Food For Thought | Death of the American Dream

“Death of the American Dream” by Booda Brand, 2018

“Kathy, I’m lost”, I said, though I knew she was sleeping,
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why,
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.
They’ve all come to look for America.”
~ America, Simon & Garfunkel, 1968

“America” tells the story of the narrator’s search for an idea of America that seems to have disappeared.

The narrator spends four days hitchhiking from Saginaw to join Kathy in Pittsburgh, where together they board a Greyhound bus to continue the journey. For the trip, they purchase cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner’s Pies. The narrator begins with a lighthearted and optimistic outlook, “Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together”. This optimism fades over the course of the song. To pass time, he and Kathy play games and try to guess the backgrounds of their fellow passengers. Over the course of their journey, they smoke all their cigarettes. Kathy reads a magazine before falling asleep, leaving the narrator awake to reflect on the meaning of the…