Dreams. Everyone has a dream. If you achieve your life’s dream most people would call you lucky because for the vast majority of people their true dream never becomes a reality, instead the harsh realization of that fact forces them to move on and forget that they ever had a dream. These two literary works The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck both portray the underlying theme of the American Dream. These novels exemplify certain struggles that characters have endured because of wealth, excess, poverty, economic issues and various views of social status that relates to the authors perspective of the world at that particular time period. Both novels are respected works of literature that capture the dilemmas that occur during the time when they were written. The authors include their own personal experiences to make it possible for more people to relate to their story and to enhance their writing.
Biography
The Great Gatsby was written in 1925 during the “Roaring Twenties” a time of wealth, prosperity and new inventions for many Americans. Fitzgerald wrote this novel during the Lost Generation, a new era of unique beginnings. Writers, including especially Fitzgerald captured this innovative generation as the economy thrived and mass production began to show the characters as representation of the corruption of society. Fitzgerald symbolized the “Jazz Age” for many young people because he was always partying and drinking; at all times he was seen having a splendid time where ever he was. The “Roaring Twenties” influenced Fitzgerald’s writing in The Great Gatsby by capturing characters as careless, greedy, and inconsiderate, similar to people in the particular time period. Fitzgerald was not very popular in school even though he desired to be. Resembling Fitzgerald, Gatsby did not like who he was, so he decided to change his name and himself into something grander and more desirable. Gatsby pursues his dream by forgetting the past and creating his own reality. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses characters to show the corruption of the American Dream. This is exemplified by how Gatsby got his money as a bootlegger, from being penniless to the self made man surrounded by luxury and wealth; Gatsby believed that if he were rich enough, creating his own new paradise like the early founders of America would guarantee his dream to come true. Similar to Fitzgerald Gatsby never reached success, his American Dream that he wanted. (Bruey-Finck) Steinbeck was raised in a wealthy family, but always expressed interest in farm laborers and spent a great deal of time working with them. He is best known for his exploration of the struggles of poor people. At the beginning of the Great Depression, minorities were “the first ones hurt by the job layoffs” and “black males were either shut out completely or had to settle for separate and lower pay scale” (The Great Depression). When Steinbeck published his book there were 7,700,000 people unemployed and farm laborers were one of the first people to receive wage cuts (Unemployment Statistics During the Great Depression).Steinbeck created the character Crooks who is a black stable hand forced to live by himself, which created a theme in the book of loneliness that many Americans went through during the hardship of the depression. The novel Of Mice and Men used extraordinary imagery to illustrate the lives of farm laborers including their living quarters of bunk houses with “eight bunks” and detailed descriptions of the harsh living and working conditions they had to endure for little pay. Steinbeck used …show more content…
“As the economy recovers from the Great Recession, it is leaving behind the poorest of the poor” this economic depression still affects people today (Yoo). The “Roaring Twenties”, the Great Depression and the economic crisis of 2007 all were a financial crisis caused by the collapse of the housing bubble triggered by the plummeting of housing prices. Poverty today is still closely dependent on the housing market and predictions indicate the imminent threat of a situation where history would repeat itself. Americans either choose to live in fear and the American Dream starts to die or Americans keep hope in the fundamentals of their American