ILHS 2000- The Good Life: The American Dream

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Babbitt

The Great Gatsby

Moby Dick

James Truslow Adams, in his book The Epic of America, which was written in 1931, stated that the American dream is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." (p.214-215).

"Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."

                                                      - Mark Twain