Social Class and the American Dream Theme Analysis

The novel opens with the family having achieved the economic prosperity and success associated with the “American dream.” Wealthy enough not to have to work, the woman’s life is full of traditional American signs of prosperity and class. She owns her house in the suburbs, wears white gloves, and hires a maid to clean her house. For all intents and purposes, she has achieved the American dream of a secure, middle-class lifestyle.

It quickly becomes clear, however, that the woman’s class status and wealth cannot protect her or her family from racism and internment. As soon as the U.S. government turns on its Japanese-American citizens, the woman’s wealth and perceived security all disappear. Overnight, the government freezes her bank accounts and takes away the family’s civil liberties. This sudden and staggering injustice, especially compared to the family’s previous status in America, suggests that the “American dream” might only be a fantasy for minority groups. Because they don’t have the security of being a part of the dominant white majority, Asian-Americans and other minorities can easily be turned against and demonized as “other” or not “real” Americans.

Interestingly, at the internment camp class divisions within the Japanese-American community become more blurred. Businessmen become janitors and the wealthy have no access to their money, so there is no real way to back up any elite status they might want to maintain. In this way, institutional racism paradoxically equalizes the Japanese-American community by uniting everyone under the same shared struggle. There are still exceptions to this, however: even after the woman loses her wealth, her former maid—who is also interned at the camp—continues her social role as lower-class “help” when she helps carry the woman’s bucket of water to the barracks. This small interaction suggests that class divisions do not ever fully disappear, even when a community shares a common race, ethnicity, and living situation, and is also struggling against a single mutual oppressor.

When the family returns home after the war, the woman begins anew her pursuit of the American dream. With few job opportunities for Japanese-Americans after the war, the woman takes a job as a domestic worker in order to provide for her children. Having achieved the “dream” and then having had it snatched away from her, she is forced to begin again from the bottom. The novel ultimately suggests that for people of color, the American dream is something of a mirage, or perhaps a nightmare.