The American Dream Case

1950s America was an age of hope and optimism, these virtues characterised the generation as national pride and dreams of prosperity and success drove the nation’s citizens. Wolff’s memoir exposes the hypocrisy in these values and its detriment to those who desired so desperately to attain the dream.

Wolf depicts the American Dream as an ideal of escape, to attain freedom and success for ordinary people. For Jack and Rosemary it was underpinned by their desire to start again and to make amends for lost time and wrong choices. Fuelled by an ache for freedom, security from ‘a man my mother was afraid of’ the dream for Rosemary was to make a fresh start and for economic prosperity and for Jack the dream was about ‘going to change our luck,’ and the personal transformation he hoped for. Utah then held out the promise to ‘get rich on Uranium.’ Nevertheless, the American Dream did bear significant inconsistencies from the reality of the 1950s, given that what it promises is merely an illusion. Even though the dream was embraced as an opportunity and presented to American citizens as the ideal, for Rosemary and Jack it proved to be an illusion, which was quickly shattered by their experiences in Utah.

The idealistic view of a conventional family, an essential element of the American Dream also proves to be an expectation that could not be reached. From a young age, without a father Jack aches for ‘belonging to a conventional family.’ Thus, Jack aches for a farther figure, but never truly discovers one from Roy, to Dwight. Despite Rosemary’s efforts the attainment of a conventional family appears to be unattainable. This dysfunction was inherent to Jack and Rosemary’s lives and too so many others in 1950’s America.

Wolf presents the struggle associated with attaining the American Dream in the 1950s America. While the car is presented as a symbol of freedom and autonomy in the contemporary world, Jack and Rosemary’s Nash Rambler adds hardship and struggle to their journey, as it stalls, constantly malfunctioning as ‘every couple of hours the Nash Rambler boiled over’. Further the hardship associated with attaining the dream is manifested in both the turbulent weather. On their journey, Rosemary and Jack