The American Dream in American Literature

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The American Dream in American Literature
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The American Dream
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The South Jamestown in Virginia, 1617,
Virginia Company in London
A commercial venture
New England Plymouth(1620),
Massachusetts(1630)
Puritans for Religious freedom
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Two Dimensions of American Dream

• For the Puritans
• to build a city on a hill
• 2. For the southerners
• to find the vale(valley) of plenty

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The American Dream
A product of the frontier and the west. It
believes in the goodness of nature and man. It
represents the romantic enlargement of the
possibilities of life. As long as one work hard,
he surely can become successful and fulfill
his wishes.

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• American individualism

( the importance of single man, initiative
independence)

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Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

• First great man of letters
• ---- David Hume

Writer, printer, publisher, scientist, and
diplomat, he was the most famous and respected
private figure of his time. He was the first
great self-made man in America.
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Autobiography Benjamin Franklin embodied the
Enlightenment ideal of humane rationality.
Practical yet idealistic, hard-working and
enormously successful, Franklin recorded his
early life in his famous Autobiography.
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• The most famous section describes his
  scientific
• scheme of self-improvement.
• Franklin lists 13 virtues temperance,
  silence, order,
• resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity,
  justice,
• moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity,
  and
• humility. He elaborates on each with a maxim for
  
• example, the temperance maxim is "Eat not to
  Dullness.
• Drink not to Elevation." A pragmatic scientist,
  Franklin
• put the idea of perfectibility to the test, using
  himself
• as the experimental subject.

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I was dirty from my journey, my pockets
were stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and
I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I
was fatigued with traveling, rowing, and want of
rest I was very hungry and my whole stock of
cash consisted of a Dutch dollar and about a
shilling in copper. The latter I gave the people
of the boat for my passage, who at first refused
it on account of my rowing but I insisted on
their taking it, a man being sometimes more
generous when he has but a little money than
when he has plenty, perhaps thro' fear of being
thought to have but little.
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Then I walked up the street, gazing about
till near the market-house I met a boy with
bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and in
inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to
the baker's he directed me to, in Second Street,
and asked for biscuit, intending such as we had
in Boston but they, it seems, were not made in
Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three penny
loaf, and was told they had none such.
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So, not considering or knowing the difference of
money, and the greater cheapness nor the names
of his bread, I bade him give me threepenny
worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly,
three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the
quantity, but took it, and having no room in my
pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm,
and eating the other.
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Thus I went up Market Street as far as
Fourth Street, passing by the door of Mr. Reed,
my future wife's father, when she, standing at
the door, saw me and thought I made, as I
certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous
appearance.
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Then I turned and went down Chestnut Street
and part of Walnut Street, eating my roll all
the way, and coming round, found myself again at
Market Street wharf, near the boat Icame in, to
which I went for. a draught of the river water,
and being filled with one of my rolls, gave the
other two to a woman and her child that came
down the river in the boat with us, and were
waiting to go farther.
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The Disillusionment of American Dream
Economic reasons commerce (admiration for
ambition, a lust for money power)
Social corruption
Deterioration of moral values
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Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Arthur Miller (1915-2005)
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????????(Scott Fitzgerald)
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????????(Scott Fitzgerald)
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• ???? (The Jazz Age) ????
• ??? ( American Dream) ????
• ?????(The Lost Generation),??????

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• best known for his novels and
• short stories which chronicle
• the excesses of America's
• Jazz Age during the 1920s.

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??? (American Dream) ????
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Dream)???????????? ???????????????????,??? ?????
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????(Disillusionment)
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The Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" defines a sense of
moral loss or aimlessness apparent in literary
figures during the 1920s. World War I seemed to
have destroyed the idea that if you acted
virtuously, good things would happen. Many good,
young men went to war and died, or returned home
either physically or mentally wounded (for most,
both), and their faith in the moral guideposts
that had earlier given them hope, were no longer
valid...they were "Lost."
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"Here was a new generation . . . dedicated
more than the last to the fear of poverty and
the worship of success grown up to find all
Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man
shaken. . . . (from F. Scott Fitzgerald,
This Side of Paradise, 1920). ????????,???????,?
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A Brief Life of Fitzgerald

• 1.His Princeton(The dream to be a success)
• 2.His Marriage(The couple of celebrity)
• 3.His works
• (His eternal theme success and failure,
• illusion and
  disillusion,
• dream and nightmare,
• beauty and
  wealth)

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