For most immigrants, coming to America means sacrificing the comfort and civility of their homelands to venture out into the uncharted territory of the Western world. People give up friends, family, and even stability to move to a place for the promise of what is known as “the American Dream.” There is the ideal of achieving that grand opportunity; for the chance to live among the privileged and see one’s image of reaching fortune and success come to life. However, what the American Dream has in illusiveness, it lacks in execution. For most, the harsh reality of life in America dawns in an age of “survival of the fittest” mentality. In Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, the protagonist Sara, along with her father Reb and her sister Mashah, each have their own interpretations of what is means to live “the American Dream.” From self-invention to religious absolution to even unachievable beauty, each character’s interpretation of the maxim is influenced by what they value most and how they interact with the family around them.
Sara’s American Dream is molded by the deterioration of her family at the expense of her father’s iron reign. As she watches all three of her older sisters’ dreams for both love and the future fade away into the visions that their father has created for them, Sara realizes just how much she wants to be independent from the bounds of her family and her culture and create the person that she was meant to be. Sara is the most resistant to her father’s religiously-backed tenets, which is why it crushes her to see the potential in Bessie, Mashah, and Fania be devolved into something of her father’s creation. She strives to be a self-sufficient woman and to pursue her passions and goals, such as becoming a school teacher, at all costs, regardless of the consequences that she will face from her father.
On the other hand, Sara’s father Reb Smolinsky is dedicated to only one dream, and that is serving the teachings of his God and to live the most holy life on earth in order to prepare for what awaits him in heaven. For him, America is just a transient place; one that is meant to act as the intermediary between the religious nirvana he expects in the afterlife. While he does appreciate the money he receives once he wins the case against his landlady and the wages from his daughters, his primary concern is being the purist, most orthodox follower of Judaism. His religious background serves to juxtapose the Western secularism that Sara follows and also acts as a ironic motif throughout the plot, as all the troubles that the family faces are at the hands of Reb and his zealous religious reasonings.
Lastly, Mashah’s American Dream is laid out in her continual search for beauty. In the earlier passages of the novel, Sara describes her sister as caring more for her own image than the image of the family. Mashah is concerned only for her appearance and the upkeep of her lavish belongings. Because of her superficiality, Mashah dreams to marry a man who matches her in beauty and supplies her heavily in wealth. She wishes for a life greater than the one that her family can provide her, and one that is ornate and adorned with visual aesthetic and symbols. However, as with her other sisters, her dreams are crushed when her father chases the one man that she could ever love, and transforms into a being without care, faced with reality of the world that she lives in and the condition that she created for herself.
