Research Paper on American Dream in Arthur Miller's Writings is published for informational purposes only. The free papers are not written by our writers, they are contributed by users, so we are not responsible for the content of this free sample paper. If you want to buy a quality Essay on Research Paper on American Dream in Arthur Miller's Writings at affordable prices please use our essay writing services offered by EssayEmpire.

The disintegration of the American Dream after World War II is portrayed by Arthur Miller in A View from the Bridge when families turn on each other to protect themselves. Eddie, like Joe in All My Sons, believes that achieving the American Dream is being successful financial and protecting one's family. Eddie believes that his wife's cousins who are living with him, illegal immigrant from Italy, are a threat to his niece, Catherine, and attempts to remove them from his life. The turning point of the play is when Eddie reports Marco and Rodolfo to the police. "I'm just around the neighborhood, that's all" (66, A View from the Bridge, Arthur Miller). Eddie makes the police think he is just a random neighbor of the immigrants, when in truth he is turning in his own family. Eddie turning in his own family to immigration shows how the American Dream is false, because no matter what one tries to do, they may not succeed in America because of matters out of their hands. Rodolfo tends to be pessimistic and "is inclined to remember the ruin in things, perhaps because [he] was born in Italy" (26, Miller). Rodolfo has a negative outlook on his old county, but he views America as a place of the American Dream which will let him lead a wonderful life free of ruin. Miller also shows his disillusionment in the American Dream by having Eddie look down upon society. Eddie tells his nice "Just remember, kid, you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word you gave away" (18, Miller). Eddie believes that in America one must keep his wits about him and never say anything one would not want the world to know. To the majority of the people in the Red Hook community, where Eddie lives, Italy represents homeland, origin and culture. Catherine associates Italy with mystery, romance and beauty. Rodolpho, on the other hand, is an Italian native, and thinks it is a place with little opportunity that he would like to escape from. Rodolpho wished to achieve the American Dream by leaving unprofitable Italy and moving to America. All of the characters, as much as they love the benefit of living in the U.S., still strongly hold to Italian traditions and identify it as home. Italy is the basis of the cultural traditions in Red Hook and unites the community in common social practices and religion. Alfieri, Eddie's lawyer represents the link between American law and Italian customs, and tries to join American and Italian values to keep the people of Red Hook happy. Alfieri describes the difference between Italy and Red Hook by stating that "this is Red Hook, not Sicily. This is the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of the Brooklyn Bridge...and now we are quite civilized, quite American. Now we settle for half, and I like it better" (Miller, 4). Alfieri shows the deterioration of the American Dream in Red Hook by the Italian immigrants by describing how they are content with less of a dream than they hoped for. One of the reasons that the American Dream is not achieved in A View from the Bridge is because all of the characters are forced to reconcile between American culture and the Italian community culture that surrounds them. The cultural and moral differences between Italian and American culture causes much of the downfall of the American Dream. The tight community around the Carbone family also creates great tension in the household. Eddie tells Catherine and Beatrice "I don't care how sees them goin' in and out as long as you don't see them goin' in and out...you don't see nothin' and you don't know nothin'" (Miller, 16) about pretending they knew nothing about the Italian immigrants living with them. The community of Red Hook controls and monitors every member of the society. Although Eddie turns away from the community culture by calling the Immigration Bureau to ruin his Italian cousins' American Dreams, he still feels he needs acceptance in his community and spends his last moments before death fighting for his good name, screaming at Marco "that he's gonna give it back to me infront of this neighborhood, or we have it out" (Miller, 83). There is great conflict between community and American law in the play and this leads to the decrease in the American Dream for the Italian immigrants. The community abides by Italian-American customs protecting illegal immigrants within their homes, valuing respect and family, being hard working, believing strongly in trust and wanting revenge when a member of the community has been 'wronged'. Some of these values, however, come in conflict with those of the American system of justice. Eddie Carbone chooses to turn against his community and abide by the state laws. He loses the respect of his community and friends -- the name and personal identity he treasures. Eddie Carbone, with a stronger allegiance to the community, reverts back to the Italian custom of revenge, crushing the American Dream of his Italian immigrant relatives.

