Similarities Between Yolanda And The Great Gatsby

Borne Back Ceaselessly into the Past
Fitzgerald and Alvarez wrote about the American Dream and although it seems they both view it differently, in actuality, the stories they tell are different sides of the same coin. In The Great Gatsby the reader experiences the classic American Dream. In which, a young man, born into poverty, pulls himself up by his bootstraps and is able to become immensely rich, and it's all in the name of love. However, in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, the reader sees the story of an immigrant woman who was born rich, but lost her wealth when she came to America, and her journey as she searches for who she is. Yolanda and Gatsby have led completely different lives, however in their searches for identity and …show more content…
Gatsby and Yolanda are both frozen in the past and are unable to move on to better things. Firstly, although it seems Gatsby had everything he could ever want, he was unable to get the one thing he truly desired. The American Dream differs from person to person so even when he had what many consider to be the ultimate goal, money, all Gatsby actually wanted was Daisy. However, this was an unrealistic desire, for Gatsby dreamed of the Daisy he knew five years prior. He had deluded himself into thinking the past could be repeated: “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously, “why of course you can!” He looked around him wildly, as if the past we here in the shadows of his house, just out of reach” (FItzgerald 110). Gatsby ached for the past and he spent so much of his life just dreaming of what it would be like to have Daisy again. He imagined this so much so, that when finally was brought face to face with Daisy again, however happy he was, he was also disappointed and underwhelmed: “As I went to say good-by I saw that expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams- not through her own …show more content…
Gatsby’s dream was unattainable because his chance had already passed, his dream was behind him the entire time. The reason Gatsby couldn’t have Daisy wasn’t just due to his death, it was simply that Daisy just wasn’t his anymore. In How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, although Yolanda’s dream was more realistic than Gatsby’s, it was just as unattainable, and also ended in failure. Gatsby and Yolanda both struggled with the past, but in Yolanda’s case it as less of the desire to return to the past and more of a want to outrun her past. Throughout the novel Yolanda wrestles with her identity. As a person who was raised and lived in two wildly different cultures, she struggles to figure who she is and who she wants to be. One of the things Yolanda struggles with in regards to her identity is language. Right from the start, the reader sees Yolanda trouble over the switch of English to Spanish and vica versa: “In halting Spanish, Yolanda reports on her sisters. When she reverts to English, she is scolded, “¡En español!” The more she practices, the sooner she’ll be back into her native tongue, the aunts insist. Yes, and when she