Tora Sellers Assignment 1

                In “Inventing My Parents”, the scene in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks is seen through the innocent, naïve eyes of an infant. In the child’s imagination, the child’s parents are discussing the American dream. The mother refers to the Dream as “a hawk flying over, its shadow sweeping every town”.  This way of alluding to the American Dream left an impression on me because one rarely hears of it as a shadow. For something that has always been held to such high esteem, in this case, the American Dream seems ironically ominous. Almost like a plague. The fact that the American Dream is compared to a large shadow points to the fact that the people living during the Great Depression and WWII sometimes lost hope in the United States. The poet was saying that during this part of the 20^th century, adults saw the world for the harsh, depressing reality that it was. Referring to the Dream as a shadow shows the difference between the mindset of pre-war and post-war Americans. Ultimately, the overall mood of the poem is hopeful. Despite the poem beginning by alluding to the American Dream as a shadow, the child, who represents the new generation, sees hope and prosperity in the future.