Him a I hope you detected in the tone in the content of what I've

tried to say that I am deeply engaged in a tradition that exists in

this country which I think can be described as a as a lover's
quarrel with my own country I think that's a healthy relationship
to have it to know all lovers are in probably quarrelsome
relationship to some degree and not there certainly is a long
tradition of that United States we've heard a lot of echoes of a
Hawthorne Whitman Emerson Monroe Jefferson Lincoln on and
on it goes and done that's that's the tone that I hope you've heard
from me with you agree with it or not I leave to you to decide in
good American pluralistic fashion we come to the end now and
the title for the end is a pair of questions where we've been
where are we going and my epigraph for this concluding lecture
comes from yet another American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti
in a poem called I am waiting says I am waiting for rebirth of
wonder in Sophie's choice the novel by William Styron that played
an important part in the previous lecture among the best
moments that sting go and Sophie enjoyed was an outing to
Coney Island indeed the novel ends with stinko waking up here
on the Atlantic shore where so much of the American dream
began not long after stinko pronounced that morning excellent
and fear the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the 1955 poems that
became his book a Coney Island of the mind still active today
Ferlinghetti was one of the dominant voices in the so-called beat
generation of the 50s and 60s leading a rebellious literary
movement from his haunts in San Francisco he wanted to free
people from the conventions of business as usual replete with
their suburban trappings and political power plays in the poem I
am waiting which is arguably the best poem in a Coney Island of
the mind Ferlinghetti uses irony wistfully humorously
sardonically he wants to cross the great divide of in congruency
between what America is and what it ought to be anticipating the
arrival of what he calls a reconstructed Mayflower he also
watches for the day that make us all things clear Ferlinghetti's
expectation is anything but passive non-activity restless and
insistent I am waiting is paradoxically a pilgrimage an odyssey of
self-discovery in verses meeting with hope that the atomic tests
show and willing for things to get worse if eventually they do get
better some would say those desires are futile like expecting the
fleeing lovers on the Grecian urn to catch each other up at last
and embrace Ferlinghetti quarrels with such realism he
concludes by awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of
wonder such wonder can help Americans arrived where his poem
begins looking within for someone to really discover America and
whale but to whale Ferlinghetti style is not to yell hysterically the
USA's number one nor is it to intone the gaggle of vacuous
clichs and pious platitudes that rush so thoughtlessly from the
mouth of e.e. cummings 1926 counterpart to Archibald McLeish's
orator both of whom we've heard before in the series Cummings
does not make explicit the occasion for the banalities uttered by
his speaker in next to of course God America I Memorial Day or
Veterans Day however seems more likely than the Fourth of July
for this poem is an ironic tribute to those who rushed like lions to
the roaring slaughter himself a veteran of World War I coming
sets forth the incoherence of a patriotism that sends the nation's
youth to die and then compounds the waist by claiming that
nothing could be more beautiful than these heroic happy dead
such blindness is a reason to lament in grief and Ferlinghetti
joins Cummings doing both but that whaling is not the end
unmasking the pretense hurting through the pathos tragedy and
irony during as Ferlinghetti puts it for the American people to
really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right both
Ferlinghetti and Cummings peer to Wayland jazz duet that soars
above the blues that learning can be felt not only through our
history but even now however much the American dream may be
in question it still remains alive but how much and how well alive
depends on where we are going as well as on where we have
been some 10 years before Sophie's choice appeared William
Styron published another controversy on novel this time called
the confessions of Matt Turner which he described as a
meditation on history one of the most poignant scenes in that
tale of an American slave uprising in 1831 comes near the end
that scene features in exchange between that Turner in his
confessor a man named Thomas Gray the two men evaluate the
rebellion success and failure Gray acknowledges that Nat Turner
the rebellions religiously driven charismatic leader scared the
entire South into a condition that may be described as will not
ship was he says well he goes on to say he was a success all
right up to a point mind you up to a point because Rev. basically
speaking and in the profoundest sense of the word he was a flat
asked daily a total fiasco from beginning to end in so far as any
real accomplishment is concerned Nat Turner says little in reply
his silence however is not INSPIRON feels net Turner's mind this
way but Mr. Gray I found myself wanting to say what else could
you expect from mostly young men deaf dumb and blind crippled
shackled and hamstrung from the moment of their first baby
squall on bear clay floor it was prodigious that we come as far as
