When I think of the American Dream many things come to mind, the original idea of hope, kindness and freedom. Then I think of the many people who have traveled here over the past years haven’t been welcomed with open arms, like when Ellis Island opened up years ago. They have a dream in mind that has been just that, a dream. When you look at all the immigrants that have come to America for jobs and to start a new life, that doesn’t always end how they want, sometimes it never even starts good for them. When you come to America it’s not an open gate anymore it’s full of barbwire and guns, millions of check overs and criminal backgrounds. If you do get through it’s not all love and freedom, from here on out there will be people who think that all you are here for his to steal their jobs and take their money or even hurt the ones they love, which most just want to make money to send home to their families. In the end it all depends on how you look at and everyone’s definition of the American Dream is completely different from one another. There is a good and a bad to every story, just depends on how you want to look at it.

We were told to interview two people, who had been out of high school for five years, to see what their American Dream is or what they think it should be. I asked my mother, Denise, what her American Dream is and she said that it was to have the money for her and her family to do what they want to do. To be able to get what she wants and not have to worry about switching money around to pay for it or having to just have enough to cover it. She said that she thought the American Dream in the big scheme of things was to come to America get an amazing job buy a nice house and do whatever they want. Even though she said that was the American dream she said that it was extremely hard to do just that. With the world we live in today people do not like new comers even more than before when we open Ellis Island and had thousands coming from all over the world.  

The next person I interviewed was my father, Dave, he said that his American dream was to move to Orlando, Florida and live his day in a warm and sunny home. He said he wants to work at Walt Disney World as a cast member and find out all the inside secrets of the parks. Dave wants to wake up every morning with the bright sun shining and no coming of winter. His American Dream is to be somewhere that there is no snow.  His American dream is a bit different than most would think when you think of the dream but it is a dream. This shows that everyone’s American Dream is completely different from each other, not everyone’s American dream everyone thinks it will be.

The American dream is one idea that will never be the same for everyone. It’s not all about freedom and hope, when you add money in there and the society now days you never know what could happen to people when they come over, it could end up happy with money and a family or bad with barely any money and just getting by. So to sum everything up a lot of the time people say the American Dream will always be about hope and freedom and nothing more and others say that now money will always come first in the American Dream, before anything else. So I ask you this, what do you believe? That money will come first before anything else or that hope and freedom will never come second.