Tag Archives: American Dream

Finding Strength in a Time of Covid

Robinson Jeffers offers a poem that reminds us of spiritual resources available to us in these dark days.

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Knives Out and the American Dream

The movie “Knives Out” is satisfying but leaves unquestioned the American Dream.

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Will Trump Turn Us into Goodman Brown?

The disillusion of Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown may prove to be America’s in a post-Trump world.

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Happiness Based on Another’s Oppression

To understand why the race card is so politically effective, reading Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

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Poems for Resisting Trump

New York columnist Roger Cohen suggests two poems for resisting Trumpism: “if” and “Harlem.”

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Tolstoy on Resisting a Narcissist

If Trump is like Napoleon in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” can he be defeated by popular resistance, as he is in Tolstoy’s novel?

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Trump Is Gatsby (But a Lot Meaner)

Donald Trump is Jay Gatsby, albeit a Gatsby with a mean streak. Nevertheless, the rise of the character helps us understand the success of our current president.

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The Wicked Witch, Disillusioned Dreamer

Gregory Maguire’s novel “Wicked,” like versions of the Oz story before it, wrestles with the death of the American Dream.

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Whoever Degrades Another Degrades Me

Whitman’s “Song of Myself” calls us to imagine the experience of the Other, just as Obama asked us to imagine the perspective of young black men.

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