New Literatures in English by Ram Sharma

Author:Ram Sharma [Sharma, Ram]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aadi Publications

16

The Great American Dream and the Problem of Loss in the Plays of Albee, Miller and Williams

Dr. Poonam Rani Gupta

Every year thousands of people from all over the world migrate to the United States of America. For most people escaping war, poverty, ecological destruction and other dangers, the United States constitute a safe harbour where their hopes of a better life come true. Ever since the settling of what is today the US, people came to live in the New World and to lead a better life than in their countries of origin. The hopes connected with this better and happier live are all joined in the concept of the ‘American Dream’, which became one of most powerful creation myths of the country.

Of course, such an important concept deeply influences American culture. Continuously the ideas of the American Dream can be found in television, movies, literature, and arts, for instance, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby or Gabriele Muccino’s film The Pursuit of Happiness. 20th century American dramas employ the American Dream and its shattering (problem of loss) as the central theme, for example, Tennessee Williams’ Glass Menagerie, Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), A View from the Bridge, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959) and Edward Albee successive plays The Sandbox (1959) and The American Dream (1960). But before discussing the problem of loss in context of the shattering of the American dream we should throw a glance on what is American Dream.

The term American Dream is a universally known concept and people would name happiness, better life, or even beauty, youth and affluence as its constituents. But surprisingly there is no consensus in terms of a fixed definition what the American Dream is about. Robert A. Rosenbaum’s The Penguin Encyclopaedia of American History describes the American Dream as:

“a nebulous term, much abused by politicians, that seems to have evolved from the early immigrants, and pioneers hopes for lives of political and religious and personal independence in the new world to a largely materialistic expectation of upward social mobility and ever increasing affluence” (Rosenbaum, 2003: 12).

Interestingly, the term ‘American Dream’ was not coined until the twentieth century although the idea behind it was already apparent when the Mayflower landed in the new world in 1620. American historian James Truslow Adams is nowadays credited with having coined the term ‘American Dream’ when he was writing a history of the United States of America. (Cullen, 3) James Truslow Adams used the term, i.e., ‘The American Dream’ for the first time in his extremely popular book The Epic of America (1931), and entered the language almost immediately—especially in political rhetoric. Nowadays it is likely to be used in acceptance speeches, inaugural speeches; but it also appears frequently in book titles. Anthony Brandt has suggested that the phrase represents an American ideal of a happy and successful life to which all may aspire; coined during the Depression, the idea “represented a reaffirmation of traditional American hopes” (Brandt).

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