. Jane first begins to show her resistance to injustice when John threw a book at Jane's head. Jane had enough of passive acceptance for the way she was being treated. Jane rushed at John, and after that she realized she is not a helpless little girl. However, she also realized that her deliberate nonconformity to the Reed's concept that Jane “ought to beg, and not live here with gentleman's children like us” will lead her to harsh consequences (12). After Jane's outburst towards John, her Aunt Reed locked her in the red room. The red room was the place that her uncle died in and was rarely occupied after. During her confinement, Jane had a nervous breakdown after seeing a “glowing orb” which was supposedly the spirit of her uncle (19). This incident, while she was still confined to the red room, led her to think intently on the injustices that are placed upon by her relatives. She goes on to remember, “all John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference, all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality” (17). These events in he...
Jane has always been very independent from a young age and having a child who is the complete opposite of her drives Jane crazy. Jane constantly compares her younger self to Franny and feels that she was better than Franny. “When she was fourteen, she was a decade older than Franny. Lived on the street for six weeks… Taught her to stand on her own two feet, which Franny wasn’t going to be able to do when she was twenty. Thirty, at this rate”(McHugh 171). Franny to her is just an annoying adolescent wait that doesn’t contribute to their survival at all. Of the course of the story this becomes a bigger and bigger problem to Jane that leads to her final decision.
Comparing the perspective of the American dream in the 1920’s to the American Dream in the 1940’s and present day seems to be a repeating cycle. The American dream is always evolving and changing. The American dream for present day is similar to the dream of the 1920’s. An Ideal of the American life is to conform to what our society has determined is success. Money, materialism and status had replaced the teachings of our founding fathers in the 1920’s. A return to family values and hard work found its way back into American’s lives in the 1940’s. The same pursuit of that indulgent lifestyle that was popular in the roaring twenty’s has returned today for most Americans, many Americans are living on credit and thinking that money and the accumulation of material items can solve all problems. Through film, literature, art and music, an idealized version of what it means to be an American has changed from money, materialism, and status of the 1920s to hard work and family values of the forties.
Both Harry and Jane had to bear the difficulty of being treated in an unjust environment. Harry had the cupboard underneath the stairs for his room, he wore hand-me-down oversized clothes that were outgrown by his cousin, he was often asked to do errands at home, he was constantly been kept from visitors, he was bullied by his cousin, and he suffered neglect and had to endure the insults and rude words that came from his aunt and uncle. Jane had a similar fate as Harry. Having been brought up in a house that treated her as a burden and constantly demoralized her, she had to endure physical and emotional abuse from her aunt and cousins. She was discouraged from socializing with other people including her own cousins and was excluded from family events. Even her three c...
She had lost her love, her family, her fiance, and the place she was living in. She also gained money which lead to her eventual rise in power. However, this only happened because she had lost yet another family member. Jane is an outsider because she was never really accepted into the rich society because she had gained the money and power through inheritance after many years of living. Most others of that time gained the power and riches through birth. Jane was also different than most people for many reasons. This is because she was a working female in a time where not a lot of females worked. She worked as a governess teaching a young french girl all subjects. She also strived to learn in the time where not a lot of women were able to go to real schools. Lastly she was alienated by her own family. Her step-mother, Mrs. Reed, treated her less than a servant just because she was not her child. Jane’s step-brother and step-sisters also treated her quite poorly due to the same reason and also because she was poor. When Jane’s parents died there was no money that she had inherited so, she remained poor throughout her early years of
MacLeod holds that aspirations pertain to the realm of individual preference as to what activities they should apply themselves to, based on their strengths and desires; expectations are a product of said individual analyzing the bounds placed on them by environment in which they live and, based on that, building an image of what they can really engage in based on said bounds. Expectations are tamed, quiet and sometimes despondent reflections of aspirations, as the two rarely coincide. The American dream holds the two are one and the same, but as MacLeod points out in this excerpt, this is woefully untrue for at least the lowest part of the social strata; I would add it 's not possible for many other societal layers, no matter how privileged
"The American Dream" is that dream of a nation in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with options for each according to capacity or accomplishments. It is a dream of social stability in which each man and each woman shall be able to achieve to the fullest distinction of which they are essentially competent, and be distinguish by others for what they are, despite of the incidental conditions of birth or stance. The American Dream is often something that humanity wonders about. What is the American dream? Many people discover success in a range of things. There are many different definitions of the American Dream. However, the American Dream embraces prosperity, personal safety, and personal liberty. The American dream is a continually fluctuating set of ideals, reflecting the ideas of an era.
