Dreams? Era? Personal Connections?
After reading A Pair Of Silk Stockings and A Wagner Matinee, what are you considering or reconsidering about the American Dream? How do these stories align with and address some of the eras in American Literature. What personal connections regarding escapism and sacrificing a passion can you critique or connect with in these stories? (Please complete this blog response during class today.)
posted by Greg T at Friday, January 16, 2015
27 Comments:
I think people are too concerned about superficial success and monetary wealth as the American Dream that they forget that there is far more to the Dream than that. We have an opportunity to live a life of freedom and we should take it.
After reading "A Pair of Silk Stockings," my view on the American dream changed. It made my consider what I want to do with my money when I am older. Do I want to be selfish and not have a family. I could spend every dime to myself, or do I take a different approach. I could be generous and start a family and raise some kids. As of now, I would rather not start a family so I could travel and spend money on myself, but that could change in future years.
After reading these specific pieces about escapism, one can see that they connect to transcendentalism because they are escaping their daily lives to experience something else. When something is taken away from them, they realize what they were missing. This happens a lot to everyone because we don't miss something until it is gone. These are very important aspects to consider, the idea that sometimes we need to escape the daily routine of our modern lives in order to truly live life.
After reading the story it has kinda swayed my perception of the American Dream. This woman has devoted her life while heatedly to her family and kinda has lost focus on her importance. She stumbles across some money and starts to rediscover what it is like to treat yourself to something enjoyable. It makes you kinda reconsider the thought that has been dismissed of should dreams be selfish?
After reading A Pair Of Silk Stockings and A Wagner Matinee, I am reconsidering what the modern American Dream looks like. For most people today, the American dream is money, fame, fortune. The modern American Dream is going from rags to riches.
In the story A Wagner Matinee, doing what makes you happy is what the American Dream is. From reconnecting to your dreams, to just smiling a bit each day, happiness is what the true American Dream should look like.
Within these stories, there's a sense of escapism. That's what happiness is too, an escape from the modern world that we find cruel. Happiness is escapism. The authors of these stories have seemed to notice this way before the people in our time. Maybe it's saying something about our society today.
After reading A Pair of Silk Stockings, I didn't reconsider my American dream. However I could relate to escapism. Every day after I get home from school I want to escape, although some people may do this by watching TV or sleeping, I prefer to do this by playing guitar. When I do this I can escape all things that are happening to me in the world. It is as if nothing can touch me now. Although I with I could play guitar forever I can't. I don't know enough songs and I have other things to do. I truly love to play guitar and wish that it would never end I know that the only way that I can escape reality is if I stay in reality most of the time.
After reading the story by Willa Cather, I believe the American dream is to live how you want. Not letting anyone tell you how to live will lead to a happy life. Willa Cather decided to give up what she loved. She made that decision on her own. After reading "A pair of silk stockings" my view on the American dream didn't change at all. I haven't reconsidered it all.
The American Dream in these stories is different from the American Dream I had previously believed was real. These two stories express that even with hard work, ambition and a dream, things don't always work out. The two women in the stories both had dreams and ideas in their heads about the future and how everything would work out. But as they grew older they found that, despite their hard work and love f their dream, they had to make sacrifices. Whether it was for their family or something else, their dream was sacrificed for others. The two women found themselves in situations where they were given a taste of a different life and both wished to never leave it. Escapism has to do with a desire to escape into a nostalgic life that is not real.
These two documents take similar but then again very different perspectives on what the American Dream actually means. A pair of silk stockings glorifys the beauty of living rich, and striving to do the best and make the best for yourself. How it feels to be colored me by Willa Cather, emphasizes mostly on the hardships and the struggles to even get to the American Dream. The quote "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background," in How it feels to be colored, obviously explains the issue of race and how that may be a set back to archiving your dreams in America. I believe the American dream is what you make it to be and even though there may be struggles to reach the freedoms that America has, it is all worth it because the dream gives you the opportunity to do what you want.
After reading these two stories, it is clear that peoples American Dreams can not only be shaped by the era they live in, but also the struggles they face. As seen in A Pair of Silk Stockings, Mrs. Sommers lived a semi-deprived life where she was not granted many of the luxuries as the wealthy. Therefor, when she found those fifteen dollars, her dreams were set on standards that might seem normal for the wealthy.
I am reconsidering the fact that you don't need money for happiness. I am doing this because, in the story "A Pair Of Silk Stockings" the main character finds money and spends it on her self which makes her happy. This could possibly align with the era of romanticism due to the fact that the core concepts and ideas are the same for each one. For me personally I can't relate to these stories because we are so young and have still not given up things that we have reconnected with yet. To critique the stories seem a little unrealistic.
