SOURCE: Friberg, Ingegerd. “The Clash of American Dreams in Carl Sandburg's Poetry.” Moderna Sprak 74, no. 1 (1980): 3-20.

In the following essay, Friberg probes Sandburg's poetry as it presents a tension between two ideals—America as a paradise and America as a land of progress—and as it promotes the possibilities of a socialist society in America.

In The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal Leo Marx studies the two well-known American dreams: America as the Garden of Eden and America as the Land of Progress. He traces these dreams through a discussion of the beliefs of Primitivists, Progressivists, and representatives of the “Middle Landscape,” covering such fields as economy, philosophy, and literature. He makes clear how the two dreams gave rise to two ideals, developing out of the situation of the first settlers. They were seen as separate ideals at first but were then kept in...