The Fractured Dream: Identity and Disillusionment in Modern American Fiction

The modern American fiction represents identity as unstable, fragmented, and deeply shaped by social disillusionment. Through shifting narrators, psychological conflict, and alienated protagonists, these works portray individuals struggling to define themselves within cultures marked by materialism, war, racism, gender expectations, and emotional isolation. The “fractured dream” becomes a central metaphor for the collapse of the American Dream, revealing how promises of success, freedom, and self-realization often lead instead to confusion and despair. Recurring themes of alienation, loss, memory, and resistance, the paper argues that modern American fiction exposes the tension between personal identity and national ideals. These texts do not merely depict individual crisis; they also critique the larger structures that produce disillusionment. Modern American fiction presents identity as a site of struggle, reflecting both the broken promises of modern life and the enduring human search for meaning and belonging.