THE DREAM

The following was submitted as a paper written for the course The American Experience at The University of Texas at Austin in Spring 1974. The course consisted of 3 semester hours of English, 3 hours of American History, and 3 hours of government. I would make a number of editorial changes if writing the paper today. It was written as a term paper requiring a certain expectation regarding length, so there are a lot of words used as padding. Also, I would be more gender inclusive and not focus entirely on reference to equality of men if writing the paper for the first time today. That said, I would not change the meaning or substance of the paper's contents.


The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald provides an excellent framework in which to view the primary emphasis of this course, that emphasis being a recognition of the difference between rhetoric and reality in The American Experience. That rhetoric has taken as its focal point a concept called The American Dream, which basically consists of the idea that, in this country, any man can attain "success," so long as he is willing to work hard in pursuit of his goal. Promises of equal economic opportunity for all men, equal educational opportunity, equal justice under the law, are all implied by the rhetorical content of the dream. No man would be faced with any more social obstacles than any other man in the striving to climb to the top of the ladder of success.

Jay Gatsby, however, by becoming the literal fulfillment of the rhetorical promise, shows us the end result of the reality of that dream. And in this revelation, he confronts us with the notion that the dream itself is flawed. For Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan embodies the American dream, and his life becomes a quest to obtain her. But what Gatsby seeks is an idealistic remembrance of his youth, a girl who is the personification of purity, and that girl, that Daisy Buchanan, no longer exists. One of the most difficult things for Gatsby to comprehend is that Daisy has actually borne a child, providing physical proof of her corruption. Gatsby's dream has become no more than a product of his own imagination, but it is in the pursuit of that dream that he finds meaning in his life. Reality is unimportant; the dream is all that matters. And Gatsby is determined to stop at nothing in order to finally be able to reach out and grasp that dream and claim it as his own. Even though illegal means be used, even though people be destroyed, the overwhelming purity of the dream itself is seen as providing sufficient justification for any evils done in its name.

Thus, Fitzgerald leaves us with the idea that the concept of the American dream is an anachronism, and always was an empty promise. But his is not a hopeless view, for he does see in Gatsby a man who was able to create meaning in his life, even though that meaning was, admittedly, in terms of illusion. Fitzgerald sees that illusion as being more substantive than the aimless, meaningless reality of the other characters who people the novel. In speaking of Gatsby's belief in the "orgiastic future" and the "green light," Fitzgerald seems to be saying that the hope of man lies in an existential search for meaning, and the evolution of a world which reflects the experiences of that search.

A more pessimistic view is taken by Erich Maria Remarque in All Quiet on the Western Front. Although the setting for this novel is German, not American, the message contained in the novel is universal in scope. Paul Baumer, the hero of the novel, is a young German boy who confronts the reality of death in war, and thus sees the cultured world he had been offered by Kantorek the schoolmaster blown to bits. Faced with this reality, he is forced to rethink his view of the world, and in this process he becomes aware of the superficial level on which people live, and of the artificialities which constitute their lives. A major lament of the novel is that men are able to communicate with one another only through an elaborate structure of societal rules, which define relationships and compel obedience. Some men are labeled enemies, and some men friends, and one must react accordingly. Men have created a machine to aid them with the problems they must face, but the machine has become the master, and men merely the extensions which carry out the dictates of the machine. The world of Kantorek is carefully constructed of things like art, literature, and music, which claim to humanize people, but which actually deny humanity by making it necessary for individuals to relate to one another in terms of these artificial creations, rather than at the level of experiential reality.

While the optimism offered us by Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby is qualified at best, Remarque offers us no hope at all. For after Paul Baumer has seen beneath rhetoric to reality, and had the opportunity to come to terms with his new-found knowledge, he chooses death. That is, one would hope, not the only rational alternative available to those who see the hypocrisy and artificiality in present-day society and would like to take some constructive action to alleviate the problems created by that kind of a world.

Howard Zinn, in the final chapter of his book Postwar America: 1945-1971, cites examples and pays tribute to those who have sought to formulate new values for modern American society, values which place above all else the dignity of man. It is in these people and in others like them that Zinn sees hope for the future of America. People like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Freedom Riders, civil rights workers in the South, and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, yet give us hope. So long as there are people who refuse to exchange humanity for a place in society, we may look to a future filled with promise, rather than despair. Zinn says that the nature of our political system demands "a long revolutionary process of struggle and example" for change to occur. He concludes his book:

The process would have to be long enough, intense enough, to
change the thinking of people, to act out, as far as possible, the
future society. To work for the great ends of the Declaration
of Independence, for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
did not mean looking for some future day of fruition. It meant
beginning immediately to make those ends real. (1)

And his conclusion must be our beginning, if we would make good the implied promise of the American dream, thus visibly affirming our faith in the ultimate dignity of man.

Jules Feiffer provides an appropriate conclusion for this paper, in a cartoon strip with a copyright date of December 23, 1973, and which was printed in The Daily Texan on an unknown date in January 1974. It reads as follows:

Dear Santa,
My father said that in olden times any boy, if he worked
hard and was a good and honest person, could be anything
he wanted to be . . . even President. And my father said
that if you were President it was like an honor and it didn't
mean you were a crook and had to be ashamed. And that
you could do good things and people even believed in you
because people didn't think Presidents were liars in olden
times. Because, my father said, people in olden times
believed in a future for this country and they called it "The
American Dream." Santa, don't give me presents this year.
Give me that dream.

(1) Howard Zinn, Postwar America: 1945-1971 (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1973), p.244.