Ah, the American Dream! Get a job. Fall in love. Get married. Buy a house. Have kids. Live happily ever after.

Having been a teacher of American literature, one would think our homegrown authors would tell happy stories to teach our students that America is a country of success and good fortune.

Well, that’s not the truth at all. Our greatest writers have portrayed the doom and gloom of the American Nightmare.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected minister of the Lord, fathers an illegitimate child, but the secret is kept for years. His mistress, whose husband was overseas, wears a scarlet A as a mark of shame and is scorned by the community. Dimmesdale has unbearable guilt for his sin, and actually whips himself for punishment. Then at the end of the novel, he stands before the community and reveals that he’s the father just before he collapses and dies from a heart attack.

A story about guilt and shame wouldn’t make The New York Times best-seller list today. We’ve pretty much decided no one should suffer such anguish anymore.

In Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” he tells the tale of the Salem witch trials. The accused are innocent, but are hanged in a frenzy of fear and false blame. Giles Corey refuses to name other “witches,” to the court. In an attempt to get him to confess, they lay huge stones on his chest while he lies on the ground.

“Tell us who they are!” A court magistrate shouts. When he bends over to hear Corey’s confession, this is what Giles says: “More weight.”

One more stone is laid upon Corey’s chest, and then he dies.

A story of the innocent found guilty makes me think of a fine teacher I had worked with who was accused of molesting two of his students. He was suspended from his job. The students under questioning admitted they had made the whole thing up because he gave too much homework. The damage was done. Parents refused to have their children in his class. He went on leave and two years later was found dead in his apartment.

In Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” Willy Loman commits suicide over his son’s failure to make something of himself in the business world. Miller reminds us about the perils of expectation and how failure can lead a family to tragic ruin.

In John Steinbeck’s, “Of Mice and Men,” George and his mentally challenged best friend, Lenny, dream of someday owning their own ranch. After Lenny accidentally kills a man’s wife, he and George run into the mountains to escape an armed posse. As the men approach, George tells Lenny to look across the valley and imagine the ranch they’re going to own.

“Can I feed the chickens, George?” Lenny asks with a smile. “Yes you can, Lenny,” says George, who then shoots a bullet into the back of his best friend’s head to “save” him from being lynched by the posse.

F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of a man named Jay Gatsby who spends five years making himself rich illegally just so he can win the heart of the ultrawealthy and married Daisy Buchanan. In a case of mistaken identity, Gatsby is shot dead by a man who thinks he’s avenging the death of his wife, believing that Gatsby ran her over with his car. Daisy returns to her money and her abusive husband as if nothing had bothered her. Can people like Daisy born with the silver spoon ever feel compassion and genuine love?

Had enough of the American Nightmares as told by famous authors?

How about Peyton Farquahar, an Ambrose Bierce character who is set up by the Union Army during the Civil War to blow up a bridge. He is captured and stands upon the bridge with a noose around his neck. Readers soon find that Peyton’s rope breaks when he is dropped, and he falls into the river below. He swims away and then runs into the arms of his beautiful wife. But wait! At the end of the story, Bierce shocks his readers. Peyton dreamed his entire escape and actually died of hanging from the bridge. What a bummer!

In the short story, “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, the people of a small New England agricultural town believe that human sacrifice helps the crops grow to sustain the community. When a woman “wins” the lottery, she is stoned to death and the last ones to hit her in the head with rocks are her husband and her young children. It’s a family affair!

Of course we have American poets who deliver the darkness, too. Edgar Allan Poe wants to lie down in the grave of his beloved, Annabel Lee. Emily Dickinson wrote plenty of poems about death and despair. She even details the destructive violence of nature when she describes the beheading of a beautiful flower by winter’s first frost.

There were a few writers who left their readers feeling hopeful and happy. Poet Walt Whitman praises his full and joyful life in 52 verses of “Song of Myself.” Mark Twain’s classic novel, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” chronicles a best friendship between a young white boy and a runaway African-American slave who share exciting and dangerous adventures while rafting along the Mississippi River. In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a Southern lawyer convinces an all-white jury that a black man wrongly accused of rape is innocent.

Well, that’s enough enlightenment for one day. Now I am motivated to write another novel. Each of my characters will have near-death experiences that transform their humdrum lives into living each day with gratitude and joy.

I will call my novel, “Everybody Lives at the End.”

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.