American Facade

Matthew Woolery

Dr. Mary Boland

English 101

February 16 2009

The American Façade

I live in tract housing, it seems nice. Close to stores, close to entertainment, there is a mall, fast food, movie rental establishments, it is more or less safe and seems perfect. Besides what it appears to be, it is far from perfect. We have been conditioned to believe that suburbia is the American Dream. Suburbia is not, it is the Anti-dream, and I will explain why. If we eliminate our bias and remove our blindfolds, we can see that our young aspirations have been crushed by the counterfeit dream.

In the beginning days of our class, we were assigned a free write about how we envisioned our dream houses. Some of the houses were by the warm sunny beach, or in the mountains surrounded by lush trees and plants. Most of the houses were two stories, spacious, had pools, with large yards and rooms, and plenty of luxuries. They were pretty much mansions. I dream to live in a large single story house with a large pool and a huge yard, far from neighbors and calm. Now, I did an image search of “suburbia.” Guess what I found. The exact opposite, pictures of cramped, crowded little clones with tiny yards and nearly no luxuries. I stated in an earlier assignment hat I could probably hear my neighbors fart because the houses are so close to each other. Barely any of these cubicles were two stories, and at best, they could be described as boring, dull, and monotonous. Honestly, these places look like the neighborhood from Edward Scissor Hands by Tim Burton, and we know that is not a complement. During a speech entitled The Tragedy of Suburbia, criticizing the conditions of suburbia nowadays, James Howard Kuntsler described it with words such as, “dismal”, “despotic”, and “insidious”. Kunstler even went as far as the say that what we see in these areas is “visible atrophy,” and that we are degrading the public realm, and in turn, degrading the quality of civil life and character (Kunstler). James Howard Kunstler is an author, social critic, and public speaker. He graduated from the State University of New York at Brockport. It would seem that Kunstler agrees with my point. Suburbia is a virus and it is spreading, dissolving the American Dream and corroding the value of the U.S. (Kunstler). Obviously, this suburbia conflicts with our desires and hopes, because, besides the student’s descriptions of their dream homes, a picture search of “dream house” returned the exact same images of beautiful homes. If this is what we so clearly want, how does it change? In addition, why do we settle for suburbia?

What turns tract housing into a cozy little dream? I do not understand how we are conned into lowering our standards so dramatically. Maybe it is because all of our commodities are within close range and we do not have to travel far for anything, so we settle and forget our old desires. Grocery stores, movie theatres, fast food joints, and other popular places are easily accessible. Nevertheless, is this really an acceptable trade off for our dream? I do not think so. An unsettling reason could be that while we are young, we do not understand the difficulty of obtaining something so valuable. Middle and lower class citizens have to break their backs and struggle to feel their dreams, while the upper class is born with their foot in the door. By the time we can realize that we are not happy, it is to late to start over. Every human being has the ability for greatness, but few have an opportunity to make it easier and even fewer take advantage of the opening. In a sense, the “American Dream” is called so because it only happens in our sleep. But this does not mean that our hopes are lost.

Suburbia has become a part of the American dream and diminished its value, we hope to live in mansions in live in the lap of luxury, but somehow we settle for monotonous little units called houses. Everything is tough today, whether it be finding a house, job, staying in school or just getting into school. At this moment in time, my peers and I are at a transitional point. Right now, we are creating our futures and in that, determining what we will settle for and what our dreams really consist of. We must not lose sight of our fantasies because they can compel us forward. People must raise their standards, improve themselves, and upgrade their conditions to reawaken their lost American dreams.