Arthur Miller shows the "falseness" of the American Dream in All My Sons by showing how defeated Joe Keller is in providing a prosperous life for his son, Chris. Joe strived to earn an outstanding salary and to pass on his business to his son one day. However, he made poor decisions and "knowingly shipped out parts that would crash an airplane" (All My Sons, Arthur Miller, 29). Chris cares more about morals than money, and is shocked by the fact that his father would sabotage people's lives for the improvement of his personal finances. Chris tells his father in dismay "I know you're no worse than most men, but I thought you were better, I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father" (Miller, 78). Arthur Miller shows the disintegration of the American Dream by having Joe Keller fail at providing a comfortable life for his son. Joe believed "What the hell did I work for? That's only for you, Chris; the whole shootin' match is for you"(Miller, 16). Miller's "characters were good people who frequently acted badly under pressure. They were insightful, but they had blind spots. They avoided reality and denied the truth when it was painful" ("The Washington Post", A01). Joe makes a poor decision while under pressure to achieve the American Dream for his son. He eventually becomes enlightened that "sure he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were" (Miller, 79). Joe learns that to truly achieve the American Dream, he must be helping his own family, but not hurting others, because every boy that goes off to war is just like his son who went away. Any boy that Joe killed by giving tainted airplane parts to was like killing his own son. Chris can never see his father in the same light again and thinks "it's wrong to pity a man like that. Father or no father, there's only one way to look at him" (Miller, 29). Miller's plays "explored misplaced and misunderstood values, out-of-control materialism, dysfunctional families and conflicts between fathers and sons" ("The Washington Post", A01). Joe had the misunderstood value that to achieve the American Dream he must have a successful business to pass onto his son. Joe also suffers from "out-of-control materialism" because he ships out faulty parts so he will not lose the money from not selling them. "In this play, [All My Sons], Miller attacks the prevailing principle of success in a consumerist society" ("A Playwright with a Purpose", 1). Joe Keller attempted to be successful in a consumerist society, but gets caught in the wrong and must go to court to face his actions. "In plays like All My Sons, the protagonist is the product and, consequently, a helpless victim of his inimical environment" ("A Playwright with a Purpose", 1). Joe Keller is a victim of the idea that all people who are 'successful' live the American Dream.

The only way that Joe feels he can free Chris and the rest of his family from guilt and pain, so that they can live and continue their attempt to become successful, is to kill himself. Throughout his life, he never learned that true success is measured in who one becomes rather than what materialistic item one owns. If Joe could have learned to love and respect himself, he could have achieved the happiness he never found in material items. His intentions were good, but his dream for the American dream was wrong, and suicide was his way of fixing the burdens he caused. Joe's longing to become socially accepted encompassed his ability to distinguish right from wrong, and that is what leads him to his dishonest and selfish choices. "Joe's suicide is less a moral judgment than an act of love...Joe commits his second anti-social crime in the name of the same love that motivated the first." ("All My Sons and the Larger Context", Gross, 13). Joe does not commit suicide because he decides that his actions were morally wrong, but because he feels that he has failed to achieve the American Dream of supporting and protecting his family. Joe Keller believed that he had to sacrifice everything, to give his family the kind of life Americans can only dream of. "In [All My Sons], Miller shows the presence of a belief that society is inside man and man inside society, and reveals the power of social relations in making man what he is and in preventing him from being what he is not" ("A Playwright with a Purpose", 1). Joe Keller also believed that if he admitted to the crimes that he had committed, his sons would lose all respect for him and that he would not be in his "rightful" position in society. Joe believed that there was something wrong with Chris for not accepting his crime, and understanding that he only sent out faulty parts to maintain financial calm. Joe tells Chris "If Larry was alive he wouldn't act like this. He understood the way the world is made. He listened to me. To him the world had a forty-foot front; it ended at the building line" (Miller, 77) about Larry, Joe's other son that committed suicide while away at war. Joe's statement is ironic because Larry committed suicide when he found out that his own father, Joe, had killed other innocent soldiers by shipping out cracked airplane parts. Larry does not understand Joe's actions, and sacrifices his life in an attempt to show Joe the error in his ways, and to prove to him what it feels like to lose one's own son. Miller foreshadows Joe's feeling of self-hatred and pity for himself by showing Joe yelling "There's nothin' he could do that I wouldn't forgive. Because he's my son. Because I'm his father and he's my son... Nothin's bigger than that. And you're goin' to tell him, you understand? I'm his father and he's my son, and if there's something bigger than that I'll put a bullet in my head!" (Miller, 70), at his wife about how Chris must understand why he made the decisions he did. Keller does not perceive the problems he has caused for his family while trying to shield his family from trouble. Joe tells Chris "I did it for you, it was a chance and I took it for you. I'm sixty-one years old, when would I have another chance to make something for you?" (Miller, 71). Joe is accused by the police of knowingly sending out faulty parts, and he lies and changes the facts so that the blame will be taken from him and there will be no shame on his family. He thinks that he is saving his family from trouble, while he actually is the cause of his own son's committing suicide. Chris understood the true meaning of the American Dream, "everything was being destroyed, see, but it seemed to me that one new thing was made. A kind of responsibility. Man for man" (Miller, 35). The true American Dream was Americans working together to form a comfortable and successful life for everyone in the country. Men like Chris, and Larry, went off to war to fight for the betterment of the world and they had a responsibility to each other. "They didn't die; they killed themselves for each other. I mean that exactly; a little more selfish and they would have been here today" (Miller, 35).