we did that we nearly took Jerusalem soon after Turner stood
trial for his life in Jerusalem Virginia he was found guilty and
executed by Styron's reckoning these last days were in November
that month is of special importance for the American dream
because in that autumn season Americans not only honor those
who have died in war but they also hold their major elections
later in the same month they also celebrate Thanksgiving a
national holiday which traces back to the 17th century programs
and which is second only to the Fourth of July in the infection but
most Americans have for it those special days give Americans an
opportunity to meditate how far has the United States, how near
is it to Jerusalem these eight lectures have explored some
American myths and some American realities by focusing on the
American dream to be an American it seems is to reckon with
that dream such is the Americans heritage if there is truth in that
proposition however it is crucial to identify assumptions that
could undergird a worthwhile American dream in the 1990s and
beyond in the time left in this final lecture of our series I would
like then to summarize where we have been by examining what
some of those assumptions might be the qualification Psalm is
important for two reasons first philosophy reveals that one
premise invariably leads to another tracking them is an endless
process second my concluding remarks will deal mainly with
psychological aspects we might call them of domestic life in the
United States far from ignoring international dimensions though
these reflections all imply that sound American dreaming must
now take place in a global village if there ever was a time when
Americans can plan their future in isolation they can no longer do
so with impunity that fact coupled with vast American power
makes it urgent therefore to consider the seven suppositions that
follow and here's the first one at its core the American dream will
continue to emphasize the possibility of new beginnings but no
longer connect emphasis rest on any simple optimism about
American life set at the turn of the 19th century in Sweetwater a
small town on the Burlington Railroad out in the prairie between
Omaha in Denver Willa Cather's brilliant novel lost lady is a story
about this first supposition this is a truly beautiful novel read it
will gather my favorite American writers in this novelette really a
lost lady is when I recommend to you Capt. Daniel Forster Cather
tells us was a railroad man a contractor would build hundreds of
miles of road for the Burlington over the sagebrush and cattle
country and on up into the Black Hills later he and his wife
Marion who is 25 years his younger came to preside over the
Forrester place as everyone called it a house well known for its
charm and hospitality to the railroad aristocracy of that time and
special friends from the little town before time and circumstance
conspired to make Marion Forrester lost lady the Forrester place
was often the scene of gay dinner parties which the captain
always gave the coast happy days he gave it cancer says so that
whoever heard him say it once like to hear him say it again
nobody else could utter those two words as he did with such
gravity and high courage with his wife's encouragement Capt.
Forrester also like to tell their dinner guests his philosophy of life
namely but what you think and plan for day by day you will get
because a thing that is dreamed of in the way I is already an
accomplished fact all are great West the captain would continue
as been developed from such dreams the homesteaders in the
prospectors and the contractors we dreamed the railroads across
the mountains said just as I dreamed my place on the
Sweetwater deep inside the nation's heart strong beats of hope
like those can still be heard yet just as something forbidding
could come into Capt. Forster's voice along with his
acknowledgment that there are people who get nothing in this
world I live too much in mining works in construction camps not
to know that the foundations of contemporary enthusiasm
opportunity tomorrow better than today boundless energy are
somewhat shaky and perhaps endanger of being lost risks are
sometimes felt less as challenges to accept and Morris threats
against which Americans want protection styles of pleasure
seeking may not reveal it but the United States is much more
conservative than it was in the 1960s and 70s the only sure thing
about social attitudes is that people change though not
necessarily for the better it seems clear that the United States
has lived through the transition from optimism to a realism that
often borders on disillusionment today's Americans are neither in
1920s lost generation more 1950s beat generation or even
entirely what some sociologists have recently called the me
generation their condition is more ambiguous and ambivalent the
rhetoric about American self images is still confident and yet
Americans have plenty of reason for uneasiness about the future
how did Americans get into this condition countless factors
emerge but one place to start is with some of the earliest
American dreams Puritans and Quakers dreamed of establishing
God's new Israel in the howling wilderness in some form the idea
of America as a promised land were chosen people could begin
life anew has been part of the dream ever since these early
settlers however had no easy view of human goodness or divine
providence the Puritans made covenants aimed at righteousness
