Dreams Made of Wood May Burn

"Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build bombing airplanes;"
(1611).

Is this what the American Dream has led us to? With so many people focused on gaining so much life and goodness for themselves, why are we still so bent on destruction? The American Dream orders us to consume, invent, and climb at all costs. Edna St. Vincent Millay is right to criticize this in her poem (above). We think we are so clever, with our nuclear power and such, until a power plant blows up in our faces and if we aren't lucky enough to be killed by the blast we end up dying sick, slow deaths of radiation poising.

Speaking of detestable... take a gander at Abner in William Faulkner's "Barn Burning." Doesn't this prove the point? This man's big dream is either to be equal or more to everybody else or to see everything burn. There is a jealousy brewing in people who do not think they have the American Dream, but who can see people who seem to have it. It is hard not be jealous of rich people... of kids who get sent to college on their parents' money... who get allowances and packages from home... who have boyfriends... who have natural talent and wit and a functioning social drive. Yet, I am not burning down Vorhees or VanVleck (if I wait long enough and the popcorn in the microwave would do that for me). Is Abner a crazy caricature of jealousy, is he so distorted so as to be unreal? I would say so. I would hope so, for my sake. I live in a flammable building.