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| 42691 |
The American dream!
Hi, I'm French and I study English. I would like to know more about the United States, about American culture. To be more precise, what does the American dream mean to you?( if you are American, of course, but also if you come from an other country... all the points of view are interesting!). And what are the American symbols? Who are the most famous president, writer, paintor? It is a good beginning, isn't it?
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Language pair: French; English
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| 42968 |
Re:The American dream!
Hi Arnaud, I'm from the Philippines and I'm learning French here. With regard to your question on American culture, well I'm quite familiar with that. We were colonized by the US for 50 years and it is very much evident in our culture. The American dream for me I guess is achieving what you want to achieve, like earn a lot, have a good job and a stable life. The US here in the Philippines is branded as the land of opportunities.
American symbols, hmmm. It would be the bald eagle and their stars and stripes flag. Uncle Sam is also a term coined to refer to the US in a person like manner. Famous writers include Hemmingway, etc. Presidents, the most popular for me would be JFK (john f kennedy), abraham lincoln and george washington. Painters, I guess would be Pollack.
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 42691
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| 43946 |
Re:The American dream!
I am an American,so the American dream for me would be that people from all walks of life and status and create for themselves(through hard work and perserverance)their own personal dreams.Many immigrants who have came here because of,let's say,poverty in their native land have worked hard and made themselves a nice lifestyle.It's possible in this great country!The American symbols are(as noted before) the American flag(colors:red,white,and blue),the bald eagle,Uncle Sam,Lady Liberty,etc.We're VERY patritoci:)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 42691
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| 43947 |
Re:The American dream!
I am an American,so the American dream for me would be that people from all walks of life and status and create for themselves(through hard work and perserverance)their own personal dreams.Many immigrants who have came here because of,let's say,poverty in their native land have worked hard and made themselves a nice lifestyle.It's possible in this great country!The American symbols are(as noted before) the American flag(colors:red,white,and blue),the bald eagle,Uncle Sam,Lady Liberty,etc.We're VERY patritic:)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 42691
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| 43948 |
Re:The American dream!
I am an American,so the American dream for me would be that people from all walks of life and status and create for themselves(through hard work and perserverance)their own personal dreams.Many immigrants who have came here because of,let's say,poverty in their native land have worked hard and made themselves a nice lifestyle.It's possible in this great country!The American symbols are(as noted before) the American flag(colors:red,white,and blue),the bald eagle,Uncle Sam,Lady Liberty,etc.We're VERY patritic:)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 42691
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| 47927 |
Re:The American dream!
Hello Arnaud,
The American Dream is what everyone's dream life. I'm from the state of Michigan, and to me it's owning my own stable and farm. Everyone's dream is different, and it doesn't even really have much to do with being American at all. It got called that because immigrants when they came to America hekd onto the dream that in America everything would be better.
The bald eagle, the Star Spangled Banner, the flag; these are all great examples of American Symbols, but I think that a county's people should be it's most important symbol. What is a country without it's people? Just a hunk of land.
Our most famous presidents are pretty well known. Washington, F. Roosevelt, Lincoln, JFK, and others. Hemmingway is one of the most well known authors, but there are so many that are fairly popular that it is hard to say which are most famous. Especially since we read a lot of books that are written overseas. I couldn't tell you who the most famous artist is; I may be taking art, but I pay no attention to the history of it!
I hope this wasn't too confusing, and that you understood me well enough.
Sarah
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 42691
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| 47994 |
Re:The American dream!
¡Hola Arnaud! ¿Cómo estas?
