Justin Bieber's Death Of The American Dream

The butler did it! Or is that too cliché? Or is it even correct for that matter? Anyhow, the point is that the American Dream is dead, or an illusion, which ever makes you sleep better at night. Who did it, you ask? Who could have possibly murdered the American Dream in cold blood? The answer is simple. We did. The Americans killed the American Dream. It is almost poetic or, at least, painfully ironic. With our own blind narcissism, we managed to snuff out the very thing that gave us pride. It was the janitors and the congressmen! Vice Chairman J. P. Moneybags and Mrs. Suburban Housewife were in on it too! Also, Little Timmy and Kim Kardashian are somehow to blame! Bring the pitchforks and the torches, because we have all committed

That is what the American Dream was and should be; however, it is not what it represents today. Today, the Dream is believed to many to be one’s natural born right. After all, if Justin Bieber can make it, you can too. It is thought that as an American citizen, one should easily be able to triumph by just the luck portion of Alger’s statement and completely omitting the vital element of hard work. A fantastic illustration of this belief is Arthur Miller’s literary classic Death of a Salesman. In the drama, the character of Willy Loman struggles with his concept of the American Dream and the way the world actually is around him. Willy Loman is so obsessed with his perception of America that he pushed it onto his children. He believed that America was a land of easy opportunity and success, a principle that was passed on to his sons. Biff, one of his sons, tried to make it in the real working world, but failed since reality was not how his father described it. Biff describes how hard real work is and how it is so hard to get ahead in the

One major issue today is that it has become much harder for the middle class, let alone the lower class, to get ahead financially. There are many great differences in both then and now in addition to the differences between the classes that show that the concept of a much less attainable American Dream. A major example is, as Richard Eskow phrases it, that “there are increasingly two classes of Americans: Those who are taking on additional debt, and the rich.” Other signs that the American Dream has kicked the bucket are the devastating amount of student debt for many Americans and the uncertain future for retiring citizens (Eskow). The inanimate American Dream is no more the fault of the misguided as it is of the ones who robbed them of