Dreaming The American Dream

       Let's try to picture four hundred years ago we finally set our feet on the vast American plain after a long journey from the old dark world. We felt like we were just reborn with our new lives, fresh air, and endless land in this new world. "Freedom", "liberal", "better" are preferred to describe this new world. We were free from religious control and free from fear. We made our effort to build our new lives and dreams.
       
        The American Dream: A Biography and Rethinking the American Dream both quotes The Epic of America, by James Truslow Adams. An original definition of the American dream in Adams' words, "he called that American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank." Here, Adams emphasized the equal opportunities to pursue happier life for all class one comes from. In The American Dream: A Biography, Jon Meacham constructs his thesis from a history perspective. He argues that "to recover the Dream requires knowing where it came from, how it lasted so long and why it matters so much." While our economy have gone up and down countless times and whatever role the government have played throughout the history, our lives is always getting better. When it comes down to how to recover the dream, we should rely on ourselves. We are the ones who make our American dream come true.

         However, in Rethinking the American Dream, David Kamp tries to present what is the right interpretation of American dream. As time goes by, the meaning of American dream keeps getting shifted and recalibrated. From Adams' interpretation to conflating extreme success, we keep rising our expectation on the American Dream so that it seems harder and harder to achieve. After all, he concludes that "the American Dream should be embraced as the unique sense of possibility that this country gives its citizens--the decent chance, as Moss Hart would say, to scale the walls and achieve what you wish.