Family, Drama, and American Dreams


Book Description

American drama is chiefly a drama of realistic family plays and its conventions revolve around the antagonistic impulses of security and freedom. Scanlan asserts that America's best plays are plays of family life and that they re-enact dilemmas of personal psychology and family structure.




Homeland


Book Description

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of North and South: The first in a saga about a German immigrant and his family’s rise in 20th-century America. The tide of the twentieth century is rising upon the world, and on its crest rides the Crown family. Young Pauli Kroner, freshly arrived in America from the streets of Berlin, makes his way to the mansion of his millionaire uncle in Chicago, looking to fulfill his dreams. His uncle, Joe Crown, is a self-made brewery tycoon who rules his domain with an iron hand—especially when it comes to his own family of defiantly rebellious children and a wife yearning for her own liberation. In this new world, Pauli will rise as his own man and find his destiny in the early days of motion pictures. Surrounded by relations close and distant, proud and vengeful, each struggling to find themselves at the dawn of a new era, he will witness and experience the violence of the Pullman Strike, and find love in the arms of a woman who can never be his as he follows the march of history, intertwined with such figures as the audacious Theodore Roosevelt, the ruthless Thomas Edison, the fading western icon Buffalo Bill, and many more. Named a New York Times Notable Book, Homeland is a “first-rate historical . . . chock-full of fascinating period detail, [Jakes’s] captivating story brings to life the sounds, smells and tastes of turn-of-the-century America in a manner comparable to Michener’s Hawaii and Doctorow’s Ragtime” (Publishers Weekly). This ebook features an illustrated biography of John Jakes including rare images from the author’s personal collection.




American Dreams


Book Description

Follows the historical saga of the Crown family, German immigrants who settle in Chicago, as they participate in the events of the early twentieth century







The American Dream in 20th Century American Drama


Book Description

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Department of English and American Studies), language: English, abstract: Every year thousands of people from all over the world migrate to the United States of America. For most people escaping war, poverty, ecological destruction and other dangers, the United States constitute a safe harbor where their hopes of a better life come true. Ever since the settling of what is today the US, people came to live in the New World and to lead a better life than in their countries of origin. The hopes connected with this better and happier live are all joined in the concept of the "American Dream", which became one of most powerful creation myths of a country. People migrating to the United States have certain dreams or hopes of a better life but in reality these promises often turn out to be not as strong as people originally believed them to be. Only a very small amount of people achieve the famous idea of "rising from rags to riches" whereas many people fail to attain their goal of a better life. Hence it is not surprising that the American culture not only is shaped by the glorious American Dream but also by the grim truth of its failing or being flunked. Of course, such an important concept deeply influences American culture. Continuously the ideas of the American Dream can be found in television, movies, literature, and arts for instance in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Gabriele Muccino's film The Pursuit of Happiness. This paper aims to examine the presentment and importance of the American Dream for twentieth century American drama. Drama in general was selected because of its importance as one of the three main literary genres. Temporal narrowing in form of 20th century was chosen because drama as a literary genre is characterized by experimentation with form and content in this period. Furthermore, some of the be




I Was Their American Dream


Book Description

“A portrait of growing up in America, and a portrait of family, that pulls off the feat of being both intimately specific and deeply universal at the same time. I adored this book.”—Jonny Sun “[A] high-spirited graphical memoir . . . Gharib’s wisdom about the power and limits of racial identity is evident in the way she draws.”—NPR WINNER OF THE ARAB AMERICAN BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews I Was Their American Dream is at once a coming-of-age story and a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children. The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. Malaka Gharib's triumphant graphic memoir brings to life her teenage antics and illuminates earnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised. Malaka's story is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream. Praise for I Was Their American Dream “In this time when immigration is such a hot topic, Malaka Gharib puts an engaging human face on the issue. . . . The push and pull first-generation kids feel is portrayed with humor and love, especially humor. . . . Gharib pokes fun at all of the cultures she lives in, able to see each of them with an outsider’s wry eye, while appreciating them with an insider’s close experience. . . . The question of ‘What are you?’ has never been answered with so much charm.”—Marissa Moss, New York Journal of Books “Forthright and funny, Gharib fiercely claims her own American dream.”—Booklist “Thoughtful and relatable, this touching account should be shared across generations.”– Library Journal “This charming graphic memoir riffs on the joys and challenges of developing a unique ethnic identity.”– Publishers Weekly







Death of a Salesman


Book Description

The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman’s deferred American dream Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity—and a play that compresses epic extremes of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room. "By common consent, this is one of the finest dramas in the whole range of the American theater." —Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times "So simple, central, and terrible that the run of playwrights would neither care nor dare to attempt it." —Time




American Dream


Book Description

For use in schools and libraries only. American Dream and Zoo story: two plays




Family Dysfunction in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie


Book Description

Tennessee Williams' 1944 play The Glass Menagerie centers around a family of three, Tom, Laura, and Amanda Wingfield, exploring what it means to share a household with people whose individual psychological eccentricities threaten to overwhelm the whole. Told retroactively in the format of a memory play, the protagonist, Tom, an aspiring poet by night and warehouse worker by night, introduces the audience to the conditions which led him to abandon his family in pursuit of his independence. This informative edition explores the themes of family dysfunction in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, providing readers with a critical look at the intersection of literature and sociology. The book includes an examination of Williams' life and influences and takes a hard look at key ideas related to the play, such as the role of guilt in family relationships and the breakdown of the American dream. Readers are also offered contemporary perspectives on family dysfunction through the discussion of toxic or overbearing parents and the effects of alcoholism on families.