the Quakers sought brotherly love but both groups knew that
created hatred were ever present threats to community life and
that God's justice could not be compromised with impunity
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas P were two influential spokesman
who focused awareness on America's potential to provide an
example and leadership for the world they promoted dreams that
still inspired on Franklin's autobiography preached the
secularized version of Puritan Quaker virtue Council people to
seek personal improvement to find the road to wealth and
consequently to power Franklin's urgings for the individual were
supplemented by pains exhortations to the colonies as a whole
asserting that the cause of America is indeed the cause of all
mankind pain made the American Revolution morally imperative
later as Americans prospered materially expanded
geographically flourished with their democratic ideals they were
only too happy to preserve and to extend these early visions of
America's especially favored status in recent times some
American fortunes at least have turned Americans have not lost
a sense of uniqueness but there is less certainty about how to
define it partly because Americans realize better the talk about
new beginnings is easy but actually to make them is far more
difficult than the American dream has often inclined without a
sense of the possibility of new beginnings there can be no
American dream the struggle is to see how they can and cannot
be achieved in late 20th century America which is still in its
peculiar ways howling wilderness far distant from Sweetwater
second the American dream rests upon the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution but no longer can it be
assumed that American democracy can meet every expectation
that may be placed upon it Americans have always harbored
something of a suspicion of government if not of each other but
even when suspicious most of them have believed that the
political institutions of the United States are unrivaled these
institutions most Americans are convinced help to fulfill the
promises of human nature by providing equal opportunity
freedom and justice for all too many Americans then the
declaration and the Constitution are virtually sacred texts
specifying independence and representative democracy to
safeguard and extend individual liberty they seem to bear well
the high expectations placed upon them in fact that dream is
partly truth and partly fiction Hamilton Madison Jefferson and
the other founders were convinced that the origin of the United
States did constitute a landmark in political achievement still
they had rather few utopian sentiments the basic point remained
clear to them life can be nasty brutish in short independence and
constitutional democracy notwithstanding they saw the
declaration and the Constitution not as guarantees of everyone's
happiness but only as giving people a chance for fulfillment too
often later generations learn the difference in recent times
however the existence of that difference has become clear again
the difficulty is to see whether the American dream can orient
itself between expectations that are too much or too little the
third assumption that I think maybe worth thinking about is this
the American dream will still place a premium on the individual's
pursuit of happiness but no longer can it be easily expected that
the communal good will thereby be enhanced Emerson believed
that he who would be a man must be a nonconformist and
Thoreau insisted that the only obligation which I have a right to
assume is to do it any time what I think right these teachers
prodded America by teaching self-reliance and personal integrity
in doing so they encouraged unintentionally as well as
intentionally the individual pursuit of happiness that is so
fundamental to the American dream they recognized that a
variety of goals and pass toward them would be chosen and on
the whole they welcomed that variety for it might forge the
original relation to the universe that they sought for American life
if every person truly pursued his or her own way they thought the
result would not be chaos but rather creativity calm and serene it
might not be a rich harmony of interests could ensue granted
Emerson and Thoreau added self-critical cutting edges to the
American dream they warned against the selfishness passive
acceptance corruption and slavery that could wreck their
aspirations for the United States nonetheless they may not have
emphasize enough that even if those defects can be removed
there is no assurance that pluralism and diversity will not be
costly for just as noble aims can be many and virtuous so they
can clash destructively partly because of the prodding of their
Emerson's and throws Americans take individualism seriously if
not the critique of it offered by those philosophers from Concorde
thus if Americans hope that individual pursuits of happiness will
work together for the common good and if they periodically make
individual sacrifices so that public welfare is achieved too often
the top priority goes to a divisive me first point of view pushed
far enough that disposition can do the very American dream that
grounds forth the American dream will continue to insist that
there are open frontiers and vast opportunities to be seized but
no longer can the future be regarded as unlimited big business
helped Americans to think that the sky was the limit although
Marxists have said that the profit motives of owner capitalists
