The Souring of the Great American Dream

19 February

The Souring of the American Dream
At the risk of sounding clichéd and mundane, the American Dream as I understand is aptly summed up in the following lines published in the Daily News.
An immigrant from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, Sapir arrived in America in 1973 and started as a taxicab driver in New York City. Saving up to buy an electronics store, he catered primarily to Russian clientele. Eventually he made contacts with the Soviet contingent to the United Nations in New York, and traded electronics for oil contracts, which he then sold to American companies. Investing the profits in Manhattan real estate, he became a billionaire by 2002, less than thirty years after arriving penniless in America. Like many rags to riches stories, his is a unique one that would be hard to replicate. Yet today Sapir is becoming known as America's "billionaire cabbie” (Adam Nichols).

The above lines may well be one extreme of the success canvas. But I do know of some journalist friends who have left Indian shores for the US with a few greenbacks in their pockets and a sack full of dreams in their haversacks, and have gone on to become small-town celebrities. I say small-town because they have indeed achieved stardom within the confines of their hometowns somewhere in the backwaters of India.

They have not courted transnational success nor have they made waves in their profession but are fat and successful albeit without any distinct identity in their chosen field. Well, maybe they have no regrets in life, but then looking back at their successful lives one may well ask: Does not the lonesome US immigrant get bowled over by material success and in the end fails to live up to his own dream? This is one niggling question that has become the standard-bearer for the launch of many a literary work. And, much as I would like to dismiss this as a figment of my sordid imagination -- or that of a man who has not stepped out of the borders of his own country and is now railing about sour grapes -– it is a question that continues to haunt me.


Arthur Miller’s finely etched play; “Death of a Salesman” was the first to address this problem of plenty amidst nothingness. To put it simply, over the years, this question has been addressed by litterateurs and purveyors of popular culture.
If this were not reason enough, I cannot help recall the plight of one of my nephews who is a qualified software engineer from a prestigious Indian university. Today, he is the Vice President of a leading car manufacturing company in Detroit. Despite getting a princely pay packet he is depressed, single and yearns to return home.
The following passage, which forms an introduction to Arthur Miller’s famous play, buttresses my point.

On its New York premiere in 1949, Death of a Salesman was hailed as the first great play to lay bare the emptiness of America's relentless drive for material success. The extraordinary success of the play throughout the world over a period of nearly fifty years, however, highlights what is perhaps its greatest strength. (Christopher Bigsby)
However, much as I would like to yield to the line of argument spelled out in the above passage, I would still be tempted to state that whatever the state of the dream, a dream remains a dream -- and can’t be translated into reality. Yes, in the realms of Hindu philosophy, rebirth and destiny are all a result of one’s karma or past actions and I cannot apply it in the case of America. For, Hindu philosophy was not born in America but only found its echo there -– in the likes of my nephew and thousands of other immigrant Indians who have scaled the epitome of success.
That is indeed why I am forced to believe that every negative has a positive side to it and the same holds true in reliving the American Dream.
Willy Loman, the protagonist of Death of a Salesman, has spent his life following the American way, living out his belief in salesmanship as a way to reinvent himself. But somehow the riches and respect he covets have eluded him. Willy lives in a fragile fantasy world of elaborate excuses and daydreams, conflating past and present in a desperate attempt to make sense of himself and of a world that once promised so much. (Christopher Bigsby)
This reminds me of a famous line sung by the great American pop singer and poet Bob Dylan nee Robert Zimmerman who said: ‘It takes a lot to cry, it takes a train to laugh’. This line says a lot about the Great American Dream that has gone somewhat sour. Or has it? For, what is a dream without a plan?















Works Cited
Bigsby, C.W.E. Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem. New York, Penguin. 1998
Nichols, Adam. “Cabbie buys a Duke-dom”. New York Daily News: 10 Jan.2006