Nicholas Kristof, writer of "The American Dream Is Leaving America" asserts his belief that our once great nation which produced some of the greatest scholars, and some of the most revolutionary ideas and documents has begun a slow decline into mediocrity where our educations are concerned. According to Kristof, this downward spiral is a result of the growing gap between social classes. Upper class citizens are able to afford better schooling for their children. While lower class citizens have a harder time baring such expenses. Therefore their children are usually unable to gain higher education. Our nations mission for equal opportunity is gone.
Throughout the novel, Jane struggles to balance her passion with reason, finding that she “cannot help experiencing the overflow of feelings from time to time” (Tiainen 32). She ranges between allowing her “passion [to] rage furiously”, and warranting the her “judgement shall still have the last word” (Brontë 233). Helen provides an example of a reason-based lifestyle, while Bertha is the embodiment of uncontrolled passion, both of which Jane rejects “in their extremities” (Tiainen 35), instead finding a “balance between sense and sensibility” (Tiainen 32). Jane becomes cognizant of the fact that a life of untethered passion is as equally unsuitable as a cold, sensationless life, and finds a balance between the two. One of Jane’s most obvious developments is the changing ethics and values she acquires following her departure from Gateshead. Growing up with a wealthy family, Jane “was very miserable” (Brontë 112); however, having no contact with the lower class, her opinion mirrored that of the Reeds. Consequently, she did not wish “to belong to poor people” (Brontë 30), no matter how “kind” (Brontë 30) they may have been to her. Her time living in the scant conditions at Lowood taught Jane “to value friendship and spiritual support over material comfort” (Tiainen 27),
What is the American Dream, and who are the people most likely to pursue its often elusive fulfillment? Indeed, the American Dream has come to represent the attainment of myriad of goals that are specific to each individual. While one person might consider a purchased home with a white picket fence her version of the American Dream, another might regard it as the financial ability to operate his own business. Clearly, there is no cut and dried definition of the American Dream as long as any two people hold a different meaning. What it does universally represent, however, it the opportunity for people to seek out their individual and collective desires under a political umbrella of democracy.
Achieving the American Dream has been the ultimate goal for individuals in America. Unfortunately, not everyone in society has equal opportunity to achieve this goal. According to Messner and Rosenfeld, the American Dream is “a commitment to the goal of material success, to be pursued by everyone in society under conditions of open, individual competition.” Even though, Messner and Rosenfeld agree with some of Merton’s paradigm about how individuals go about achieving society’s goals, they rejected his explanation for the increase in crime rates in the United States. Merton believed the individuals who lack the opportunity to achieve monetary gain turned to illegitimate means, often leading them to get involved in criminal behavior to get to their desired goal.
...d outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders." She is an example of what might have become of Jane if she hadn't been able to control her anger against life. She illustrates all of Jane's passionate personality traits taken out of balance. In the end, she dies trying to gain freedom from the life she needed to escape.
When Jane is shunned by Mr. Brocklehurst in front of the entire Lowood population, Helen is the one person that does not immediately judge Jane. In fact, she makes her feel more comfortable in a place that is filled with punishment and hypocrisy. Though Lowood does not truly feel like home, Helen is able to provide Jane with not only all the compassion she needs as well as support and respect. This is one of the first loves Jane experiences on her journey and it allows her to become more open to the love she finds in her future endeavors.