This Side of Paradise

achieved through sacrifice and hard work, not just by chance. This meant to motivate Americans to attain prosperity and happiness. However, there is an ironic interplay between idealism and materialism in this statement of American Dream; the dream suggests hope, opportunity and equality, but in reality, it is to become rich and of higher social status, which is only possible through materialistic means. The author Fitzgerald shows the failure this dream through the main characters and the…

societal norms. This began the era of bootlegging, gangs and crime all across the country and the decline of morality. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby trying to attain a higher social class can lead to lack of morals demonstrated by Gatsby’s bootlegging, Tom’s Party in New York, and Myrtle’s affair with Tom. Gatsby shows that he was a poor child and wanted to attain wealth and luxury, but this lead to him to start bootlegging which led him to immoral behavior. "He and this Wolfsheim…

achieve a goal is not easy which people have to face the challenges and difficulty on their life. In the play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller, the major theme of this play is about American Dream and the interpretation about dream includes memories, confliction, and arguments of Willy Loman. Willy Loman who is the main character in this play has to face difficulty to achieve the America dream like others. However, the reality is often different to the imagination, so that Willy Loman has…

Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses tells the story of a young man, John Grady Cole, from Texas who realizes that his idealistic vision of a traditional Old West future is being compromised by the modernization of American culture. Grady holds himself to a cowboy code which advocates honestly, loyalty, and ardor above all. While the code is well intentioned it is also overly idealistic and ultimately leads Grady and his travel companion and friend Lacey Rawlins to some misfortunes.…

Myrtle and George Wilson were once two passionate lovers, caring for nothing else in the world but each other. However, Myrtle’s selfish aura led her to fall in love with not a man but a thing: money. She became dissatisfied with her husband and decided to move on to someone more enticing, someone wealthy like Tom Buchanan. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Wilsons are discontent with their lives as they become unsatisfied with one another and turn to lives of avarice,…

Many classical pieces of literature do not become famous until after their author has far deceased. For F. Scott Fitzgerald this is more true. Kenneth Eble was assiduous to Fitzgerald's work saying, “It took critics a long time to recognize that a writer like Fitzgerald could be more than superficially romantic, an even longer time to realize that he was, as a novelist, intuitively historical” (Eble, 3). While Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” pervades under many high school student’s…

In contrast to Troy’s definition of the American dream, Willy Loman believes that to gain success, one must have connections, contacts, and an attractive personality. Willy’s high expectations for Biff make him assume that Biff has the ambition to succeed. Furthermore, Biff struggles to find his place in the world after not being able to find an interest in many conventional jobs. Nevertheless, in Death of a Salesman, Willy shows his high hopes for Biff when he declares, “I’ll see him in the…

The corruption of the American Dream is a prevalent theme in classic literature, as it highlights the falsified illusions of social mobility and power commonly promoted during the early twentieth century. The motivation for socio-economic inclination is generally consumed by materialism and shallowness in an effort to satisfy the constant lack of self fulfillment, which inevitably leads to self destruction. Many people blindly accept the idealistic concept of social and economic mobility only to…

Closing Line in The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby is the story of an eccentric millionaire, Jay Gatsby, narrated by Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner, who's ultimate goal is to reunite with his one true love, Daisy. Daisy was the cousin of Nick Carraway and was married to Tom Buchanan, both of whom live in East Egg, New York. Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway lived in West Egg, New York. The cities of East Egg and West Egg, both of which were separated by The Valley of Ashes, show one's societal status,…

and dull but ends up being entangled with essentially the entire backbone of the story like Nick depicts “The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standards -it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion.(5)” The mansion seems to be inanimate yet it is constructed of spite and is alive with Gatsby’s…