Essays

The British Dream (Hearts&Minds) compared to the American Dream (The Tortilla Curtain)
In the following analyze, I’m going to take a closer look at the similarities and differences of the British and American dream, considering the two novels “Hearts&Minds” and “The Tortilla Curtain”.
The idea of the so called American Dream is represented in a really famous novel, called “The Tortilla Curtain” by T.C. Boyle.
The characters Candido and his wife America come illegally to the USA to start a new life. The living conditions in their home country are extremely bad and finding jobs in which they could earn enough is impossible there.
They decide to go to the USA, a country which represents the idea of the American Dream. That means that everybody who works hard and who acts morally right will be able to improve his or her life. This idea includes the chance for prosperity and success.
A lot of immigrants, like Candido and America, want this kind of life and they think that they will find it in the Unites States.
Candido who has been to the USA before, knows that it’s not that easy. Especially not for illegal immigrants. His wife America has to face the harsh truth, when she discovers how illegal immigrants actually have to live.
She thinks that when she comes to the USA, she and Candido will find a decent job, with which they will earn enough money to hopefully live in a nice flat. She thinks that her whole life would be so much better than in her home country. What she didn’t know was that illegal immigrants have to be “invisible”. That means they have to moonlight. In those kinds of jobs they don’t earn much money. There are some days where they don’t even get a job because other illegal’s got the jobs before them. So it’s possible that they have to be a day or longer without any money. This means that buying food is also extremely hard. Living in a flat is impossible for Candido and America. They have to sleep outside and hide behind bushes where no one can see them.
Their American Dream is just an illusion. They left their home country to get out of the poverty, but that’s exactly what was waiting for them in the USA.

Just like in America, there also is a “British Dream” in England. The idea behind this dream is that people desire to live a middle-class or an upper middle-class life, where they are successful and where they earn enough money. This picture is represented in “Hearts&Minds”, for example in the chapter called “A North London Dinner Party” (p. 194). The “high society” meets and none of them have to worry about money.
This is why especially illegal immigrants come to Britain. Just like in America, they think that they will find a better job in England and that they will be away from the poverty in their home countries and maybe be able to live a life that people from an upper class live.
Considering the British Dream in “Hearts&Minds”, you can definitely say that there are a lot of parallels to T.C. Boyle’s novel.
Especially two characters, Anna and Job, are going through a similar situation as Candido and America.
Anna comes to Britain because she is sick of her boring life in the Ukraine. She thinks that she can’t have a successful future at home. She has this dream that when she comes to England, she can directly work as a chambermaid in a hotel and that she’ll have a nice life in London. Compared to the village where she lived before she came to England, London seems like such an exciting big city to her (p.29:,,To get to England, to London, is the dream of all.&rdquo.
What Anna really has to experience in London, is something that she could have never imagined. What she doesn’t know is that she was sold to a brothel. After arriving in London she is immediately forced to work as a prostitute. The living standards that she has to experience there are not even human anymore. The pimps don’t give her and the other prostitutes much food and there are also days when they don’t get anything to eat. She is beat almost every day. Her life in England is even worse than her life in the Ukraine.
This idea of the “British Dream” doesn’t work out for her at all.
The same goes for Job. He leaves Zimbabwe because he and his wife are poor and they have to struggle because of political injustice. His aim is to come to London, be safe there and find a job, so he can send some money to his wife and his mother at home. Finding a good job turns out to be quite hard or actually impossible due to the fact that Job is an illegal immigrant as well.
He earns so little that he has to take more than one job.
Job’s and also Anna’s “British Dream” is similar to America’s and Candido’s American Dream. They wanted to come to this prosperous country and change their lives for the better. But nothing went how they wanted it to be. Again, none of them has enough money and they are all still stuck in poverty.
Comparing these two stories with each other, you can see that one fact is clear: Neither the British, nor the American Dream worked here.
A slight difference between those two concepts is that the idea of the American Dream is a hard working and morally good person. It tells us that you have to work hard and then you will be successful.
As a contrast to this, the “British Dream” seems to be more superficial. There’s actually no real or official “British Dream” that tells you how to be successful; there’s more just this concept of a big and high-quality society. This can be seen in all the high-society dinner parties in Hearts&Minds (e.g. p. 194). All the people from a higher class meet and talk about all the problems that immigrants in their opinion bring with them. They talk in a way which shows that they think that they’re better people than the immigrants and they see them as something disturbing. They seem to think that immigrants are taking away their jobs and that they are responsible for everything bad that happens in Britain (p. 198 ,,The Problem is that the English have become the underclass, covered with colonial guilt.&rdquo
Those are Polly’s friends talking but who are immigrants themselves. On the one side, they say that immigrants, like for example the Polish people, work hard and do a good job but on the other side they think that there are way too many immigrants in Britain (p. 198 ,,There’s a limit to how much a culture can absorb, and we’re long past it.&rdquo
In contrast to this, the American Dream is more about success for everyone. This pursuit of happiness is available for everybody. It tells us that you can achieve everything that you want with hard effort.
So comparing the “British Dram” to the USA, it actually does not tell you that this concept is really for everybody.

What those two concepts still have in common is the idea of a successful and wealthy life and both seem to be a big illusion. It’s more a dream than reality. Of course there are some exceptions. There are some immigrants, like Polly’s friend Hemani (H&M) who came to Britain and who were able to live a life in an upper class.
A lot of people fail to succeed, especially illegal immigrants. For most of them it’s just too expensive to become a legal citizen and that makes it impossible for them to live their American or British Dream.
The best examples are the four characters from the two books. They all have the same hopes and dreams and they all have to recognize that it’s not as easy as they think it will be.