The autobiography is one of the first depictions of the american dream

1.2 The theme of the "American dream" in the literature of the United States of the twentieth century

The theme of the “American dream”, so characteristic of US literature, has changed significantly, which was clearly voiced in the literature of the 19th century and was further developed in the literature of the 20th century. Now the optimistic faith in America's prosperity and the happiness that comes from wealth is being challenged.

The relationship between the concepts of "American dream" and "American tragedy" was outlined in Russian American studies by A.M. Zverev. In the section “American Tragedy” and “American Dream” in the book “US Literature of the 20th Century. The experience of typological research" he explored the artistic interpretation of these phenomena by American writers from the beginning of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. A.M. Zverev wrote: “... the “American tragedy”, no matter how typical in essence it may be for any bourgeois society, should be studied as a phenomenon that has a peculiarity characteristic of America, as a phenomenon inextricably linked with the “American dream”, and in to a large extent and generated by those ideals, collisions and contradictions that open up behind this concept. "This has not lost its relevance today.
As Zh.G. Konovalov, “the American dream” is one of the most important components of the mentality, culture, history, social and political life of the United States; the myth, which is deeply rooted in the mass consciousness, predetermined the perception of the world by Americans. The American Dream played a crucial role in the formation of the American state and nation, had a decisive influence on the formation of the American national character, and determined the relationship of the United States with the outside world .
The original version of the American Dream was widely replicated in numerous cheap novels by Horatio Alger, one of the most popular prophets of the success gospel. The popularity of Alger's novels dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the class contradictions of American capitalism had not yet received explicit antagonistic expression and the myth of a society of "equal opportunities" still retained the illusion of reality.
However, already in the era of economic "prosperity" for many American artists, the vices of capitalist civilization became obvious.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald reflected the fate of the "American dream" in a peculiar way. In his novels, Fitzgerald vividly and vividly captured the spirit of the 1920s, a decade that he himself defined as the "Jazz Age". For America, the 1920s were a boom period, an era of temporary economic stabilization. During these years, official propaganda widely advertised the ideas of "prosperity", unlimited accumulation and consumerism. "America's business is business," said then-President Coolidge.
This atmosphere of the period of the 1920s is beautifully conveyed in one of Fitzgerald's best novels, The Great Gatsby (1925). There is no need to retell the content of this widely known novel. Let us recall only the lyrical digression at the end of the book, where the author looks at America through the eyes of the first Dutch settlers: “And as the moon rose higher, erasing the outlines of unnecessary buildings, I saw the ancient island that once arose before the gaze of Dutch sailors, the untouched green bosom of the world . The rustle of its trees, those that then disappeared, giving way to Gatsby's house, was once the music of the last and greatest human dream; it must have been for one short moment that man held his breath in front of a new continent, involuntarily succumbing to the beauty of a spectacle that he did not understand and did not seek, because history for the last time brought him face to face with something commensurate with his capacity for admiration. .
This image of the “American dream”, which arose before the hero of the novel in the moonlight, was seen by the millionaire Gatsby, who believed in the all-powerful American idea of success ...
“It probably seemed to him that now, when his dream is so close, it is worth stretching out his hand - and he will catch it. He did not know that she was forever left behind, somewhere in the dark distances beyond this city, where the boundless lands of America stretched under the night sky.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the light of incredible future happiness, which is pushed back every year. Let it slip away today, it doesn't matter - tomorrow we will run even faster, we will stretch our hands even further ... And one fine morning ... "
The Soviet literary critic A. N. Gorbunov noted the commonality of the novels The Great Gatsby and The American Tragedy by T. Dreiser, the mental and emotional commonality of their characters, the tragic commonality of their destinies. “For the first time, in The Great Gatsby, the unique originality of his talent was fully revealed, Fitzgerald created his original version of the“ American tragedy ”, expressing many thoughts about modern America no less profound than those of Dreiser.”
To this fair assessment, we can only add that the ideological commonality of Fitzgerald and Dreiser, despite the absolute difference in their artistic methods and style, is explained by the similarity of their attitude to the "American dream".
In one of his letters from this time, Fitzgerald wrote: “America's greatest hope is that something must happen here, but you soon get tired of guessing, because nothing happens to Americans except that they grow old, and to the American nothing happens in art either, because America is the story of the moon that never rose.” The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, the set of ideals (democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality) in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, as well as an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers. The term "American Dream" was coined by James Truslow Adams in 1931, saying that "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.
