Ernest Hemingway and the Reality of the American Dream

Ernest Hemingway's fiction criticizes the American Dream and its myth of success in the early twentieth century. In The Sun Also Rises, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," Hemingway exposes the corrupting influence of monetary wealth. During the economic collapse of the Great Depression, many Americans created for themselves a fantasy world to avoid the reality of the failure of the American Dream. In "Fathers and Sons," The Garden of Eden, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway's characters escape into their own illusions. "Wine of Wyoming" and To Have and Have Not show the disillusionment of individuals who are denied access to the Dream. Hemingway uses the example of Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea to show a new and more realistic American Dream in which material wealth is not the goal. Hemingway is not bound by the geographical setting of his characters in his assessment of the Dream, illustrated by using Americans away from the United States, outsiders in America, and an expanded understanding of America to make his evaluation.