brutally exploit the vast majority of labor those charges never
convince the United States American industry and business
seemed able to produce wealth enough to make it clear that the
path to upward mobility was open to all affluence was a good to
be highly prized moreover with hard work or little luck and
special privilege it was available to anyone humanized by deeper
social concerns it was thought America's Ebert position and
resources technology and trade would enable Americans at least
at home to shatter the myth of scarcity and to eliminate the plate
of poverty Americans have always been shrewd and cost-
conscious is just that so much success sometimes lead to
complacency if not blindness about the cost factors obvious as
well is hidden and social as well as financial that their
transactions carried with them nothing is free now that fact hit
home with the realization that scarcities real and the economic
instability much of it fueled by green the road wealth as fast as
many individuals can accumulate today's costly demands for
energy make claim that almost everything Americans want to do
is going to cost more and thus it is going to be harder and harder
to do everything they want to do that crunch necessitates
wrenching decisions for the cunning of history is conspiring to
test the depth of Americans ability to sacrifice and the quality of
their social concerns fifth the American dream will still stress
both material success and at least the possibility of moral
progress but no longer can't assume that the two easily nurture
each other George Santiago wondered whether materialism or
idealism was at the heart of American character most Americans
might answer both and in doing so they would press the point
that material success and moral progress Canon often do go
hand-in-hand that perspective is not without credibility the
United States has used its material prosperity at least as well as
any other human society to promote education to ensure
widespread participation in government intimate opportunity
more than a clich to that extent achievement validates the
dream even so American systems of education and government
have obviously not eliminated in flexibility unresponsiveness and
inequity moreover whereas American ingenuity industrial
productivity and technological expertise have raised standards of
living for many people an increasingly ravaged environment both
rural and urban may prove to poisonous a price to pay material
success does not guarantee the highest qualities of life although
it may be impossible to have the latter without a good measure of
the former the connections between the way to wealth and the
way to make life richer in its moral and spiritual dimensions are
subtle and not easily located or control if it is correct to say that
both materialistic and idealistic yearnings can be found at the
base of American character the dilemma of their relationships
and priorities still haunts the American dream sixth the American
dream will continue to proclaim that all persons must be
regarded as fundamentally equal but no longer can Americans be
innocently unaware of the irony and complexity that are
introduced into their lives by that claim American ideals
promised an open land and millions crossed oceans to seek
opportunity these ever new arrivals huge numbers of them
brought here unwillingly as slaves kept building the country but
when established Americans began to see the newcomers as
threats there was great effort to restrict them nonetheless the
nation grew but not without conflicts about ethnic and religious
groups as the trilogy film godfather reveals moreover Americans
learned that not every disembarking family was virtuous and
civic minded and of course the problem populations usually
identified by skin color continue to be an irritating presence to
Nevis even when restricted to reservations or ghettoized in their
emancipation from enslavement added to these continuing
complexities are ongoing and even intensified concerns about
the elderly women and children not to mention the thousands of
Mexican citizens who enter the United States illegally now every
year in some ways it seems that the nations motto ought to be
reversed out of one many may be more true today than out of
many one granted there is little likelihood of secession and civil
war of the sort that bloody the the nation the country a century
ago but there is also little likelihood that Americans will all blend
together harmoniously consider for example John Kennedy's
1963 assertion that every American ought to have the right to be
treated as he would wish to be treated as one would wish his
children to be treated ironically all Americans can affirm
Kennedys principal and in doing so actually make their
disagreements greater Kennedy offered his principal in defense
of civil rights were African-Americans but it is a two edge sword
it can cut in the opposite direction depending on how Americans
view each other and how the fact wish themselves and their
children to be treated on that point they often family disagree
witness the current issue about abortion in the United States
Americans are divided at times violently between those who
believe that abortion violates an unalienable right the life and
those who believe that to make abortion illegal is to deny a
woman her right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness the times
will keep pushing the times out of joint on equally unless
Americans keep struggling to keep things together as we reckon
