American Dream

The American Dream is a central symbol of the American experience, based on the premise that, through individual agency, success and happiness are realistically attainable goals for anyone regardless of class, gender, race, or religion. The dream has proven so powerful an influence on American life and culture that it is sometimes referred to as part of a civil religion, in which the widespread association of success with the accumulation of material wealth has increasingly turned consumer products into status symbols through which consumers seek to position themselves socially.

Credit for coining the term is usually given to American historian James Truslow Adams, who used it in his one-volume interpretive history of the nation, The Epic of America, published in 1931. To Adams, the dream signified a general potential for a life “better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement” (404). It was evocative of new beginnings and the reinvention of self so inextricably tied to American history and culture. The Puritans' search for freedom from religious persecution, the poor immigrant's pursuit of economic opportunity and abundant land, or the desire of early nationalists to create a republic away from the rigid social and political structures of Europe can all be seen as early versions of the dream.

Inherently relativistic, the American Dream is constantly renegotiated and invested with new meanings. Historically, the inclusive definition of [Page 41]that better, richer, and happier life has simultaneously made for a sense of national unity by setting a goal for which everyone ideally can strive, while allowing for several contradictory and even conflicting interpretations of that goal. For example, nineteenth-century settlers rushing into the trans-Mississippi West to dig for gold or to secure land for themselves and their families caused an often violent disruption of Native American lives and customs. Similarly, the exploitation of labor in early textile mills and other industries saw the desires of owners and workers collide, and the basic premise of the dream has continually been countered and problematized by the historic exclusion of minorities.

In spite of its capaciousness, however, the dominant interpretation of the dream has been in terms of economic security and home ownership. Firmly rooted in the nation's political culture through the Declaration of Independence, a common manifestation of the dream was the story of the self-made man who rises from rags to riches. Benjamin Franklin, the archetypal self-made American, popularized that narrative when he extolled the virtues of industry and courage as the answers to his own success. A century later, that theme was endlessly reiterated in Horatio Alger's many books about poor boys who became wealthy through hard work and honesty. Although formulaic in plot and structure, Alger's stories became remarkably popular and, by the end of the century, had found their way into many homes and libraries.

By the 1890s, shorter work weeks, higher wages, and an increase in white-collar jobs combined with technological advancements and improvements in production and transportation helped make possible a culture of spending that political economist Thorstein Veblen characterized as one of conspicuous consumption. As Americans ventured out into the new electrically illuminated city streets, they had more money to spend than ever before and more products to spend it on. So powerful had the link between affluence and success become that the immigrant letters, which half a century earlier had tended to focus on the availability of inexpensive land, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revolved around themes such as the comparatively high wages of the American factory worker and the refinements of modern society. Even though socially conscious exposés and muckraking journalist efforts such as Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives (1890) and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) did much to question the American Dream, to many impoverished immigrants, America remained a land of social opportunity.

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