Last updated on November 6th, 2026 at 11:43 am
Do you ever feel that the American Dream we are taught to chase is nothing more than a polished mask for a much darker, more primal instinct lurking within us all? Norman Mailer’s An American Dream is a hallucinatory, visceral descent into the psyche of a man who murders his way into a twisted state of grace, suggesting that true power in America is often forged in violence and the occult rather than merit or law.
An American Dream is best for readers who crave gritty, existential thrillers and don’t mind a protagonist who is morally repulsive yet intellectually electrifying; those who appreciate “New Journalism” prose that reads like a high-speed fever dream.
May not be suitable for readers seeking “likable” characters, traditional justice, or those sensitive to graphic violence and mid-century misogynistic themes; definitely not for those who prefer their plots to be grounded in strict realism.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
In the mid-1960s, at the height of his powers and his notoriety, Norman Mailer unleashed An American Dream (1965) upon a nation already grappling with its identity. Originally serialized in Esquire magazine—written at a breakneck pace to meet monthly deadlines—this novel is less a story and more an explosion of existential angst.
It follows thirty-two hours in the life of Stephen Richards Rojack, a man who has achieved every version of the “Dream”—war hero, Congressman, TV celebrity—only to find it a hollow shell that can only be shattered by a singular, irreversible act of violence.
2. Background
To understand this book, one must understand the man who wrote it. In November 1960, during a drunken party intended to launch his mayoral campaign, Mailer famously stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, with a penknife.
While Adele survived and Mailer avoided prison, the psychological residue of that act saturates every page of this novel. Mailer was obsessed with the idea of “The White Negro” and the “Hipster”—individuals who embrace their primal, even violent, impulses to escape the “cancer” of societal conformity.
An American Dream was his fictional laboratory for these dangerous ideas, written during a time when the Kennedy-era optimism was beginning to curdle into the “sound and fury” of the late sixties.
3. An American Dream summary
Stephen Richards Rojack is a man “standing on a parapet” both literally and figuratively from the moment we meet him. A Harvard graduate and a hero of World War II who once killed four Germans in a single night of ecstatic violence, Rojack has spent his life trying to replicate that feeling of absolute, dangerous presence.
By the opening of the novel, however, he is a “nascent alcoholic” and a television personality whose marriage to the wealthy, aristocratic Deborah Caughlin Kelly has become a spiritual prison.
The novel begins with Rojack visiting Deborah in her high-rise apartment. Their relationship is described not in terms of love, but as a psychic war between two powerful, predatory entities. Deborah is the “bitch-queen,” a woman whose wealth and social standing represent the cold, castrating power of the American establishment.
During a vitriolic argument, the “Moon”—a recurring symbol of madness, magic, and the primitive—seems to call to Rojack from the window. In a moment of sheer, existential “breakdown,” Rojack strangles Deborah to death.
What follows is not a typical crime story. Instead of fleeing or feeling traditional remorse, Rojack feels an immediate, terrifying sense of liberation. He describes the act as “never asexual,” a dark merging of Eros and Thanatos. To cover his tracks, he throws her body off the balcony, making it look like a suicide.
Immediately after the murder, Rojack descends into the New York City night. He visits the apartment of Ruta, Deborah’s German maid, and engages in a sexual encounter that Mailer frames as a battle for his very soul—a choice between the “Devil” (symbolized by the anus) and “God.”
This scene, controversial then and now, establishes the novel’s core metaphysics: that every action, especially sexual or violent ones, has a cosmic weight.
Rojack then finds himself in a jazz club, where he meets Cherry, a blonde lounge singer who had been involved with both the Mafia and Deborah’s own father, Barney Oswald Kelly. Cherry is the “angel” to Deborah’s “demon,” representing a possibility of grace and genuine love through shared risk.
However, the law and the underworld are closing in. Rojack is taken in for questioning by the police, but through a combination of his own wit and the unseen machinations of the powerful interests Deborah represented, he is released.
The plot reaches its fever pitch when Stephen Rojack is summoned to the Waldorf Towers to meet his father-in-law, Barney Oswald Kelly. If Deborah was the demon-queen, Barney is the Emperor of the Abyss—a man who admits to an incestuous obsession with his own daughter and who seems to operate on a level of power that transcends the law.
In a scene dripping with gothic tension, Rojack confesses the murder to Barney. Rather than calling the police, Barney challenges Rojack to a ritual of courage: walking the narrow, freezing parapet of his high-rise balcony. For Rojack, this isn’t just a dare; it is a metaphysical trial.
