An Analysis of Gish Jen's use of the American Dream in her novel Essay

An Analysis of Gish Jens use of the Ameri earth-closet Dream in her myth Typical American - Essay ExampleThe latter abstract phenomenon reveals the secret of American success immolation of morals in the pee of prosperity.Gish Jens characters, Chinese immigrants, are between two cultures as between the devil and the deep sea, between familial dreams and their own thirst for self-definition, between the Old World traditions and shiny, new dreams of the New World. Chang family are perpetual outsiders, connoisseurs of the strange, sometimes mysterious aspects of the world around them and the odd, surprising ways in which race and discrimination and family history can confuse their sense of individuality. Chang family seems to be stumbling on the edge of American phenomenon, the identity crisis (Kakutani). As newcomers to America, they take this countrys incident seriously, a prospect that would cause both liberating freedom and discord.Ralph is the main character, whose ideals were be ing changed in the process of the novel. He left for America to earn an engineering degree, but he wanted to preserve all the seeds of Chinese way of life. In his mind Ralph surely discarded all tempts available for typical Americans (food, women, entertainments etc) and he thought that he would never be involved into this vicious circle. Chang family mocks at American typicality of living they make fun of Americans, who live with more freedom and liberation, and typicality becomes a kind of plague for them. Nevertheless in the course of time, Ralph gets married, earns his doctorate in engineering, buys his root home, has two daughtersand becomes typical American. Thus its no wonder that his ambitions need release and Ralph becomes seduced in order to reach an American Dream. Ralph thinks that in America if you have money, you can do anything. You have no money, you are nobody. You are clink (Gish, 66). Suddenly Ralph gets a shot I the arm, finds an American-born con-man Grover D ing, who disrupts the harmony of Chang family lives and unties their relationships and provokes them to become typical Americans. This man instills Changs gluttonous materialism, marital betrayal, and person-to-person fraudulence. Ralph is highly motivated by Dings ideas and launches a fast-food restaurant, called Chicken Palace, which eventually fails. Fortunately, Chang family becomes united at the end of the novel and able to restore their initial morals, principles and traditions. A struggle between valuesIn the characters of Ralph, Theresa, and Helen, Jen shows lives of immigrants as a struggle between old-world and new-world values between good and evil. At first the main characters sacrificed their self-identities, got disjointed in the New World. In the U.S. immigrants run into changes of their Old World circumscribed roles. They have a unconscious responsibility to preserve at least some