American Myth of Success

Recently I was reading in the "Eyes Wide Open" book and I ran into a great example of the American Myth of Success. Earlier in the semester when we were assigned the online reading about the American Myth of Success I found it interesting, but I found it also slightly hard to understand. The idea that you are either born into success or you have to work hard for it is what got me. I do agree with this idea that you are either born into it or work for it, but I always tried to think of a story that could help me visualize the actual idea of the American Myth of Success. So, as I was reading the other day I found in this book that the author use the story "The Little Engine That Could" to illustrate the American Myth of Success. I found this interesting because it is a children's book that contains the complex idea of how to be successful. When I heard this example I thought back to when my mom would read to my brother and I before bed and she had told this story multiple times. After hearing the story time and time again she would refer back to it when either my brother or I were going through and time when we didn't think we would make it through. Years passed and still she would refer to this children's book. Then my senior year of high school on the last day of class my leadership development teacher read to us the same story...only now I actually understood the true meaning and the concept of being successful. As a child I thought that this little engine overcame something that it thought it couldn't do, but as a senior in high school hearing the story again I realized the engine was successful through hard work and that was the point that my teacher was trying to make to us that last day of high school that with hard work and determination success will come...just as the American Myth of Success says it will.