The American Dream

The American Dream, yes everybody has one, it can be from living in a large house and having a million dollars to just having the privilege to live in America and try to make something better for themselves in this "new" life or "new" start they are trying to grasp. There are many traditions and dreams of every American today while some dreams are practical and some are not and most of all their dreams are from the heart. The American dream is really simple--it consists of a house a job a car three kids and one dog but this is not always the case. The American Dream can be lived by anyone who tries to make due with what they can afford at the time they are in and the situation that's upon them. The American Dream is built into everybody who has ever wanted better for themselves and family members. It is not being selfish just wishing to have all the worries of the hustle and bustle of life go away that would be so nice; everybody innately wants to achieve that because why would you want to spend most of your life worrying about money and security? Today in society, people have different perspectives on what is the American dream because we as Americans are all not the same because we all see things differently than what another person sees. Some families with tons of money could be living a horrible life, always fighting with each other and never happy while a not so rich family could just be happy and make due with what they have as long as they stick together; maybe the dream for some people is more realistic than the dream for other people who may have more opportunities. This could be their dream. The House on Mango Street presents good aspects of the American Dream and offers insights on the extension of the American Dream they are living; wanting more than they can achieve with in their means and desires that one must uphold to keep a family together peacefully. The House on Mango Street presents a family that lives right below the American Dream (kind of like an extension of it); they have a house, beautiful family that loves each other, mother and father who are together and love each other and their children the same, but because they still do not have the financial security one must obtain to freely pursue that dream, it just would not be a typical American dream to an outsider. In this novel they're poor but still manage to buy a house and maintain a loving atmosphere for the children to develop in. The family in House on Mango Street is not the perfect family but who is? Esperanza the main character in House on Mango Street, is a young girl who looks at life from an experience of living in poverty, where many do not question their experience she did, maybe on accident, but for the better. As a young girl Esperanza is asked one day where she lived by a nun from her school who happened to be walking by. Now before this moment Esperanza never really notice her living situation, all she knew is that her parents loved her and wanted her to go to school. When the nun rudely said "You live there" (Cinceros 5) and pointed at the shoddy apartment building, it is then Esperanza started to build a dream inside of her head because of the look on the nun's face, unsatisfactory. Esperanza is a shy but a very bright girl. She dreams of the perfect home now, with beautiful flowers in their luscious garden and a room for everyone to live in comfortably all because of the unsatisfied face the nun made that one afternoon--when she moves to the house of Mango Street. She thinks it's going to be a "grand house on a hill that will have a bedroom for everyone and at least three washrooms so when they took a bath they would not have to tell everybody." (Cinceros 4) Reality is so different for her when her dream is shot down in a heartbeat when she sees the house for the first time; "the run down tiny house has bricks crumbling in places". (Cinceros 4) The one she dreamed of had a great big yard, trees and "grass growing without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he held the lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed". (Cinceros 4) Now this shows how the typical American family has their own dream of receiving the American dream. Some want to work super hard for it and some wish it would just fall into their laps. They were not the typical American family seen on TV because of the non-existent car and one hundred thousand dollars, but those really did not exist either just the TV networks idea of what the perfect family in the perfect house with the father who has the perfect job would be almost like the American Dream they wanted to portray to everyone through media. Being Hispanic, and not white, the family does not live the typical American Dream because they do not have a giant white house, rather a small house with small red stairs