While one analyzes Chris's criticism of Joe and his morals, the focus then moves to Chris and his own morals. Though Chris preaches to his father about morality and his loyalty to his country, we see that Chris may be just as unmoral as his father. He too has pocketed the profits of the family business, yet he continues to hold himself to be morally superior to Joe. Joe himself asks Chris, "Exactly what's the matter? What's the matter? You got too much money? Is that what bothers you?" (Miller, 67). Chris claims all the money that his father has earned is dirty, yet Chris has taken the profits just as his father has. Chris is revealed as suspecting his father's guilt all along, but "lacking the moral stamina to force the issue". (Clurman, 24). "It's true. I'm yellow; I was made yellow in this house because I suspected my father and I did nothing about it." (Miller, 66). Says Chris. It is shown during an exchange between Chris and George (the brother of Chris' love interest) that Chris has always suspected his father. "Let me go up and talk to your father. In ten minutes you'll have an answer. Or are you afraid of the answer?" asks George. "I'm not afraid. I know the answer" replies Chris. (Miller, 48) Chris has not allowed himself to admit what he knew because he would not know how to live with it. Chris could not love a guilty father, "not out of moral fastidious but out of self-love" ("All My Sons and the Larger Context", Gross, 13) If as George says, Chris has lied to himself about his father's guilt, it is more to deny what he himself is than what his father is. Chris has always known his father was guilty but could not handle the consequences- the condemnation of his father and also of himself because he name has also been polluted by his father's crime. This is exactly what the "exposure of his father forces upon him and his father's arguments all shatter upon the hard shell of Chris' idealism not simply because they are, in fact, evasions and irrelevant half-truths, but because they cannot satisfy Chris' conscience." (Gross, 14). Chris' father believes he is living the American Dream by running a deceitful business, when in reality he is only harming himself and his family. "The theme, then, is one of morality and money, and the action centers around the attempt of Keller's son Chris to find the truth and to fix the responsibility, and of Keller to avoid his responsibility" (American Writers, 151). Although Chris' seems like he may not be moral, just like his father, he really does understand the faults of Joe and never wants to be a 'practical' man like him. "But I'm like everybody else now. I'm practical now. You made me practical... Only the dead ones weren't practical. But now I'm practical, and I spit on myself. I'm going away. I'm going now." (Miller, 66). Chris has become what he never wanted to be a practical man. The true Chris was always soiled, just as his father by his father's actions and just like his dead brother, Larry, who could no longer stand himself. "Miller is concerned with consciousness, not crime, and with bringing a man face to face with the consequences he has caused, forcing him to share in the results of his creation." ("Contemporary Authors Online", 2) Chris tells his mother, "You can do better! Once and for all you can know there's a universe of people outside and you're responsible to it, and unless you know that you threw away your son because that's why he died." (Miller, 69) At this moment, as hot is heard and we find out that Joe has committed suicide. Chris starts to apologize to his mother for being so harsh with Joe, but his mother stops him and says, "Don't, dear. Don't take it on yourself. Forget now. Live." (Miller, 69) Chris has now been freed from his father's immoral actions and can now live as the man he has become, a "practical" man. "The son, Chris, has learned from his war experiences that relatedness is not particular but universal; he is shocked by his father's unscrupulous renunciation of that knowledge." ("Contemporary Authors Online", 2)A "practical" man is the type of man who can strive to live the American Dream without acting immorally because he knows right from wrong, and knows what the consequences of poor actions are.

Free essays are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can order a term paper, research paper or custom TOPIC at our site which offers professional essay writing services. Get your high quality custom paper at relatively cheap prices. EssayEmpire is the best solution for those who seek help in essay writing related to TOPIC and other relevant topics.