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Let America Be America Again: An Analysis

Decent Essays

Ever since the first colonists landed on her eastern shores those making passage to America have all been seeking a new life. Whether it was those escaping religious persecution like the Quakers or Puritans in the seventeenth century, Eastern Europeans searching for work in the nineteenth century, or even immigrants today desperately attempting to give their families better lives, they have all sought after what is known as the American Dream. The American Dream rooted in enlightenment philosophy has been the beacon of hope for all, however in the past decades the dream has changed and it has left many to wonder did the dream ever exist at all. The American Dream is one of equal opportunities and freedom to all in America. It is for even the poorest of people to have a chance to strike it rich and become prosperous. In his book James Truslow Adams states the American dream is “a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, …show more content…

That Americans have attempted and nearly reached it but never having fully achieved it. In “Let America Be America Again” the people of America are all described as being slaves to what they have to do “I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro servant to all” (Hughes). Later on he describes America as truly never existing “O, let America be America again- The land that never has been yet- And yet must be” (Hughes). The idea that no one has truly been or will be free in America, that they are just enslaved by their own desires. The rich and their wealth and their poor in their quest to achieve wealth are ultimately bound to their desires. The American Dream is freedom which is impossible to find as people become bound to spend their whole lives trying to get

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