Analysis Of Professor Harlon Dalton's 'Horatio Alger'

The United States of America, or often recognized as "the land of opportunity” where individuals seek to achieve "The American Dream” hard work, initiative and persistence. If people have the sufficient determination and motivation to push themselves to the maximum and strive through every obstacle they might face, they can achieve their fullest potential and become successful. But what exactly defines "success" and is every single person really exposed to the same equal opportunity for this "success"? In the article, "Horatio Alger", Professor Harlon Dalton disputes Alger 's ideas about what it takes to achieve this Dream, which conveys around the idea of an individual 's merit. Dalton disagrees with Alger’s belief about a and argues that Alger fails to show the common issue the American country faces with discrimination and the …show more content…
In her article, "From America 's New Working Class" (342), Arnold finds that individuals under "workfare" factories face brutal conditions such as freezing temperatures, sexual assaults, murder, and kidnapping. However, these factories remain unsupervised and deregulated, and despite all these factory worker 's hard work and conditions, there is no way up and no way out because they are the "lower working class" and they are taken complete control of. In the article, "Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumption" (314), author Diana Kendall further explains how the media aids in shaping public opinion about the upper, middle, working, and poverty classes by "framing" their stories in misleading ways and the effects it has on society as a whole and how it effects each social class individually. Through the research found in these three articles, one could conclude that maybe "The American Dream" really isn 't equally available to everyone and despite one 's hard work, upward mobility can be nearly