He believes that by conquering his physical fear of death, he can finally purge the “cancerous” guilt of the murder and escape the psychic grip of the Kelly family. He completes the walk, even as Barney attempts to push him to his death. Rojack strikes back, survives, and flees into the night, feeling he has finally “earned” his life.
But the universe, in Mailer’s world, rarely grants a clean escape. Rojack returns to Cherry’s apartment, hoping to start a new life with the only woman he has ever truly loved. Instead, he finds the street choked with sirens.
Cherry has been beaten to death in a senseless act of retaliation by friends of Shago Martin (who has also been killed in Harlem).
The novel ends with an epilogue titled “A Vision in the Desert.” Rojack has fled to Las Vegas, where he wins a fortune at the tables—a final sign of “grace” in a world where luck is a spiritual currency.
In the final, haunting scene, he stands in a desert phone booth, imagining a conversation with Cherry’s spirit in “Heaven” before setting off toward the jungles of Guatemala and Yucatán, a man permanently untethered from the American Dream he once epitomized.
4. An American Dream analysis
4.1. An American Dream characters
Stephen Rojack: A “hero” who is also a monster. He is Mailer’s ultimate “Hipster,” a man who believes that the only way to save his soul is to follow his most violent, primitive impulses. His complexity lies in his intelligence; he is acutely aware of his own depravity.
Deborah Kelly: Though she dies early, her presence haunts the novel. She represents the “Establishment”—cold, aristocratic, and spiritually dead.
Cherry Melanie: The “Angel” figure who offers Rojack a brief glimpse of redemption through pure, risky love. Her death is the price the universe extracts for Rojack’s survival.
Barney Oswald Kelly: The “Solicitor for the Devil.” He represents the corrupt intersection of wealth, politics, and the occult.
4.2. An American Dream themes
The Moon: The central symbol of the book. It is the voice of madness and the primitive, guiding Rojack toward both murder and the parapet walk.
Cancer: Mailer presents cancer not just as a disease, but as a psychic manifestation of a soul that has failed to act on its true impulses. To Mailer, the “American Dream” is a form of spiritual cancer.
Violence as Grace: The controversial idea that a violent act (like murder or the parapet walk) can be “purgative” and lead to a higher state of being.
5. Evaluation
Strengths
The prose is electric. Mailer writes with a “sledgehammer” intensity that captures the frantic energy of 1960s New York. The book is a masterclass in atmosphere, blending the grit of a police procedural with the surrealism of a nightmare.
Weaknesses
The dialogue often feels stilted and “ludicrous” by modern standards. The inherent misogyny and the “vaginal orgasm” obsession can make it a difficult, even repulsive, read for many contemporary audiences.
Impact
It remains one of the most polarizing novels in American history. It didn’t just tell a story; it challenged the very idea of what a “hero” could be in a post-WWII world.
Comparison with Similar Works:
Think of it as the dark, hallucinogenic cousin to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. While Gatsby tries to buy the Dream, Rojack tries to murder it. It also predates the “psychopath as hero” trope seen later in works like American Psycho.
Adaptation
The 1966 film directed by Robert Gist was widely considered a failure. Starring Stuart Whitman as Rojack and Janet Leigh as Cherry, it “castrated” the novel’s metaphysical depth, turning it into a standard “studio soap opera.”
Box Office: It was a “huge flop” and was even retitled See You in Hell, Darling in a desperate attempt to attract audiences.
Reception: Critic Andrew Sarris called it “the worst film of its year.”
6. Personal Insight
Reading An American Dream today feels like looking into a cracked mirror. In an age of “hustle culture” and the relentless pursuit of social media perfection, Mailer’s warning about the “cancer” of the soul feels eerily relevant.
We may not be throwing spouses off balconies, but the statistics on modern burnout and “moral injury”—the psychological distress caused by acting against one’s own values—suggest that we are still struggling with the same “void” Rojack felt.
Interestingly, despite its controversy, the book was a commercial success, spending six months on the New York Times bestseller list in 1965, proving that the public was (and is) hungry for stories that dare to touch the third rail of the American psyche.
7. An American Dream quotes
- “I understood the moon… Something in the deep of that full moon… traveled fast as the thought of lightning… and into me.”
- “God is not love, but courage. Love is the reward of courage.”
- “Murder is a cry that goes through the market places of sleep.”
8. Conclusion
An American Dream is not a “pleasant” book, but it is an essential one. It is a raw, unapologetic look at the shadows we cast while we chase the light.
Recommendation: Essential for fans of dark existentialism and the “Mad Men” era of literature. If you liked Fight Club or The Executioner’s Song, this is your origin story.
