First coined by James Adams in The Epic of America, the American Dream has
always invited hope into all those that think of it. For those that journeyed into the US during
the early 1900s, they strove for success and freedom that they were unable to attain
elsewhere. During the 1950s, the American Dream became the ultimate idea of success: hard
work and dedication will pay off to fame and fortune. As time went on, however, this idea
became more and more convoluted. The American Dream not only became harder to achieve,
the idea of it became harder to understand; every person has their own, separate idea of what
the term “American Dream” means. As seen in works by authors such as Alison Bechdel and
Maya Angelou, more often than not, the idea of the American Dream leads to failure in the
eyes of those that tried to follow it.
Alison Bechdel grew up in a home that had more attention given to it than she
probably ever had. The musical Fun Home shows two very different sides of the “American
Dream”. On one side, a person is able to achieve happiness. On the other hand, however, the
person more closely follows the idea of what the American dream is, but is unable to actually
attain it because of who they are. Bechdel told her family story not only in a musical, but in a
comic as well. Both of these forms were able to show its audience how her father’s idea of
perfection ended up ending his life. Much like in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman – a
show that also portrays the impact that a failed dream can have – Bruce, Alison’s father, kills
himself because of his dissatisfaction in life. Alison’s father, never quite convinced he should
have had a family, was more focused on other aspects of his life and covering up the parts of
himself that those around him would fail to understand. He spent the majority of his time at work, and
when he was home, he spent it restoring their house to its former glory. The
Bechdel’s seemingly idealistic family was quite the opposite, the glory that Bruce put into the
house concealed all the troubles within it. Just like how their house covered up the secret
family turmoil inside, Bruce strove to do the same with who he was. Bruce was gay, but he
married Alison’s mom because of the stigma associated with being gay at the time that he
grew up. Not only did Alison’s dad have to deal with the fact that he was gay during the mid-
nineteenth century, he also had to hide it from his family and from himself. He was
constantly hanging around and hooking up with younger boys in secret. Most of these boys
were from the high school class that he taught. While his relationship with his wife and
daughter were deteriorating, his relationships with these boys kept growing stronger. His
relationship with one boy, so close that he became his kids’ babysitter and a helper to Bruce
around the house. He was out working on another house that he had just bought, a house that
directly symbolized what Bruce thought of life when he jumped in front of a bus. Bruce
called the house “A piece of shit but [with] the greatest potential. It’s run down, I have a lot
of work to do, but it’ll get done. Imagine the glory it will have when it’s done.” (Bechdel
344). For many years, he thought about buying the house in order to restore it, but something
had always put him off from it. When Alison comes home from college for a weekend with
her girlfriend, she is surprised to find herself driving with her dad to this house that he had
been talking about buying for years. Soon after this drive with his daughter is when Bruce
decides to kill himself. The realization of what was going on in his life and how drastically
different it was from what he thought his life was going to be was too much for him and it led
to the end of his life.
While Bruce was on the end of the line after he realized what he was, his daughter,
Alison was finally finding happiness as she was finding herself. She always knew that
something was different, seen when she sings the song “Ring of Keys” in the second half of
the show. She never really understood the significance of what was happening in her life until
she left for college, but she understood that she was different. When she went to a Gay Union meeting,
she was finally able to understand who she was and what that meant for her as a human being. After
writing home to her parents, however, she realized that who she was is seen as wrong in the majority of
people’s eyes. She was never happy growing up, even though she lives in a country that says that
everyone is entitled to “the pursuit of happiness”. When she finally found herself and was beginning to
be happy with who she was, her parents shut her down. Her mother said she “was just being
overly-dramatic” and that “it was just a phase that she would get over” (Bechdel 83). Alison had spent
her whole life living in a body that she didn’t understand, and when she was finally able to be
comfortable enough to come out to her parents, her mother removed all progress Alison had made. Much
like in Andie Hochman’s essay, “Growing Pains”, after coming out to their parents, both girls watched as
their families’ lives drastically changed as they took in the “oddity” of Andie Hochman and Alison
Bechdel’s lives.
On her next visit home after coming out to her parents, Alison and her father went on a car trip.
Unbeknownst to Alison, it would be the last time that she would have the opportunity to talk with her
father (the song “Telephone Wire”), and she was unable to say anything at all to him. She sat there in the
passenger seat watching the passing trees and wires, trying to think of something to say, but coming up
short. She returns back to school the next day, and the next time she hears of her father, it’s to find out
that he has jumped in front of a truck and killed himself. Her family was upturned once again by another
unfortunate event. Alison, even though she may have been shocked by the fact that her father suddenly
killed himself, didn’t let his death stop her from becoming who she wanted to be. Growing up, she knew
that she had a natural talent for creating. At school, she not only found her knack for comic books, but
also for drawing reality in a cartoon-y way. She pursued her dreams, reinvigorated by finally
understanding who she was, and became a very successful comic book writer. She drew and wrote her
comic book Fun Home, to which the musical is based off of. She wrote about the true tales of her life and
the things that stood out to her about her life when she was growing up. She went against her mother’s
wishes of taking her comic book off of the shelves, and made another comic depicting her mother’s
response to publicly coming out to the entire world. Unlike her father, Alison Bechdel didn’t care about
what society thought about her and her lifestyle and sexuality. She lived in a time period not as accepting
of homosexuals as the times are now, but rose above the opinions of those around her to become not only
a successful comic book writer, but successful in her life as well. She can be quoted saying “I just have
this entrepreneurial spirit and I work really hard at promoting myself.” Alison Bechdel is an embodiment
of the American Dream, even though she lives a life that angered a lot of people in the time that she grew
up, and in the times now. She still continues to write comic books about topics that some would consider
controversial, but she doesn’t care. She just tries to keep inspiring her readers and others as well. She
promotes herself for who she is through the books that she writes.
