The Revolutionary American Dream

As the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening spread in America, logic took over as the center of the literary thought. People started to identify as Americans, and a sense of success of the self was born. The dream was to create a eutopic America, an America with a very conscious logistical construct. This empowerment of the individual instilled a sense of hope for the future of the new country.

An example of this concept of the American Dream can be found in Phillis Wheatley’s story to literary success. Born in Africa, she was brought to Boston in 1761 and purchased by the prosperous family of the Wheatleys (Belasco 599). Phillis was in ill health as a child, so she tended to wife Mary Wheatley. Mary admired Phillis for her intelligence and taught her to read and write. She took advantage of the opportunity given to her and advanced to learning Latin, history, religion, and geography (Belasco 599). Wheatley was quick-witted and learned that suppressing certain information was vital in order to succeed in this world; when her family inquired about her childhood, she would give vague answers and claim she could not remember (Norton). Wheatley was aware of her limitations as a slave and knew that her “captors” do not want to see her as someone who was taken away from her home but brought to her current one. Her intellect was constantly challenged with ludacris literary tests given to her by her superiors. Overcoming these obstacles, she went on to publish many poems and was eventually emancipated by the Wheatleys. Towards the end of her life, her success declined as a poet and in her personal life. After the death of two of her children, Phillis Wheatley passed away and was buried in an unmarked grave (Belasco 601). Wheatley was fortunate with the opportunities she received because of the enlightenment-influenced ideology of this era; however, her experiences as a slave and her constant need to prove her status as a successful writer questions the notion that this period was filled with logical hope. Wheatley seems as though her carefully fabricated public persona was performative to conform to the strictly constructed America she lived in, suggesting that the American Dream is too narrowly constructed to ingrain a true sense of hope.