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The American Dream

The American Dream refers to the freedom that allows all citizens and all residents of the United States to pursue their goals in life through hard work and free choice. The American Dream often refers to the opportunity for immigrants to achieve greater material prosperity than was possible in their countries of origin. America has been viewed as a land in which one's prospects in life are defined by one's talents and energy rather than by one's family wealth or political connections.
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" to encompass all that is available in America. According to the Dream, this includes the opportunity for one's children to grow up and receive an education and its consequent career opportunities. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the restrictions of class, caste, religion, race, or ethnic group.

For many immigrants, the Statue of Liberty
was their first view of the United States,
signifying freedom and personal liberty.
The statue is the icon of the American Dream.

Origin

Historian and writer James Truslow Adams coined the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book Epic of America:

“ 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 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 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 position. ” He also wrote:

“ The American Dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a 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. ”

Latter 20th and 21st centuries

In recent years, the concept of the American Dream as a national ideal has been studied by various organizations. The conclusions of these studies indicate that during the 1990's to the 2000s, a period of remarkable wealth for the U.S., an increasing number of people confess having lost faith in the American Dream.
Barack Obama used the theme of the American Dream in many aspects of his campaign. He said:

"What is that promise? It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect. It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.... That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I ** my brother's keeper; I ** my sister's keeper. That's the promise we need to keep."

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.
Others have been written to critique or ridicule the concept, such as John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby about the extreme selfishness of adultery, bootlegging and social climbing sometimes associated with the American Dream, as did Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, which satirized 20th-century materialism and conformity. Many films explore the topic of the American Dream. One such film is 1969's Easy Rider, in which characters make a pilgrimage in search of "the true America."

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