The American Dream Wealth, freedom and prosperity. These are words synonymous with the American dream. This idea of a land where you can find your fame and fortune, since its founding in the late 1700’s, its appeal was the availability of low cost farmland. I suppose you could say this was the original American dream in its simplicity, a place where any man could have the chance to make something for himself, and be there at the start of something new, a new state of democracy.

Since then, chinese whispers spread around the world of this new Promised Land for all people downtrodden by their countries. In the 19th century many German immigrants flooded into America to escape the failed revolution in 1848. Charles Bukowski writes in his novel ham on rye in regards to the main protagonist’s grandfather

‘He was an army officer in Germany and had come to America when he heard the streets were paved with gold. They weren’t so he became the head of a construction firm’

I think the point that Bukowski was trying to get across is very clear that many people were drawn to America by the mystique that surrounded it, that they could get a piece of those gilded streets. However, that’s not necessarily how it was for most who made their way to America, there would still be poverty, hardships and challenges to life. So you could say the American dream was still very much a dream for some people that made their way over.

As time moved on in America its population and landscape changed and the original materialistic dream ‘from rags to riches’ wasn’t the only defining quality. A dream to me is something quite personal and unique to each particular person. As the population of America changed the dream must also take on wider meaning. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his ‘Letter from a Birmingham jail’

“We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. . . . when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."

His quest for civil rights was rooted in the American dream or at least his interpretation of it. So instead of it just being a get rich quick scheme the American dream has taken on so much more meaning. It has become hope to a race of people that had been persecuted and grossly mistreated; hope that they may find equality and the rights that every human being deserves.

During the same time that Martin Luther King Jr. Wrote this letter the youth of America were stirring and dreaming their own dream of America, which allowed freedom of speech and experimentation, not forgetting a release from sexual repression. In their own separate way they also dreamt of an America free from oppression, an oppression that that stifled their lust for life and experiences yet unknown to them. In Hunter S. Thompsons fear and loathing in Las Vegas, Raoul duke and his attorney become sidetracked from their original assignment by a search for the American Dream, wit

h "...two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.”

These two well known figures clearly display two very different views of what the American dream is all about, showing that it can be more than a one way highway but a path with many forks with routes as individual as the people that walk them, but it’s with fear and loathing in Las Vegas, a savage journey into the heart of the American dream that we find Hunter S. Thompson criticizing its materialistic origins. Since the 1920’s many authors have found fault with these tendencies that are associated with the American dream. George Carlin famously wrote

"It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

Does the American dream still hold relevance today? A BBC reporter Katty Kay posed the question‘

Is today's American Dream a mythical concept or still a reality?’

Her report showed immigrants are still coming to America in hopes of economic gain, that some degree of disillusionment has spread amongst them, especially in poorer parts of America like Brooklyn, where poverty is king and hardships are plentiful.

It seems to me that the American dream is ingrained within the tapestry of America, so ingrained that it may as well be written into the constitution, it will always entice people in, but whether it will become reality for these searchers of liberty or remain just a dream is uncertain and depends on the opportunities each individual comes across, if any. The American dream is a diverse thought process, something that has changed and will continue to change from person to person and definitely with the times. As long as there is an America there will be an American Dream.

Portraits and videos by Sasha Maslov

Words by Ben Robinson