The American dream is generally considered to consist of a healthy family, a well-paying job, and a solid home. Many people dream of it and take advantage of every opportunity to achieve it. However, the socio-economic situation of the United States poses an obstacle to this ideal. The characters who inhabit Raymond Carver's cathedral are blue-collar Americans confused and deluded by the hollow image of an American dream that they see every evening on the television screen. However, Denis Johnson's protagonists have never heard of the American dream and are certainly not determined to achieve it; their lives descend into alcoholism and drug use and their future becomes brutally shapeless. Their despairs and disappointments are replaced by drug addiction, alcoholism, infidelity and unemployment. Nevertheless, there are rare but genuine impulses of hope in both authors' stories. (The Carvarians find their own ways to communicate and influence each other in order to survive in this brutal world. Johnson's character is influenced by his own experience and environment; his sparks of hope appear while he is on his path to recovery.) Despite the fallacy of the American Dream, the characters of Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver have occasional moments of hope, either in the struggle to achieve the American Dream or in spite of it. In “A Small, Good Thing”, Carver builds his story around the Weiss couple: a wealthy and happy family who have been “kept away from any real danger” (Carver, 62). The Weiss couple differs from typical Carver characters in that they are content and successful. However, their tragedy refutes the fact that wealth and prosperity can protect against fate. When a car hits little Scotty on his birthday, their...... middle of paper ...... Johnson characters, hope is masked early in life by violence and substances chemicals. Sometimes, a simple glimmer of hope can be enough to revive lost causes, vegetating in drugs or joyless lives. Carver's characters turn obsessively to the material promises of the American dream, but discover that the most qualifying abstractions do not come from a home or a well-paying job. Despite all the disappointments and despair, one must always find a ray of light that can shine through even the darkest world. Sometimes it's hard to speak up and say what people really think: either they're not good enough to be intimate with others, or they feel like they need to protect themselves. But in these stories there are other means of communication. Even though the things told in the stories seem to have no purpose, they help people in a very difficult time in their lives..