It has changed over the years. The original American vision was one of the fresh start,
new beginnings, and boundless opportunities. It was a green virgin land, to paraphrase F.
Scott Fitzgerald's characterization at the end in the Great Gatsby, that great cautionary
tale about success and its pursuit within the United States, and held the promise of
self-determination. Nowadays, the American Dream may merely mean keeping your head above
the economic tidewaters.
The past thirty to forty years of middle-class decline has put the notion of the American
Dream to its severest test given that the Great Depression in the 1930s. After World War
II, the American Dream became very particular - house in suburbia, car inside garage, a
spouse and 2.3 kids to go with it all; whereas before it had been just a general sense of
optimism and, even, redemption, by the 1950s and early 1960s the American Dream was about
widespread prosperity and stability.
People could count on things - God, the country, the government, and one's fellow
citizens. In the 21st Century, there is usually a feeling of every single man for himself
and everybody trying to "get over" (that is, take advantage of the system) as
best they can.
Thus will be the historical trajectory of the American Dream: from a newfound Promised
Land from the 1500s through the 1800s to an actualized Paradise 1950s and '60s, this
notion of living by one's personal wits and succeeding by way of one's own efforts has
held tremendous appeal for hundreds of years.
But ever since the 1990s Generations X and Y are the only ones to expect lower living
standards than their parents. Is this the death knell of the American Dream, where
citizens work harder than ever for less than ever competing with immigrants who undercut
their wages?
