The American Dream Chronicles

In Search of the American Dream

Introduction

“Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.”  This may very well be the key to finding the American Dream.  However, the west is all grown up and the country is mostly developed.  Despite this, I must go west.  Maybe there is something to be found on the range where the Indians and cowboys once roamed.  I do not really expect to find anything, it is the journey that draws me.  It is the experience that will teach me and it is the memories that will remain with me to remind me what America is, if nothing else.

On second thought, it has to be out there, if only as a simple desert gas station, built, owned, and operated by the same family since its origin.  That is, in fact, the American Dream in its purest essence.  As defined by the founding fathers, the American Dream is right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Happiness has come to mean attaining wealth through hard work.  But it is also more than this: it is the promise of a social order in which any citizen is able to attain all they are capable of, limited only by their own talent and desire.

It must be asked whether the American Dream is truly a single ideal to be capitalized or whether it changes from person to person, thus an american dream.  This is a possibility, but I am led to believe that there is one true American Dream that all citizens in this country long to discover, know, and retain.

This trip is to be, in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, a “physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country.”  If the trip is to provide no direct, physical representation of the American Dream, the trip itself must represent some ideal of life or opportunity in America to be worthwhile.

I consider this the search for the American Dream an essential experience as an American college student.  I need to know what the rest of America looks, smells, and acts like in order to better understand our country.

-Matt Steinberg