Myths and heroes : How does the idea of the American dream push its physical and symbolical frontiers always further and further?

Myth and hero

Today, I’m going to present the notion of « myth and hero ». It can be defined as a story about gods or heroes, it can be popular belief or a tradition or a false notion. A hero can be a mythological figure, a person who is admired for his or her achievements, a superhero or maybe a role or an icon. In our dossier, we will deal with the American frontier. We can ask ourselves: How does the idea of the American dream push its physical and symbolical frontiers always further and further?

First of all, we will focus on the American physical frontiers. Then, we will look at that with the American dream, even the American symbolical frontiers are pushed back.

On the one hand, we can consider the American physical frontiers are pushed by the American dream.

To begin with, the idea of the American dream appeared when British pilgrims arrived in America to exercise their religions and they found a land that meets the needs of abundance, material wealth, expansion and power. The American dream was born, and it was necessary to hunt the Indians to build this nation, it was the beginning of the pushing back of the American frontiers. The painting “American Progress” of John Gast shows the Indians who are hunted of their lands, they go to the left of the painting, which represents the west. They are accompanied by the allegory of manifest destiny that represents the mission of the American nation, which is the expansion of civilization to the west. And this way, and this from the beginning, the American physical frontiers are pushed back. Indian hunting is also mentioned in the document “They want to go home” of Howard Fast, because the Cheyenne are retained in the Indian territory in Oklahoma while they want to go home in Wyoming, I quote: “They want to go home. […] They mean home to Wyoming” (line 4/5). The goal is eliminating a maximum of Cheyenne in order to appropriate the land, for build the American nation.

On the other hand, we can also consider American dream pushed back the American symbolical frontiers.

Indeed, as it is mentioned in the video “Space Exploration Enthusiasts Say US Program Adrift”, in 2012, the NASA wanted to send astronauts to Mars in order to enlarge the American territory, be-cause the American dream, after the expansion of the civilization to the west, is also the space conquest. So, after the moon, the NASA wished to explore Mars, but this didn’t happen because it was too ambitious. However, it shows that America will never stop in terms of space conquest.

To conclude, the American dream is based on the conquest of the west and the space, the princi-ple of the American dream is always searched to have more, don’t be satisfied with what you have. Which explains the fact that the American physical and symbolical frontiers are always pushed back.

...