with that fact it bears remembering that the American dream
originated in struggles over human rights and true to its heritage
the dream keeps that struggle in the forefront once separate but
equal was thought sufficient to guarantee the rights of African-
Americans the dream helped prove that clause insufficient to do
so once women did not have the right to vote the dream help
them obtain it and it will continue to promote their quests for
opportunity and equality true laws do not automatically change
attitudes or alter social and economic realities the voices
protesting the dream deferred attest to that paradoxically though
the very persistence of such voices suggests that the American
dream is still alive" Booker T. Washington WEP to boys and Martin
Luther King Jr. were all instrumental in exposing the myth that
Americans black or white I without deep-seated differences that
can breed animosity and hatred I have a dream that one day this
nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed we
hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created
equal that was Kings hope Washington and the boys shared it
painfully before him the help to show the multiple ways in which
attitudes of superiority mistrust and selfishness undermine
American proclamations about the quality and create division
instead in doing so however their voices did not relinquish the
dream instead its inspiration continues to nourish hope that by
sharing and understanding differences spirit of openness respect
and equality can still be found seven and last the American
dream will still assert that human rights must be real but no
longer can it assume that the dream including the value it places
on freedom of choice and human rights is guaranteed to future
let alone fulfillment in the world speaking about American
experience the historian James Trussell Adams wrote that the
epic loses all its glory without the dream the dream has placed a
premium on the rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness
and from time to time Americans may have had intimations of
their dreams immortality within human history however no nation
seems to last forever and the threats that engulfed the world
make us all Americans included acutely aware of how fragile and
vulnerable life liberty and the pursuit of happiness can be it was
prodigious said that Turner that we come as far as we did that we
nearly took Jerusalem what shall become of the American dream
in the 1990s and perhaps beyond power holds one of the keys to
answer that question but everything depends on who controls it
what ends it serves and the means employed to pursue them
answers to those questions must be awaited anxiously
meanwhile the American dream hangs on in the wake of the
Great Depression the American poet Archibald McLeish worked
with a set of photographs that documented devastation of
American ground during the 1930s the original purpose explained
McLeish adventure write some sort of text to which these
photographs might serve as commentary finding in them vividly
what he named his stubborn inward living this McLeish reversed
that plan and produced not a book of poems illustrated by
photographs but a book of photographs illustrated by a poll
McLeish called the book land of the free this is another one of my
recommendations to your beautiful book the photographs were
ones that were taken during the dust bowl agent during the time
of the cutting of timber in Michigan and Wisconsin and they
portray a rather devastated kind of land and McLeish took these
photographs composed a poll to go with them he called the poll
on the soundtrack for the pictures the final page of this book
called land of the free pictures the face of a wizened old man
torn his soiled suit worn he does not have it made and yet he's
looking squarely at the camera jaw set unsmiling eyes gleaming
apparently he's asking questions and they are not without
discouragement but no one would confuse his expression with
despair it's got too much insistence to much resistance to much
wonder and determination for that like features of the old man's
face the closing lines of this poem that McLeish called the
soundtrack wonder if the liberty is done the dreaming is finished
we can't say we aren't sure we don't know where asking
McLeish's verse does not exude optimism and yet the yearning
and wondering of his lines finally expressed either despair nor
lack of courage and morale to continue McLeish apparently feels
the urge for renewal for a new beginning if one can be made and
he understands that such feelings may run deepest not when
times are placid and all seems well but rather when events have
disoriented one sense of direction so with McLeish's poem
sounds a somber note when that should rightly sober all shallow
American self-confidence it may still be an apt prelude for the
rebirth that Americans need having outlined those seven
suggestions about assumptions to help govern American
dreaming in the future our time in the series is nearly at an end
but permit me please just a few more closing remarks to sum up
a little differently the mood I hope these lectures have
engendered a mood that can perhaps be instructive to recall as
we go our various but interdependent American ways Ronald
Reagan whose path from small-town Midwestern radio announcer
to Hollywood movie star the president of the United States
embodied in American dream itself Ronald Reagan liked to call up
John Winthrop's Puritan image of America as a city on a hill he
