"Deconstruction of the promise of prosperity and success--and often subsequent disillusionment--associated with the American Dream and Experience. 'The American Dream' is a phrase that has become an essential component of the American experience, a phrase that, once entered into the national lexicon, has come to define our nation's identity, underlying nearly every aspect of our lives. And since the birth of the founding document of our nation, the Declaration of Independence, the idea of 'the American Dream' has become a pervasive and frequently deconstructed theme within the canon of American literature. Edited by Keith Newlin, Professor of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Critical Insights: The American Dream offers thirteen original essays exploring the contexts and expressions of the dream as it is reflected in our imaginative literature. For readers who are studying it for the first time, four essays survey the critical conversation regarding the theme, explore its cultural and historical contexts, and offer close and comparative readings of key texts in the genre. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of the theme can then move on to other essays that explore it in depth through a variety of critical approaches. Works discussed include The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Death of a Salesman, The Great Gatsby, Bernard Malamud's The Assistant, Américo Paredes's George Washington Gomez, and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, as well as the works of Willa Cather, Cormac McCarthy, Theodore Dreiser, and Michael Gold, among others."--Publisher's website.

Critical contexts. The rise and fall of the American dream: from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin to Death of a salesman -- "To go into partnership": gender, class, ethnicity, and the American dream in Edith Wharton's The house of Mirth -- Meaningful work and self-determination: the American dream for women -- Why speak of American stories as dreams? -- Critical esays. The American dream, the Western frontier, and the literature of expansion -- Dreiser and the Dream -- The great Gatsby and the American dream -- Survival and transcendence: the Jewish American immigrant and the American dream -- Blurring the color line: race and the American dream in The autobiography of an ex-coloured man, passing, and Cane -- After Auschwitz, Connecticut?: dreams and disappointments in mid-twentieth-century American literature -- The assimilated and unassimilated in Bernard Malamud's The assistant -- American Indians and the American dream: "a world in which we had no part" -- Mexican Americans encounter the American dream: George Washington Gomez.