American Dream?

American Dream?

The American dream! What is the American dream? Who lives and considers their life the American dream? Does Bartleby live the American dream? What makes this story have anything to do with the American dream? Well in the next few pages I am going to try to relate my idea of the American dream to this story.

The American dream to me is quite simple, happiness living in America. To strive for happiness you need some other tools, just face it happiness isn’t everything. Money is a big tool to happiness. “Anybody that tells you that money is the root of all evil, doesn’t fucking have any. They say money cannot

buy you happiness look at the fucking smile on my face, ear to ear baby.”-Boiler Room. The American dream is in one mans eyes to have a nice house, nice car, fun toys, a great family, and dignity. That is the ideal American dream. But that nice house, nice car, and fun toys aren’t going to just appear on a piece of land for you with out money. Working hard for you money, who really wants to work hard for a living? Everyone is out doing what ever they can to make good money with less work. Ever receive those emails or phones that guarantee you to make millions of dollars from home, and have all the free time you want? Well that is the dream of the American dream. The American dream to me is being able to maintain a nice home, with a great family, with more free time on my hands that time spent at an office. With a nice chunk of change in my pocket. But hey that’s why they call it the “American Dream” it’s only a dream and only the lucky ones will live such a dream. But not so much are they lucky, but smart and figured something out before everyone else figured it out.

Ill do a quick sum up of Bartleby the Scrivener. It’s about a lawyer who helps out wealthy people mortgages, titles deeds, and of the such. He has two scriveners, Nippers, and Turkey, these are just their nicknames. He hires a man named Bartleby, who just replied to add that was put out. Then Bartleby is asked to proofread a document, and replies with “I’d prefer not to” Its of course irritates him and the rest of the people in the office. Then after that it seems that Bartleby starts to take on less and less responsibility in the office. Then lawyer visits the office on a weekend day, and finds that Bartleby has been living there all this time, because Bartleby is a very lonely man. At night and on Sundays that Wall Street is just like a ghost town, no one is trading no one is spending. Bartleby gets to the point where he is no longer performing any duties around the office; it just went from some to none. The lawyer cannot get Bartleby to do anything or leave. Bartleby has some sort of strange control over his boss. So in attempt of getting rid of Bartleby he moves his office to a new location. But soon after the move, the new owners of the building come to the lawyer for help. They cannot get Bartleby out of the office. The lawyer comes to reason with Bartleby, and Bartleby refuses to see him, in fear of being bothered by anti-Bartleby folks. Then Bartleby gets thrown in jail. The lawyer’s bribes the turnkey to make sure that Bartleby is well fed. Bartleby dies because he would rather not eat. Later the lawyer finds out that the reason for Bartleby’s dark gloom was that he was a dead letter writer.

The lawyer