After reading A Pair of Silk Stockings and Wagner Matinee, one might realize the sacrifices that are made everyday by our loved ones. These sacrifices are made by people who want the best for us, and it makes me realize that a huge portion of someones American Dream might include doing things that don't always make you super happy or doing things for personal pleasure. Instead, things should be done in your lifetime to provide for those you love and sacrifices should be made so others can live better.
After reading A Pair of Silk Stockings and a Wagner Matinee, I've realized the trend of distraction a making sacrifices. When reading A Pair of Silk Stocking, Kate Chopin had found 15 dollars, at first she had good intentions to spend it on her family and items that they needed, but instead she had spent the money on luxurious items and outings. This shows us that the American Dream is more than family values, but it is also material values that seem to make society pleased by how they look and make us feel. These stories have made me realize that the American Dream comes with sacrifices. A personal connection that I can make to escapism, is taking time to myself from my family and the responsibilities that I have such as working, school work, and household chores.
I'm considering that my American dream should be to live happy and with pleasure. Mrs Summers in A Pair of Silk Stockings was happy with the money she got. We need to learn to live more honest and purely like the Puritans did. The transcendentalists learned to give things up and live they way they believe through the nature. Our American dream should be more like that which is better for us.
Having read, "A Pair of Silk Stockings," I've reconsidered my view of the American dream. As shown in this story, there is a multitude of ways your money may be spent, and I now believe that finding an ideal balance between spending money and time on myself, vs spending it on other people or necessities is very important to the American dream. Both establishing myself financially and treating myself are very crucial to my ideal American dream.
I believe the American dream is very selfish and materialistic. The more We talk about the American dream in class and read about I realize that Americans are striving for the wrong things. The American dream was once about being able to pursue any lifestyle you wanted to and be free. Somewhere a long the way we have turned the dream into something wrong.
I think that after reading these two stories, that sometimes the American Dream can get in the way of what is really important. In A Pair Of Silk Stockings, Mrs. Sommers finds herself with a large sum of money for the time in which she lives, and the American Dream would say that to feel happy she would have to spend it all on herself. However, at the beginning of the text, she realizes that there are bigger concerns within her family and decides against that. She is then tempted by the American Dream when she was perfectly happy before, but now needs to keep living the American Dream to feel happy even though there are more important things that she could have spent the money on. On the contrary, in A Wagner Matinee, the woman gives up what means the most to live the American Dream of a stable career with her husband, but finds herself maybe wishing that she hadn't when she is re-exposed to what she gave up. So, coming to a conclusion, escapism I think, can be many things, Mrs Sommers escapes within the American Dream, while the woman in A Wagner Matinee escapes from the American Dream.
Our main character had to give up her passion, do to the circumstances of life. This is nothing that uncommon as giving up different things is just part of life. Compromising things for those around us is just how the world turns. It appears that in the story, our main character was accustomed to the lavish style of her day. She uses the shopping spree as a escape.
After Reading these Stories my View of the American dream has changed. The original thought that everybody has about the american dream is that you will become very successful and rich. But these stories show how that not everyone can be rich. these show the american dream as simply taking part in small pleasures. Like in the Stockings story the simply finds her self buying small thing that make her happy. basically live for the small things.
After reading "A Pair Of Silk Stockings" and "A Wagner Matinee" it made me think about about myself in the future. A Pair of Silk Stockings made me consider how I control and use my money. It made me consider if I use my money selfishly or on my family and on things that matter. After reading both it makes me think that as humans, we are too focused on success with wealth and possessions. If we as Americans can go back to our older dreams where possessions and money weren't as important.
After reading the stories we explored in class in regards to escapism, my consideration about the American dream has not changed. However my understanding of it has been enhanced, because I see the connection between escapism and transcendentalism more clearly. In conclusion, everyone has there own different America Dream, but everyone has one for the same reason. Escapism.
After reading "A Pair of Silk Stockings", it made me realize that my American dream is actually to just be happy enough with my life that there is no desire to "escape", that I won't go through the daily routine and wish I was somewhere else.
After reading those two stories, I realized that there is no set American dream. Everyone's dream is different, and I don't think that dreams change with different eras. Sure the materials will be different but the ideas will stay the same.
After reading the stories, I realized my American dream is to just be happy and to be thankful for what I have. When I'm thirty, I don't want to look back at the last ten years of my life and wish I had a different life. I just want to be happy.
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I'm not rethinking anything about the "American Dream" after reading these two pieces, because there is no such thing as an "American Dream." It's just a stupid idea made up by egotistical Americans to make themselves feel superior to people from other countries. I can connect to "A Pair of Silk Stockings" because I often just want to escape from reality and not have to care about anything.
After reading "A Pair of Silk Stockings", I realized that although you should treat yourself every once in a while, you can't over do it, especially when your family needs that money for necessities. I learned that I definitely need to manage how I spend my money and save it for important things that I actually need instead of spending it on useless things.
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