The American Dream

“Athena is going to college in the United States to fulfill the American dream.” - my parents’ favorite line to say when people asked about where I was going to college. To them, a couple who have never been to college, who have never been out of China, and who believe that gold and money are all over the streets in the United States, the American dream simply means that I am stepping on the land of opportunities. Even though people talk about it all the time, I didn’t know that the “American dream” has another deeper meaning than what it literally means until I read the introduction of the book The American Dream by Jim Cullen. I typed “The American dream” in Google, hoping that I could find some definition and more information on the terminology. After I finished reading Wikipedia, I was confused: What exactly is the American dream? I started to read the introduction, puzzled, but eager to find the answer.

James Truslow Adams states “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man.” I agree on Cullen’s opinion that “better and richer and fuller” has a lot of meaning, and it changes over time, so there isn’t one specific definition. However Cullen does mentions four categories:  the upward mobility, such as economics and social advancement, the quest for equality, home ownership, and personal fulfillment. I can easily relate to the first one. I have to say that one of the reasons my parents sent me to a private college in the United States is that they know with this kind of education, the best education they could find in the world, I will be successful no matter what. Their money is going to be paid off years later when I become a doctor or a scientist. Although the economy has experience some downhill recently, America is still indeed the “land full of gold.” Cullen also made the point that

The term seems like the most lofty as well as the most immediate component of an American identity, a birthright far more meaningful and compelling than terms like “democracy,” “ Constitution,” or even “ the United States.”

We treasure the American dream more than democracy, Constitution, and even the United States because the identity we have is that we do not have an identity. The American dream symbolizes the prosperous variation of different identities.