When I was accepted into the Honors English Program during the spring of my sophomore year, I began to consider what I wanted to spend the next three years of my life researching and composing. Inspired by the almost sinister "success" portrayed by Theodore Dreiser in his novel Sister Carrie, I began to push against the world where getting a degree, a well-paying career that fulfills you, a successful partner, and a white picket fence can be achieved by "working hard." 

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I began my research with Horatio Alger, the popular dime-novelist who championed the term "rags to riches" or the notion that working hard and being a good person is always rewarded with success. After familiarizing myself with Alger's writing, I took note of the prototypical Alger "hero" or protagonist. Alger features young, white, able-bodied men in virtually all of his novels. It became clear to me that such an important narrative in American history was being represented and demonstrated by a character that is hardly representative of the diverse American population. 

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From this realization, I chose three other novels featuring the "rags to riches" narrative. However, the protagonists of these novels are a woman, a lesbian woman, and an African-American man, pushing against the prototypical Alger hero. By comparing the trajectory of these three characters with Alger's, I uncovered new definitions of success and broadened the narrow lens through which success is too often portrayed in American literature and pop culture. Ultimately, my goal for this project was to compare and contrast Alger's original "rags to riches" narrative with more contemporary novels that reimagine his own themes, hoping to discuss our nation's limited and prejudiced definition of success.