Many twentieth century conventional American creative writers commonly believed that the American Dream can only be achieved through hard work. John Steinbeck goes against the tide as he demonstrates that taking for granted the achievability of the Dream by all can turn out to be an illusion and a trap. He highlights the failure of the American Dream through the lives of his white characters despite their determination to change their social status. This paper relies on New Historicism to analyze the pursuit and the failure of the American Dream by some white people in the twentieth century and on psychoanalytical literary criticism to reveal their unpredictability. It concludes that not the American Dream cannot be fulfilled only when one is white in the American context.
Keywords: American Dream, illusion, fulfilment, trap, Great Depression.
