Hillbilly Elegy Book Report

The American Dream The American Dream is a personal thing. Every person’s belief or thought is different from each other’s on what the American Dream should be. What is your American Dream? The J.D. Vance book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, he talks about the native values of his upbringing and how they are related to the social problems of his hometown. He was born in August 2, 1984 and grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. He called himself and his family “Hillbillies”. His grandparents were struck by the poverty and shifted to Ohio to change their fate. Vance raised up in Ohio by his grandparents who were hard working and had firm believe in the American …show more content…
In hillbilly cultures, people had defeated mindset that they are born in the poverty and destined to live with it all their lives. They did not want to work and progress beyond their thinking and wanted to remain wherever they are. They blamed the government and the system for being poor instead of taking initiative from their side and working hard. For example, the author writes about a guy, who quit his job just because he did not want to wake up early in the morning and later criticized the president for having a poor economic plan for the country (8). Vance was also once a victim of a defeated mindset when he used to fight and an argue with his girlfriend just like his previous generations …show more content…
He lists the solutions of a stable family and self-motivation to deal with the crisis of defeated mindset and dysfunctional families. First, let’s talk about the importance of self-motivation, which is the key to success in everyone’s life. Without motivation, one cannot direct his efforts efficiently toward a goal and hence will be less likely to achieve that goal. So, self-motivation according to me is a pre-requisite for bringing an individual out of the state of defeated/fixed mindset and help him being successful in the life. That motivation can come either from any of your contacts or may come from within yourself. Secondly, a stable family environment plays a vital role in the success of an individual life. If the family environment is not productive, it will have a negative effect on all the people living in that family, especially the children and youth who can try the negative interventions like drugs, violence etc. to escape from it. If the family environment is good, in which the parents have a good bond between each other and also with their children, the children will feel free to discuss their problems with their parents. Thus, they will be less likely to resort to the negative alternatives like drugs to get a temporary solution. The parents can work as a guide to the children and the family will also be economically stronger. There is enough