Mission Impossible

American Dream is one of the most important motifs of American literature. Because it plays an indispensable role in the forming of American nation and American literature, writers in the United States have always been probing and exploring it. Nathaniel Hawthorne is an important writer in the forming period of American literature. In The Scarlet Letter, he studies the theme of American Dream in the light of Calvinism. In Hawthorne's eyes, the history of the New England is a reenactment of the Fall on its new Adams and Eves. Hawthorne believes that because of the evil in human nature, the Puritan American Dream is doomed at the very beginning. William Faulkner is an important writer from American South. In his masterpiece Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner makes it clear that a Northern, industrial, and capitalistic American Dream is impossible to be fulfilled in American South. Furthermore, the Southern version of American Dream, that is, the Myth of the South is also a lie.In this thesis, the author discusses the origin of the American Dream in the history of the United States. Through the analysis of the two novels, the author studies the significance of the American Dream towards American culture, and its great influence on the individuals who are living within this culture. Going still further, the author points out that the disillusion of the American Dream is deeply rooted in the culture itself, and it is doomed that all dreams dreamed on this land, of this land would turn out disillusionment.