The Effects Of Love On The American Dream

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Final Exam Movies are filmed around this topics, novels are written, and people are constantly searching for it in their lives. This “thing” is called love, and it is a powerful feeling that many strive to be able to experience. The United States is a powerful country, and so as a result, many are relatively well off. With money not being an issue for some people, many then try to focus on finding love in their life, and for those that are not as well of, love can be the only thing that they can cling to. For some, love is an essential part of the “American Dream”, and it represents a large part of American successful life. The presence of love is very common in much of American literature, and it is very vivid in books like Their Eyes Were …show more content…
Only Mexico, Turkey and Portugal, of the OECD nations, have greater disparity of income” (Rifkin). In our society today, income inequality is a big issue, and that has a damaging effect on the idea of the American dream. This quote supports the notion that the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. After the powerful and tragic aftermath of the Great Recession, for many, loved ones are the only hope that they have left in their lives. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston takes place in a segregated and poverty-stricken South. The main character, Janie, longs to feel loved. One good example of her desire is found within the quote “There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Janie had no chance to know things, so she had to ask. Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day” (Hurston 21). Janie had long lived a life void of ambition and poverty, and so she hoped that marriage would help bring excitement into her life by spurring love. Like many people, she was aware of the fact that she would not magically gain a huge financial advantage out of nowhere, and so she hoped that by being forced into marriage she would end up falling in love. With love, she hoped that her life would be filled with some amount of excitement, but as a result of going through a forced process, she would come to find that forced love would not make one live a good life. Her realization is evident within the quote of “The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (Hurston 25). Janie was not able to experience the other parts of the American dream through

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