iRic.com

Asleep to the Dream Historically, America prides itself as a place of freedom and expression. A place where people could live a free, prosperous life for themselves and their descendants. For citizens of the United States, the American Dream is a common value that lies at the very heart of the nation. “The American Dream is the aspirational belief in the US that all individuals are entitled to the opportunity for success and upward social mobility through hard work” (Dictionary.com). But in America, are all individuals entitled to the same opportunities for success? What does it mean to “make the world a better place?” A continuing theme in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me is the belief in the dream, and the impact of the dream on his life as a man of African-American descent. “A very large number of Americans will do all they can to preserve the Dream” (33). The ideas that Coates expresses throughout the book serve the opinion that as a black man living in the United States