I agree with most of what everyone is saying about the American Dream. One thing I would add, though, which I think is essential, and which perhaps you may understand, being a Frenchman, is that we should remember the context in which America emerged as a nation. We declared independence from a country where success was determined by having had the good sense to be born into the right family. So when we speak of the American Dream in terms of being able to earn success by honest effort and perseverance, this is against the backdrop of other countries where people are born either into or out of such lifestyles, and their birth determined their destinies. America was the first (and thankfully not the only) country to institute social mobility as a fundamental value, so we can have a guy like Bill Clinton, who grew up in a poor family raised by a single mother, but who nonetheless was able to rise to be President of the United States. This could never have happened for one of the old Kings of England or of France. So the American Dream is a little more than just being able to earn your dreams by the sweat of your brow—it’s having a place to live where your dreams will never be forbidden to you because you were born to the wrong social class.
The American Bald Eagle won the right to represent our nation in a pitched battle in Congress against the Turkey, who had held the place of honor at Thanksgiving, our first national holiday.
Some other great national symbols include the famous Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, a gift to us from your own country, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and the Arch of St. Louis, the Gateway to the West. The Arch marks the point of departure that settlers often used for setting off for California in search of Gold and good fortune. And of course, there’s Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Oddly, most of us, try as we might, can only remember three of the four presidents whose faces were carved into this mountainside: George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln are easy—they are our two greatest presidents by far. The rest of us can usually only remember one or the other of the remaining two, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. I always thought Teddy’s cousin Franklin Delano was a far more impressive president than his predecessor, but FDR was elected in 1933, and Mt. Rushmore was designed to represent our first 150 years of history: 1776 – 1926. Missed it by just a smidge. They should have just stuck him in on general principle.
(To be continued...)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 42691
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| 47995 |
Re:The American dream! 2 of 3
(Part 2 0f 3)
It’s funny, speaking of presidents, that JFK has always been seen as one of our greats. He was fiery and dynamic and had incredible charisma. And while he pulled a great miracle out of his hat during the Cuban Missile crisis, he also laid an egg at the Bay of Pigs. The great tragedy of Kennedy was that he was murdered before he could accomplish his great vision, most of which was finally brought to fruition by his vice president and successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. It was Johnson who established “the Great Society” programs to combat poverty, and who ushered in the age of civil rights in our country. And yet Johnson is rarely remembered as a noteworthy president.
It took us a while to establish our own literary flavor beyond the shadow of the great canon of British Literature. Scholars called the period of Emerson, Whitman, Dickenson, and Thoreau the “American Renaissance,” which I always found Ironic, because it was really more an American Naissance than a Renaissance. We weren’t reborn, we were born. Of course, there is a new great wave of literature between the world wars as the American Expatriates, mostly writing in Paris developed the body of literature we often call the literature of “The Lost Generation” These writers include T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner (who never made it to Paris, but was firmly in the tradition), Archibald MacLeish, and Ernest Hemingway.
Most respected American Authors in the modern age include Saul Bellow, Don Delillo, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, John Updike, Joseph Heller, Marilynn Robinson, And David Lodge.
Of course, I can’t leave out names like Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Ambrose Bierce, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglas, Alex Haley, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen—And these are just people we hear about in the University. Many of them were discovered after the fact. There work was overlooked as the result of prejudices of the time, and only after we overcame our preconceptions were we able to read their work more objectively, and recognize their value. Kat Chopin is an excellent example of this. She wrote in the nineteenth century and was added to the literary canon only within the last twenty years. There’s no telling who might be recognized later on as our thinking continues to broaden.
(Continued once more)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 42691
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| 47996 |
Re:The American dream! 3 of 3
(Part 3 0f 3)
I’m afraid I’m not nearly as fluent in visual art as I am in literature, but names that stand out in my mind are Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, C.M. Russell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Mary Cassatt, Man Ray, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Norman Rockwell. I should mention also, our famous Architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who had such a huge impact culturally, that he even appears in a famous song by Paul Simon.
Although learn alot about your great cultural figures here in the U.S. I hope you will share with us anyway. It is often surprising to learn how different a country appears from the outside than from the inside. For example, yourJacque Derrida was revolutionary for us, and yet I was shocked to learn that your universities don’t talk about him very much as all.
Thank you for your very interesting topic.
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
(Fin)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 42691
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