was also fond of Thomas P 18th-century dream that we
Americans could begin the world over again in the 1988
presidential campaign although it's a long time back you may
recall Michael Dukakis is Labor Day speech when he stood in the
shadow of the Statue of Liberty and announced that he was a
product of the American dream and when George Bush sketched
his picture of 1000 points of light images of the dream or once
again not far behind contrast rhetoric of that kind with words
whose inspiration is not American but French instead song from
which they come is part of the musical version of Victor Hugo's
Les Miserables which I've referred to earlier the words are some
fairly early in the production by woman life is not treated kindly
her name is fine team and her lament is worth remembering I had
a dream she sings my life would be so different from this hell I'm
living so different now from what it seemed now life is killed the
dream I dream having things go wrong in ways akin to Fontaine's
experience is an American reality to there are many in our land
and in those places affected by the American dream with as
much injustice as Feinstein encountered discover that their
dreams cannot be that there are storms we cannot weather and
that life kills dreams studs Terkel whom we had met before as
worried along those lines his 1980 sequel to American dreams
lost and found is called the great divide second thoughts on the
American dream summing up more interviews he found too many
unhealthy riffs races religions that hasn't have-nots all are split
more than they were a decade earlier he found lamenting an
increased collective amnesia as he called it a loss of contact
with our past Turco also detected in urine for belief that hearing
however does as much to widen the great divide as it does to
Bridget America may not be blown up says Turkel but an equally
grim scenario seems possible polluted air polluted water it's
going to be death by strangulation he writes the overall detritus
of banality will overwhelm and yet even though aspects of the
American dream are nightmarish there is considerable evidence
and rightly so that we Americans have not abandoned the in the
possibility of new beginnings or for that matter in the American
dream as a whole Terkel himself provides an example great
though the divide may be as he appraised second thoughts about
the American dream at the end of the 1980s he takes heart in the
fact that there are more grassroots activities today he says than
ever before in our history insisting that there's got to be a change
the ads I think it's happening I hope if you could coalesce all
those little groups Goliath has the networks and channels in
certain newspapers but we got the slingshot Terkel has allies the
periodic popularity of books such as Charles Reich's the
Greening of America or William least heat Moon's blue highways
a journey into America help testify to that a 1970s version of the
myth of America as an Eden Reich's version predicted that the
American consciousness would transform itself into a new
openness a new honesty a new awareness of individual worth
that is less competitive and cooperative some current trends
indicate that many Americans still share Reichs hopes for rebirth
of their personal lives if not for the life of society at large the
body feeling head for the gym a weight control program or the
latest thing in cosmetic surgery the psyche disintegrating try a
new age religion see a therapist will put Humpty Dumpty back
together again or if you can afford therapy via self-help book and
do the job yourself experiencing dark nights of the soul when as
F Scott Fitzgerald said it is always 3 o'clock in the morning
become a born-again Christian or transcendental meditator or go
out of the now all too much for us complexity back to the land on
a communal farm less optimistic than Reich and persuaded that
there was no quick or the inevitable fix for his nearly desperate
sense of isolation and a growing suspicion that I live in an alien
land William least heat Moon Chuck his Missouri routine on the
last night of winter took to the back roads in a van named ghost
dancing and looped America from the heartland out and around
searching for clarity and renewal this half Anglo half Native
American concluded by wondering in a season on the blue roads
what had I accomplished the log of heat Moon's journey answers
in my own country I had gone out had met had shared I had stood
as witness the blend of change in permanence he found was far
from perfect yet it's hope was enough to keep him going because
as he stresses I sometimes heard human voices that showed the
power not of vision but of revision the power to see again and
revise America obviously differs in many ways from what it was
200 150 or even 10 years ago visions of some parts of its dream
had indeed been revised and other still need to be in at least one
respect however the country has not changed much at all and I
think we should be glad of that in spite of ironic disparities
between ideals and realities enough good has happened in this
land for its vistas to empower still a dream that can inspire
challenge and call us to account as a people that fact confers
responsibilities upon us at Willie Loman's funeral near the end of
Arthur Miller's play death of a salesman Willie's friend Charlie
says a salesman's got to dream toy it comes with the territory
the same ought to be said of all of us still state claims on
American ground