In five pages this essay analyzes the novel by Mario Puzo in terms of how it represents the American Dream in telling the story of immigrant woman Lucia Santa. Three sources are cited in the bibliography.
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the reader will give The Fortunate Pilgrim a chance, there is no doubt that he or she would become engrossed in this stirring tale of endurance, hardship and the obtainment
of the American Dream. In this novel, Puzo relates the story of Lucia Santa, a strong-minded immigrant woman. Puzo takes the reader through a narrative encompasses her two marriages,
the births of her five children, and her battle to raise her family successfully in the Hells Kitchen section of New York in the early 1900s. It is a portrait
of a strong woman who perseveres through tragedy and withstands the onslaught of American culture pitted against her traditional Italian values (Moxley 142). Puzo presents this family sage with insight,
as he demonstrates how the conflicts between Old and New World values brought happiness to Lucia Santas family, as well as hardship (Moxley 142). One reviewer of The
Fortunate Pilgrim made the comment that there is little in this book of the "frantic pace" that characterizes Puzos bestsellers (Pilgrims...Nelson). This is quite true, as the pace of
the novel is geared towards the inner life of Lucia Santa, as a wife and mother, rather then to external events. Nevertheless, as this reviewer also points out, there is
simplicity and beauty to this prose that is not evident in Puzos later work. In the introduction to this book, Puzo explains
that the books heroine is based on his own mother, a powerful woman who held her family together in the New World through force of will (Pilgrims...Nelson). Throughout this narrative,
Lucia Santa struggles to achieve her dream, which is to take her family away from poverty to Long Island. It is her courage, as well as her ruthless scheming, that