The Dream. . . .\u2018Do I have to change my name? Will it get me far? Should I lose some weight? Am I gonna be a star? I\u2019m just living out the American dream and I realized that nothing is what it seems. . .\u2019 These lyrics are taken from Madonna\u2019s recent song \u2018American Life\u2019 highlight our society\u2019 pre-occupation with achieving the \u2018American dream.\u2019 The car, the house, the family, the job and the respect of friends all constitute our life\u2019s aspirations, what we value and most of all what we fear that we not achieve. In my project I have explored the following objectives and idea of the American dream, highlighting it through Arthur Miller\u2019s play Death of a Salesman, and Louis Begley\u2019s novel About Schmidt and using the lyrics from Madonna\u2019s song American Life. OBJECTIVES: ~ What constitutes the American Dream and how, or if, it has altered over time. ~The relation of its concept to the philosophies of Sartre, such as fear, freedom, emotions and existence ~How these concepts are related to the main character\u2019s in Death of a Salesman and About Schmidt ~Whether we have a choice in our quest to achieve it or whether we have become \u2018trapped\u2019 by its rules. ~To what extent do we have any freedom and how this aspiration affects our existence ~Is the American Dream really the most satisfactory state to be in? The humiliation that Willy experiences as a result of not quite achieving this dream drives him to take his own life. With arguments over the importance of attaining the American dream aside, this single incident demonstrates the power and influence of it over today\u2019s society. The question is, are we trapped, is there really \u2018nowhere to run\u2019 or is it up to us to change our values?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marguerite Heaton, 2003, Stage 3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,22,123],"tags":[28,97,351],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-396","category-abstracts","category-stage-3-abstracts","tag-identity","tag-music","tag-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}