The Fallacy of the American Dream. The Reservation Cab Driver and Essay

The Fallacy of the American Dream. The Reservation Cab Driver and Mexicans Begin Jogging - Essay Example Of the 300 million American citizens, close to 50 million of them do not have basic health insurance. This is such a travesty in a country that is the sole superpower and the most prosperous. With the onset of the latest episode of economic recession, the unemployment rate has touched an alarming 10 percent. The main characters in the two poems have highly insecure jobs and barely scrap-by for a living. Living hand-to-mouth on a perennial basis, the attainment of American Dream is a distant and implausible reality for these people. The Reservation Cab Driver is a man of Native Indian origin, whose rickety Malibu 65 also doubles up as his house. His rights for a basic social security blanket are taken away by the same government agencies such as Bureau of Indian Affairs and HUD, that were meant to provide benefits. Living a nomadic life as a Reservation Cab Driver and working 24 hours a day he cannot yet earn a subsistence wage. His condition typifies the status of Native Indians as a whole. Once the rightful inhabitants of the vast American continent, the arrival of European colonizers put an end to their peaceful existence. Ever since, nearly the entire population of Native Indians have been wiped out, with few remaining descendants such as the Reservation Cab Driver still struggling for survival. (Alexie, 2011, p.173)