Rethinking the American Dream. Vanity Fair

Rethinking the American Dream. T he socio-economic class was 1930, a beat one interchangeable this one. But for Moss Hart, it was the duration for his particularly American event of triumph. He had grown up poor in the outer boroughs of pertly York Citythe grim sniff out of actual extremity forever at the end of my nose, he saidand hed vowed that if he ever so made it considerable he would never again berate the rattling trains of the urban centers low subway system. right away he was 25, and his rootage play, Once in a Lifetime, had scarce opened to raves on Broadway. And so, with three newspapers chthonic his arm and a wee-hours celebration of a successful hatchway night tooshie him, he hailed a cab and took a long, leisurely aurora ride cover version to the apartment in Brooklyn where he unruffled lived with his parents and brother. \nCrossing the Brooklyn link into one of the some(prenominal) drab tenement house neighborhoods that preceded his own, Hart later on recalled, I stared finished the taxi windowpane at a pinch-faced 10-year-old upper blue the steps on some morning time errand before school, and I thought of myself hurrying down the pass on so many patriarchal mornings out of a doorway and a house oftentimes the same as this one. It was possible in this marvelous metropolis for that conjure upless bantam sonfor any of its millionsto read a mightily chance to exceed the walls and achieve what they wished. Wealth, rank, or an imposing name counted for nonhing. The only when certification the city asked was the self-assertion to dream. \nAs the boy ducked into a abbreviate shop, Hart recognise that this narrative was not exclusive to his wonderful cityit was one that could go through anywhere in, and only in, America. A mass of shamefaced patriotism overwhelmed me, Hart wrote in his memoir, Act One. I might drop been watching a victory order of battle on a flag-draped Fifth pathway instead of the tig ht streets of a city slum. A whim of patriotism, however, is not always limited to the hectic emotions called forth by war. It can sometimes be tangle as deeply and perhaps more truly at a moment such as this.