Response to Olivia's post: Living the American Dream-- The Wrong Way

After reading Zitkala-Sa's essay "The School Days of an Indian Girl," I would have to say that I agree with Olivia's opinion that Zitkala-Sa's story is certainly not one of the American Dream coming true.
The American Dream as an ideal is not culture specific and American perceptions regarding the achieval of this ideal should be relative to the culture and beliefs of the individual. As Olivia stated in her blog, "The American Dream is a patriotic ethos in which freedom includes a promise of prosperity, success, and independence." For Zitkala-Sa, the ways in which she perceived independence, success, and prosperity were very different from the perceptions of her white peers and those who taught and attended the Quaker boarding school she was sent to in her youth. This is specifically illustrated when Zitkala-Sa describes her first couple of days in the "Land of the Red Apples." Although white Americans perceived sending Zitkala-Sa to school as a great opportunity for her to prosper, Zitkala-Sa felt like freedom had been stripped away from her and that she was not free to be her best self: "And though my spirit tore itself in struggling for its lost freedom, all was useless" (430). Zitkala-Sa becoming "civilized" and being forced to disregard and devalue important aspects of her culture indicate that the Anglo American perception of the American Dream was flawed and excluded differing ideas and cultural values. As Olivia stated in her blog, Zitkala-Sa's story is not a "rags to riches" story, but a story of marginalization and the misconceptions of what the American Dream entails.Therefore, because Zitkala-Sa was not given the opportunity to achieve the American Dream in a way in which she could remain true to herself and her values, her becoming educated and adapting to white culture cannot be viewed as an achieval of the American Dream.