Similar to how Alison Bechdel’s musical narrative tells the story of how the American Dream
can very easily go sideways, Maya Angelou portrays the failed side of the American Dream in her poems
and in her life. Maya Angelou’s poem “Caged Bird” can be used to identify a lot of the issues with the
American Dream as it applies to people of color. The poem speaks of two different birds, one that “leaps
/ on the back of a distant wind” (1-2) and “dips his wing / in the orange sun’s rays” (5-6) and another bird
that “stalks his bars of rage” and who’s “wings are clipped and feet are tied.” The two birds represent the
different sides of the American Dream, those that are able to attain it, and those that try but fail because
of extenuating circumstances. The poem, on the surface is about a bird trapped in a cage in a sort of split
screen with another bird, a free bird, as the caged bird sings of the freedom it wishes to hold in its grasp,
the caged bird “Sings… / of things unknown but longed for still… / for the caged bird sings of freedom”
(15-18). The bird in the cage tries to release its anger at being trapped by singing, it is the only way it can
give itself some sort of freedom because it “Can seldom see through his bars of rage / His wings are
clipped and his feet are tied / so he opens his throat to sing” (10-11). The free bird becomes a symbol of
the white man, born into a freedom that the caged bird just so happened to be unlucky enough to be born
into. The caged bird becomes a symbol of the colored men in women in America trying their hardest to
come into equality with the white man. Angelou switches back and forth between the perspectives of the
free bird and the caged bird. But the tone of each of the individual stanzas about the birds remains the
same. While the caged bird contains words of meaningful things such as freedom and the pain of being
trapped in a cage in its mind, the free bird thinks only of what its next meal is and the feel of the next
breeze under its wing as it flies through the air, the things that the caged bird go through never even
crossing its mind.
The free and the caged bird are symbolic of the racial struggles that were going on in the time
that the poem was written, 1983, and that still continue to go on today. While the free bird, some may
compare this to the white man in America, thinks only of menial things, the caged bird longs for the more
meaningful. The caged bird sings songs that reach the hills as its pain penetrates all of its thoughts and
gets carried to far off places. The clipped wings and narrow cage trap the bird to where it is much like
how the news networks of today demonize all black and Muslim Americans. The cage that the caged bird
lives in can be said to represent the confines that minorities are placed in in America. Although the bird is
still exposed to the wind and to some free space, the confines of the cage prohibit the bird from living the
life it should be able to if it were in the wild, or if the colored man were born into a white man’s body. It
sits on its small perch looking out at the other birds that fly freely, singing of things it wished it could be
experiencing. The hardships that the caged bird go through keep it from knowing the graces of the free
life, but allows it to know how much it truly does want to fly amongst the free birds. The song that the
bird sings is heard far and wide as the thing that it sings of, freedom, is sought by other birds in the same
situation as well, the things that it sings and wants go where the bird wishes to.
Relating these birds to people in America is not hard to do. Colored people in America are
constantly facing issues that white people take for granted. Colored women having it even harder than
colored men, because confines placed on women make it that much harder for them to succeed. Granted,
this situation is not true for all white and colored people. The poem can also very easily be applied to
someone who has ended up on the street because of mental health issues or someone that was put in jail
under false pretenses or wrongly convicted. Maya Angelou was a Civil Rights activist, therefore the
interpretation of this poem seems to be mainly applied to people of color like Maya Angelou. The poem
shows how it takes a lot more effort from the colored than from the Caucasian American to reach the goal
that they set for themselves. Angelou, I believe, wrote this poem in order to make it known to the
populace the issues that still face black Americans, even though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.
She not only wanted to make it known to the populace the constraints of the struggles that colored people
face, she wanted to use this poem to inspire them as well. “Caged Bird” can be seen as a story of hope,
too. Although the caged bird “can seldom see through his bars of rage”, his song is able to reach the
distant hills, meaning that its struggles are not only his own. There are more people going through the
same struggles as the one “Caged Bird” just like how the racial struggles that go on in one race are
mirrored in another race as well. Angelou’s poem not only shows how racial struggles can tear down the
attempts at freedom a man may have, it also relates to how people, even though they may try to, can have
other, extenuating circumstances that prevent them from reaching their “American Dream”.
The “American Dream” is a very non-Newtonian word. It has many meanings depending on who
you talk to. Through the analysis of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird”, I
realize that the American Dream is about letting your voice be heard. It’s about the success you feel you
need to reach and the happiness associated with that success. There are people who are happy with
finding success at the local level and there are people that strive for international fame. From the analysis
of Fun Home, however, I found that being happy with who you are and true to who you are is what can
directly lead to your success. Alison’s father was never fully able to successfully accept who he was, and
because of it, he found his life ending in front of a bus. Bruce became the caged bird that let the cage
close in on him. Meanwhile, Alison had her tune reach the distant hill, her comic book being turned into
a musical that toured not only the nation, but made its way to the West End in London as well. Even
though the widespread idea of the American Dream is something that most people cannot attain, the
success that one person sets for themselves is what makes them happy. So, although this idea is
something that everyone in the world thinks of when they think of America, the likelihood of everyone
attaining the so-called “American Dream” is not an achievable goal. More and more people are realizing
this. The idea and ideals associated with the American Dream have changed. More people are striving to
attain happiness rather than fame, and I think that that is the definition of the “American Dream”.
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