Love, an American Dreamer.

The 'Merican Dream.

Is it that white picket fence on a farm with a well-fed family?
Is it moving up in your beloved career and living in a fat new loft?
Is it the hope of unlimited opportunity?
Or is it simply walking outside your home without worrying about losing your life?

Personally, I would say that the American Dream has no true definition. When asking my friends and family what they thought of when they heard "American Dream", the responses ranged anywhere from "making an impact with your life", "gaining wealth", to just "finding true happiness and contentment".

To revisit the idea of "gaining wealth", I want to first analyze the definition of wealth. On a surface level, most people would say that to gain wealth, you must accumulate a lot of money. However, I think at its purest form "wealth" is anything that you have an abundance of that gives meaning and gratification to your life. To some this might be money, but to me this could mean a wealth of love, or of compassion, or of friendships. When I look back on my life, I desire to have gained a tremendous amount of these types of wealth.

When looking at the mass opinion of America, judged by social media and networking, monetary wealth is greatly sought after, and poverty is very much avoided. Even in popular songs, famous singers and rappers especially are talking about their lust for money, thus influencing their adoring fans. One song with less vulgar lyrics than most money-glutton songs is "Billionaire" by Bruno Mars. His lyrics plea, "I wanna be a billionaire so frickin' bad, buy all of the things I never had. I wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine, smiling next to Oprah and the queen. Oh, every time I close my eyes, I see my name in shining lights. A different city every night, oh I, I swear the world better prepare for when I'm a billionaire." This is not a new idea. When he sings this song, he embodies the dream presented in The Great Gatsby of materialistic gain to achieve happiness. If he is poor and cannot achieve this goal, it is inferred that he can never be truly content. Even in bible times, it talks about how humans have a craving for money and fame.

My attitudes toward wealth and poverty are simply this: no matter the number listed in your bank account, you can always be rich. Rich in spiritual stability, rich in familial bonds, rich in helping your community, and rich in anything that gives you peace.

To be fair, I have never thought of myself as monetarily "poor" nor "rich". I am coming from the perspective of someone who has had to work for things, but has definitely (and thankfully) not struggled with finding my next meal or anything like that. I have been blessed with a beautiful family who is tremendously great to me, so I have never had to be concerned with being rich in love. The American Dream for me has always been to continue to find contentment and peace, no matter where I am or what I have, in the present. My goal is to act today in a way that my "future self" might thank me for. This being said, someone who has not had the luxury of being without worry of how they will survive the next day, or is lacking support from a solid group of friends/family might wish for things different than I.

Perhaps the "American Dream" is simply the promise of searching for and defining it for yourself.

I Mean, Some Things Matress

Diction - the diction changes the level of properness between the different translations
Syntax - changes the emphasis between different words such as uneasy and enormous
Imagery/Details - the level of description between the details of the the dream or how large the bug was changed
Structure - the structure determined the direct object of the sentence, which influenced the meaning

Word choice, syntax, punctuation, and imagery shift affect the meaning of a sentence in that the development of the sentence provides context of the narrators background. If the sentence has a word choice of more elaborate vocabulary, the reader is inclined to think that the narrator is well-educated. The syntax of a sentence determines what the narrator thinks is important for the reader to know. For example, in the different translations provided, #4 puts more emphasis on the dreams than any of the others because the "agitated dreams" were placed in an appositive phrase. Punctuation also can determine how the reader pauses and exclaims when reading the sentence. Imagery gives more explanation so that the reader can know fully what the narrator is intending.

I think that they are all very important, and one aspect of creating a sentence is no more important than another. This shows that it is very hard to translate a text. Since they are all so important, the translator must take into account what the original author was intending when writing the text so that they can accurately display the correct meaning. The word choice, syntax, punctuation, and imagery determine how the reader will understand the text, thus the translator could potentially skew the entire meaning of the text. This exercise showed how little alterations completely transpose the whole idea of a sentence. Different translations can affect the tone of the character. For example, saying, "Mother died today" is a lot more detached than, "Today my mommy died."