Success and virtue are two human traits that affect everyone in their endeavor to obtain the American Dream. In order to fully grasp the glory of this dream, it is important for one to maintain an equal balance of the success dream, and virtue dream. However if unbalanced, the two dreams contradict one another and result in failure. By defining success as a point of stability in life to which you reach the accomplishment of a certain goal, the means of attaining this goal can be conflicted and contradictory to one’s virtues such as respect, empathy, and trust. Through the analyzation of characters Gatsby from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, and Willy from Death of a Salesman, directed by Volker Schlöndorff, we can see that the virtues
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Gatsby’s dream was always to obtain his lost love, Daisy, thinking the only way to reach this success was by impressing her with his wealth. He became so caught up with money that many of his morals eventually dropped. This distraction to why he was actually doing all these intricate things, and cooking up these exaggerated lies, affected his outcome and failure, and ultimately the end to his life: “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy”(Fitzgerald). Gatsby’s dream of becoming successful to impress Daisy, took a toll on his virtues in the sense that in order to be granted acceptance, he forced himself into lies, schemes, and wrongful behavior that not only affected himself, but others around him. His distraction of his goal steered him even farther away from his morals, showing that success and virtue are two dreams that naturally cannot coexist. Success and virtue are two mandatory traits to obtain a goal, with this division and unbalance of the two, Gatsby never had a clear shot of reaching his goal from the …show more content…
His visions of reaching the goals of being able to provide for his family and set an example for his sons gets deteriorated by his infidelity, contradictions to himself and his family, and his incapability to see his life for what it is. His motives for obtaining money, and being successful enough to reach what he thinks is the American Dream, are blindsided by his obsession of reaching this goal; so to the point that he pushes away his family, the reason he began this journey in the first place: “Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground”(Schlöndorff). Willy’s infidelity to Linda, and utter obsession of being “well-liked” chip away at his moral compass and virtues, being another reason as to why he’s unsatisfied with his life. Willy is under the assumption that the more liked an individual is, the more successful they will become, and with this, associates happiness with popularity. This becomes an ironic point due to the fact that his obsession with being liked takes a toll on his morals, shown when he commits adultery in order to be granted the upper hand with investors and improve his business. Success and virtue can simply not go hand in hand due to the fact that a businessman must have a selfish mindset, be reserved and strict in order to focus on their job and gain the wealth they feel they deserve in this type of career. In Willy’s dream to obtain
Gatsby’s dream was always to obtain his lost love, Daisy, thinking the only way to reach this success was by impressing her with his wealth. He became so caught up with money that many of his morals eventually dropped. This distraction to why he was actually doing all these intricate things, and cooking up these exaggerated lies, affected his outcome and failure, and ultimately the end to his life: “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy”(Fitzgerald). Gatsby’s dream of becoming successful to impress Daisy, took a toll on his virtues in the sense that in order to be granted acceptance, he forced himself into lies, schemes, and wrongful behavior that not only affected himself, but others around him. His distraction of his goal steered him even farther away from his morals, showing that success and virtue are two dreams that naturally cannot coexist. Success and virtue are two mandatory traits to obtain a goal, with this division and unbalance of the two, Gatsby never had a clear shot of reaching his goal from the …show more content…
His visions of reaching the goals of being able to provide for his family and set an example for his sons gets deteriorated by his infidelity, contradictions to himself and his family, and his incapability to see his life for what it is. His motives for obtaining money, and being successful enough to reach what he thinks is the American Dream, are blindsided by his obsession of reaching this goal; so to the point that he pushes away his family, the reason he began this journey in the first place: “Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground”(Schlöndorff). Willy’s infidelity to Linda, and utter obsession of being “well-liked” chip away at his moral compass and virtues, being another reason as to why he’s unsatisfied with his life. Willy is under the assumption that the more liked an individual is, the more successful they will become, and with this, associates happiness with popularity. This becomes an ironic point due to the fact that his obsession with being liked takes a toll on his morals, shown when he commits adultery in order to be granted the upper hand with investors and improve his business. Success and virtue can simply not go hand in hand due to the fact that a businessman must have a selfish mindset, be reserved and strict in order to focus on their job and gain the wealth they feel they deserve in this type of career. In Willy’s dream to obtain