"What so proudly we hailed..."
So a few weeks ago, I misinterpreted what our professor meant when she said to read “The Making and Persistence of the American Dream.” I thought we were supposed to read the whole book and chart claims from the whole book. Which I did. I read the whole book. It sucked. Regardless, I found several chapters interesting in The American Dream in the 21 st Century . Pinpointing which one to write about wasn’t too hard, considering I read ALL of them. I was particularly interested in “Twilight’s Gleaming: The American Dream and the Ends of Republics” by American studies professor Jim Cullen. Cullen explores the nature of the American Dream and compares it to the Roman dream of the New Man. The Roman Dream of the New Man refers to the dreams of slaves in ancient Rome, which allowed slaves to achieve significant upwards mobility in the social hierarchy. The parallels between the two are obvious, a key component being social mobility. Rome and America are both republics so share si