American Dream= Fairytale

Video, because ESPN is a jerk and won't let you embed...

This is a story about Sasha Doran, who is an 18 year old high school football player in Minnesota. What makes his story so special is the fact that when he was six, he ran away from his home in St. Petersburg due to an abusive father. He lived in the streets for about a year before he was found and taken to an orphanage where he reunited with his two sisters, who he no longer recognized.

In 2001, he and his two sisters, were adopted by John and Mary Ellen Doran. When they went to Russia to meet their new children, John brought a football with him. Sasha loved the gift but didn't understand why someone would want an oblong shaped ball. In May 2002, they finally moved to Minnesota with the Dorans. He didn't know any English when he arrived. One of the ways in which Sasha learned English was through sports, football especially. He ended up falling in love with the game.

Now he is a high school junior and the starting quarterback for Wayzata. He took his team to the state quarter finals but ended up losing. With the help of ESPN, Sasha returned to the orphanage where he lived for a few years before he was adopted. He took toys and hope to the children who were living there. His sister Elena describe his journey from being a runaway to being a starting quarterback at Wayzata as a fairytale and the American Dream. Sasha himself describes it as the American Dream.

Elena's labeling of the American Dream as a fairytale is kind of fitting. It does take the shape of a classic rise tale. One of the differences between a fairytale and the American Dream story would be the fact that in a fairytale the transformation is usually the result of magic or of great luck. I guess you could say for Sasha's story it was a case of luck that the Dorans adopted him and his sisters, but in the traditional American Dream story, such as Abraham Lincoln or Ben Franklin, it is through hard work and acting for oneself that one achieves their meteoric rise.

Elena could have also been calling the American Dream a fairytale, because for her, who didn't grow up in this country, if she had heard this story, she probably would have thought of it as just that, a story. I think for Americans we don't really see the American Dream as a fairytale because we have seen or read so many examples of it that it almost seems natural for it to happen to us. A fairytale is something that entertains and is just made up. For those children growing up in a Russian orpahanage, the American Dream may seem like that. Its was an interesting perspective of the classic American Dream story and one that puts it into a cultural context.