Essay about American Dream

The idea of the “American Dream” was a popularized idea in the 1930s by James Truslow Adams, who coined the term in the midst of the Great Depression. Initially, the idea meant something different, but over time the American dream became associated with economic success through hard work. 

The desire to be successful is something that many humans desire, and the dream suggests to Americans that if they get a job or get through their education, they can pave their way to live a comfortable life. All of this rests on the idea that if you try hard enough, there will be a way to achieve success.

One case of this is the story of Carlos, told by Malcolm Gladwell in his podcast. The speaker introduces Carlos as “a smart kid. He’s gotten a scholarship to a really good private school. He’s excelling.” By introducing the story this way, Gladwell shows a real world example of a person who embodies the American Dream; Carlos worked hard to accomplish a goal of his which paid off. While this idea seemed to work well for Carlos, the podcast dives deeper into the story of success to see where the dream can fall short.

Further down the podcast, the story revolves around the environment in which Carlos grew up in, a small town in California called Lennox, which Gladwell compares the school to a concentration camp. “You go to a place like Lennox and you can’t help feeling hopeless,” Gladwell says, which suggests that the environment a person grows up in can impact their ability to reach their own level of success. Although Carlos showed that it wasn’t as hopeless as it seems, the story isn’t just about Carlos anymore. It’s about the environment around him, his community and the thousands of students that weren’t as fortunate as he is.

Consequently, the podcast introduces a man named Eric Eisner, a “high-powered guy with lots of connections”. Eric allows Carlos to attend a private school because he found him in Lennox and used his connections to enroll him into a better school. This part of the story is crucial because it shows that without Eric, Carlos would not have escaped the environment he was a part of and gotten as far as he could’ve by himself. 

Furthermore, this suggests the idea that hard work and talent alone does not guarantee success. For Carlos, who already excelled in school at Lennox, he could not find better opportunities alone that would enable his growth in school. Even more, it seems that for other students, even gifted ones like Carlos, they do not always have the privilege of working with Eric. These people are unable to work their way upward to reach their success because of the system that often leaves them ignored, leaving them hopeful that an “Eric” will come uplift them. 

These are numerous stories of Americans that show that the American Dream by itself is not enough to meet the standards of success.