【正确答案】正确答案：American Dream is a phrase connoting hope for equality, prosperity and happiness, symbolized particularly by having a house of one"s own. Possibly applied at first to the hopes of immigrants, the phrase now applies to all except the very rich and suggests a confident hope that one"s children"s economic and social condition will be better than one"s own. Writers in the early time give much thought to the issue and even glorify the dream, as in the works of Whitman. In Leaves of Grass, Whitman interprets the dream as full of energy, optimism, romance, and excitement. The self-made man spirit deeply rooted in American Dream is rather evident in Frederick Douglass" semi-biography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. However, some critics also question American materialism and concomitant lack of serious morality. Writers of this kind include F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck. Disillusion throws a rowdy block party throughout Fitzgerald"s The Great Gatsby while the tragedy in Steinbeck"s of Mice and Men leaves the reader feeling hollowed and thoroughly un-dreamy. The interesting thing about The Great Gatsby is that Gatsby, the protagonist and the embodiment of all that the American Dream is, himself, remains static. As the novel moves forward, he doesn"t become more perverse; he doesn"t become richer or poorer, nor does he impoverish those around him. In fact, were it not for the innovative use of the narrator, Nick Caraway, as a literary device, Jay Gatsby would seem to be a vivid illustration of how the American Dream can succeed. It"s the limited perspective of Nick and those at a distance from Gatsby that preserves his mystique and, by extension, the mystique of the American Dream. When this mystery is removed, when ignorance of Gatsby"s character is removed, we feel, with Fitzgerald, that the Dream has been removed too. Then you read of Mice and Men and you find yourself plunged into a world of even deeper despair and pitch-black hardship. The barren lives of the ranch hands George and Lenny are sustained by the American Delusion, Lenny"s simple ignorance allowing him the fantasy of his rabbits and his ranch right up to the novella"s powerfully tender end. That is perhaps the essence of the American Dream; ignorance to the truth, willful self-deception. The world as it is, the object of the American Dream, does not change. It, like Gatsby, remains constant while the speculators and wishful individuals congregate around it, willing it to be something other than it is.

【答案解析】解析：本题考查美国梦在美国文学中的地位与影响。本题的难度较大，建构了美国文化的美国文学反过来受到了文化的制约，美国梦作为美国文化的核心理念不断影响着文学的创作。由于问题比较宽泛，把握起来有些困难。编者将结合文学作品从正反两个方面对这一问题加以阐释。