Course Essay Outline
1. Intro
a. Thesis: The Great Gatsby and Invisible Man represent a hopeless tension against foiled dreams.
b. Supporting Points:
i. Failure of the American Dream ii. Hope in a world full of struggles iii. Acculturation as a means of attaining the American Dream
2. Topic Sentence 1: The decay of the American dream in the 1920s
a. Great Gatsby Support: the lavish parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night results ultimately in the corruption of the American dream. The wild desire for money and pleasure surpassed more moral goals.
i. Chapter 3 pgs 43-45 (description of Gatsby’s party) ii. “‘I found out what your ‘drug stores’ were.’ He turned to us and spoke rapidly. ‘He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drug stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him and I wasn’t far wrong.”(Fitzgerald, 143)
b. Invisible Man Support: Differences between the realities of black life and the myth of the American dream.
i. The briefcase figures as a rich metaphor during the riot. ii. Given to him by the white men in the battle royal passage in Chapter 1. iii. The briefcase symbolizes the exploitation that the narrator has suffered. The Sambo doll and its …show more content…
Invisible Man Support: The narrator believes that if he “acts” American, he can attain the American Dream. In an attempt to achieve the monetary promise of the American Dream, the Invisible Man abandons many African cultural practices and seeks to separate himself from African Americans in an attempt to become like the White man as opposed to discovering an identity of his own. The narrator’s sense of lost identity as a means of acquiring the American Dream is most noticeable when he is in the hospital and being asked who he is, “Who am I? I asked myself. But it was like trying to identify one particular cell that coursed through the torpid veins of my body” (Ellison,
1. Intro
a. Thesis: The Great Gatsby and Invisible Man represent a hopeless tension against foiled dreams.
b. Supporting Points:
i. Failure of the American Dream ii. Hope in a world full of struggles iii. Acculturation as a means of attaining the American Dream
2. Topic Sentence 1: The decay of the American dream in the 1920s
a. Great Gatsby Support: the lavish parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night results ultimately in the corruption of the American dream. The wild desire for money and pleasure surpassed more moral goals.
i. Chapter 3 pgs 43-45 (description of Gatsby’s party) ii. “‘I found out what your ‘drug stores’ were.’ He turned to us and spoke rapidly. ‘He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drug stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him and I wasn’t far wrong.”(Fitzgerald, 143)
b. Invisible Man Support: Differences between the realities of black life and the myth of the American dream.
i. The briefcase figures as a rich metaphor during the riot. ii. Given to him by the white men in the battle royal passage in Chapter 1. iii. The briefcase symbolizes the exploitation that the narrator has suffered. The Sambo doll and its …show more content…
Invisible Man Support: The narrator believes that if he “acts” American, he can attain the American Dream. In an attempt to achieve the monetary promise of the American Dream, the Invisible Man abandons many African cultural practices and seeks to separate himself from African Americans in an attempt to become like the White man as opposed to discovering an identity of his own. The narrator’s sense of lost identity as a means of acquiring the American Dream is most noticeable when he is in the hospital and being asked who he is, “Who am I? I asked myself. But it was like trying to identify one particular cell that coursed through the torpid veins of my body” (Ellison,