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The American Dream In Lorraine Hansberry's Desire Under The Elms

984 Words4 Pages

What exactly is the American Dream? It is a tangible concept that is within the hearts of most Americans. It can also differ and change between whom is asked and where that person is at with their life. The idea of the American Dream has certainly changed between its first manifestation during the 1800s and today, but at the same time some of those dreams have stayed the same. The American Dream equals happiness and what makes a person happy has changed throughout time. “In the 1920s, it became the acquisition of material things. That was best exemplified by the novel The Great Gatsby. Its author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, defined the aspirations of the age. At the same time, he warned that a pursuit of happiness driven by greed was not attainable. That's because someone else always had more. This greed led to the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression” (Amadeo, 2017). The Declaration of Independence never told American citizens what the American Dream was. What the Declaration of Independence did do was ensure that everyone has the same opportunity to pursue their personal vision of the American Dream. Within different plays, the concept of the American Dream is manifested through some of the characters. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin …show more content…

He has been led to believe, by his deceased mother, that the farm is rightfully his. His dream is to own that very farm and be able to smell the blooms of his own work. While he attempts to accomplish his dream, greed also takes hold of him as he buys pieces of the farm from his brothers that technically do not belong to them. The grasp of the American Dream tightly holds on to Eben that he stops at nothing in order to take control of the farm. Eben could have simply taken a stash of money that his mother had left hidden and bought his own farm, but he insisted of having his father’s

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