The American Dream is rooted in the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that "all men are created equal" with the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Also, the U.S. Constitution promotes similar freedom, in the Preamble: to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity".
Substantial empirical evidence indicates that upward economic mobility has declined and income inequality has risen in the United States in recent decades.
The meaning of the "American Dream" has changed over the course of history, and includes both personal components (such as home ownership and upward mobility) and a global vision. Historically the Dream originated in the mystique regarding frontier life. As John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, the colonial Governor of Virginia, noted in 1774, the Americans "for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled". He added that, "if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west".
In the 19th century, many well-educated Germans fled the failed 1848 revolution. They welcomed the political freedoms in the New World, and the lack of a hierarchical or aristocratic society that determined the ceiling for individual aspirations. One of them explained:
The German emigrant comes into a country free from the despotism, privileged orders and monopolies, intolerable taxes, and constraints in matters of belief and conscience. Everyone can travel and settle wherever he pleases. No passport is demanded, no police mingles in his affairs or hinders his movements ... Fidelity and merit are the only sources of honor here. The rich stand on the same footing as the poor; the scholar is not a mug above the most humble mechanics; no German ought to be ashamed to pursue any occupation ... [In America] wealth and possession of real estate confer not the least political right on its owner above what the poorest citizen has. Nor are there nobility, privileged orders, or standing armies to weaken the physical and moral power of the people, nor are there swarms of public functionaries to devour in idleness credit for. Above all, there are no princes and corrupt courts representing the so-called divine 'right of birth.' In such a country the talents, energy and perseverance of a person ... have far greater opportunity to display than in monarchies.
The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought in a hundred thousand men looking for their fortune overnight—and a few did find it. Thus was born the California Dream of instant success. Historian H. W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread across the nation:
The old American Dream ... was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard"... of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream ... became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutter's Mill."
Historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 advanced the frontier thesis, under which American democracy and the American Dream were formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed results; especially that American democracy was the primary result, along with egalitarianism, a lack of interest in high culture, and violence. "American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier," said Turner. In the thesis, the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner elaborated on the theme in his advanced history lectures and in a series of essays published over the next 25 years, published along with his initial paper as The Frontier in American History. Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.
Just after the beginning of the twentieth century, one widely accepted literary vision of the American dream involved life in a small, tightly knit community where residents were free from secrets and ill will. This idealized vision of a perfect American town, far removed from the tumult of the rest of the world, became a symbol for how the United States viewed itself in the larger community of the world. The reality of American small-town life may not have matched this vision very closely, but it was not until just prior to World War I that American writers began to explore this discrepancy in a meaningful way. Edgar Lee Masters, in his poetry collection Spoon River Anthology (1915), employs an ingenious technique for stripping away the rigid customs and traditions of American small-town life: Each poem is narrated from beyond the grave by a resident of the local Spoon River cemetery. These narrators are free to speak the truth about their own dreams and habits, and to expose the ways in which their seemingly idyllic town falls short of the idealized American dream. In "Doc Hill," the town caregiver admits he worked long hours because "My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs." In "Margaret Fuller Slack," the mother of eight recalls that, though she wanted to be a writer, her choices were "celibacy, matrimony or unchastity," and concludes, "Sex is the curse of life!" In "Abel Melveny," an apparently wealthy man laments the things he bought but never needed or used and sees himself "as a good machine / That Life had never used." Even as he exposes the dark side of Spoon River, however, Masters affirms the intimate nature of the community by showing connections between many of the deceased characters. With the advent of World War I, the notion of America as a tightly knit community isolated from the rest of the world came to an abrupt end.