American Dream Today the Term Essay

This is a lesson that many today need to learn.

This view of the American Dream can still be seen today, however, even if it requires reading between the lines. In Bruce Handy and Glynis Sweeney's graphic essay "The American Dream, Supersized," the author is struck by his daughter's field trip in a limousine to the former tenements that were the home of many immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The view of the American Dream that the authors presuppose is represented by this scene is the ability to achieve luxury without really thinking about the struggle that this type of wealth entails. Yet the facetious comments that the authors "imagine" in the mouths of immigrant parents, such as "God willing, my children will go to medical school and then become rich by injecting women's faces with poison to make them look younger" and "Would that my great-grandson grows up to become a professional poker player" belie the truth about the modern concept of the American Dream.The phrase cannot help but call up visions of the past, and of the desire to provide a better life for the next and future generations. This is what my concept of the American Dream is -- to be able to provide a better life for me and those that will come after me by working hard.

I do not think that the American Dream could ever be achieved by everyone in this country. Many people do have the conception of the American Dream that the authors of the Time piece at first imagine; they are not willing to work as hard as is truly necessary to achieve the success and security they desire. The children that have been provided for by their parents success might even be at a disadvantage, if they have not been taught the proper skills and attitudes to maintain it. The American Dream is one of responsibility, and this is the only way to sustain it......