...person’s American Dream varies, but everyone hopes to come here and get a job, make a lot of money, secure a place in higher society for themselves and possibly a family or partner. The story of The Great Gatsby argues for the idea that the American Dream is unattainable. Fitzgerald shows this idea through the use of Gatsby, Daisy and Wilson as they all struggle towards their dreams and fail. With the death of Gatsby and Wilson, the American dream also dies. As a young boy, Gatsby exemplifies the American Dreamer. He starts young and works hard to improve himself. This is seen in his “Schedule” and “General Resolves” (Fitzgerald 173). When he was...
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...The American Dream, dating back all the way back to the colonial era, is the promise of a new beginning, no strings attached. This dream to many people includes the promise of a living wage, retirement funds, and the opportunity for their children to achieve in life and move up the social ladder.The optimistic dream seems to ignore the misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and overall inequality that exists in America. Because of this, the American Dream has become a something that more than half the country believes to be impossible. The American Dream is little more than an illusion—hollow, distorted, and unattainable. Inequality growth in the U.S has caused key elements in the American Dream to become unaffordable to most of the population. To...
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...John Steinbeck uses a range of language features and techniques in his novel Of Mice and Men to convey the idea of George and Lennie’s dream being important yet unattainable. Steinbeck creates a sense of powerlessness for the characters George and Lennie as well as Crooks and Curley’s Wife. Steinbeck also highlights the importance of friendship through George constantly looking out for Lennie. He does this by the use of repetition, characterisation and other language techniques throughout the novel. The use of these features influence the reader by creating a sense of empathy for the characters. Steinbeck uses repetition to highlight the importance yet unattainability of the dream for George and Lennie. Go on, George! Tell about what we’re...
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...The American Dream has been commonly believed that every person, no matter where they are, can work their way up to success. However, the American Dream is a constant power struggle of enough never being enough. Due to the fact that some become engrossed in their dream, they lose sight of little successes of daily tasks and importance in other things. Through the approach shown in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the foundation of the American Dream is unattainable. Literary elements such as ethos and pathos used by Fitzgerald contributed to the vision of the unattainable American Dream. In The Great Gatsby, The Narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, claims “Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people I have ever known” (Fitzgerald 59). As a result of this statement, it is displaying that the audience can trust the narrator in what he describes throughout the story, explaining the issues of each character's life. This is an example of using ethos to...
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...Opportunities, power, wealth, are all parts of the American Dream, a dream to achieve what not had. A selfish dream, but also a necessary one. Of Mice and Men is about two friends George, and Lennie. They both struggle to survive in the great depression. They work at a ranch, all is going well until Lennie accidentally kills Curley’s wife (The ranch owner’s son), in the end George has to kill Lennie. Steinbeck uses symbols such as the farm, Lennie’s rabbits, and Lennie’s death to represent George and Lennie’s unattainable dream. He uses the farm and rabbits as their goal, and Lennie’s death as an obstacle or failure for having the American Dream. Most of the people on the ranch shared a simple dream, to own land. George and Lennie had originally...
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...The Failed American Dreams of The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby invokes the American Dream and how important it is not only the titular character but to the many other’s who strive to achieve it. The American Dream originated in the early days of the American Settlement, which consisted of mostly poor people looking for bigger opportunities. Fitzgerald uses characterization in his novel The Great Gatsby to convey how the American Dream is not only unattainable for many, but also the idea that the pursuit the American Dream can lead to corruption. George Wilson is a man who desires the American Dream but he ultimately fails in the end. His pursuit is ( one of good intentions) a modest one in which he does not crave loads...
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...To correlate with the American Dream, Fitzgerald constructs Gatsby with his own dream: the pursuit of winning back Daisy. However, he purposely makes Gatsby intent not on Daisy herself, but what she represents. It is the wealth that Daisy has, the luxurious life that she lives, that has driven Gatsby for the past five years. In their early encounters, it is evident that it is Daisy’s lifestyle that he seeks when he is described first entering her home. “It amazed him – he had never been in such a beautiful house before, but what gave it an air of breathless intensity, was that Daisy lived there – it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him” (148). He is notably awed by the fact that wealth to her as natural as poverty had been to him. As the years pass, Daisy’s life becomes...
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...The American Dream, fueled by ambition and hopes of success, can often be exposed as a nightmare in disguise. Set in the roaring twenties, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby demonstrates such a point, criticizing the American Dream as well as the dishonest values of characters attempting to achieve this dream. When Nick Carraway moves to Long Island's West Egg, home to the newly rich, he is not expecting to get dragged into an atmosphere of depravity and deceit. Next door lives the elusive Jay Gatsby, a self-proclaimed Oxford man who throws extravagant parties at his mansion with the sole intention of reuniting with Daisy Buchanan, his lost love and true desire. The American Dream was traditionally the belief that anyone, regardless of background, has the opportunity to be happy and successful through hard work, yet as America evolved, the dream did too. The once virtuous ideal modernized into a plot for materialistic power. By the end of the novel, Fitzgerald is trying to project the idea that the American Dream is not only an unattainable ideal, but in addition, corrupts those who seek to obtain it. Firstly, Gatsby's unrealistic dream of Daisy is used to portray the unattainability of the American Dream. In Gatsby’s mind, Daisy is perfect in every aspect and the object of his greatest desire. He becomes so engrossed with the image of Daisy from his memories, that even she herself cannot fulfill his expectations: "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy...
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...The idea of the American Dream has been around for as long as literature in America has been.The American Dream; an idea that an individual can come to the United States, from anywhere on the planet. People coming to the United States with nothing but his or her name, and the clothes on their back, can become successful and wealthy through hard work and determination, over the course of time. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is a classic example of a rags to riches man, but learns the hard way that money and materialistic things cannot fill one’s need for happiness. Not only that, but F. Scott Fitzgerald also portrays the corruption of an individual's American Dream through their foolish pursuit of wealth and physical...
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...For my research paper I will be discussing the hit TV show Gossip Girl and it’s influence on societal values. More specifically, I will examine how in trying to critique society, Gossip Girl inadvertently equates money with happiness and distorts perceptions of class by romanticizing the negative aspects of upper class New York society. Through textual analysis of the show, a survey I conducted among viewers, and reviews and analysis from other authors, I will argue how the show looks down on the lower class; glamorizes materialism, corruption, and narcissism; and conveys that some people will always be excluded from the “Gossip Girl” world. Ultimately, the privileged Upper East Side lifestyle is a metaphor for the American Dream. While the show presents this lifestyle as the goal, it also suggest that like the modern day American Dream, it is unattainable....
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...The American Dream of today is all about being given everything without working for it. However, during the 1900’s it was all about working hard. People packed up everything and moved for a chance at a better life. This was a great risk and negatively impacted many people. There wasn’t enough jobs so people became poor. Also, the living conditions were terrible because of how many people had moved to find a better life. In the story Of Mice and Men the author, John Steinbeck, shows the reader that everyone works hard for the American Dream of the 1930’s but it is rarely attainable. One way the American Dream is unattainable is how it is just a dream. For example, the dream that George and Lennie had of them owning their own land seemed like a possibility, but it was crushed when Lennie killed Curley’s wife. This shows how anything that a person does can ruin their chances of attaining their perfect life, or the American Dream. Another example is: “More than a dream of land or property or riches or even a house of one's own, George's vision encompasses a broader range of values—freedom, abundance, fairness, nature, and companionship—that are universally desired by the novel's characters, even if they too often remain tragically unfulfilled” (Zeitler). This shows that no matter how much someone...
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...Crooks says when he hears of Lennie’s dream to own his own farm, “Nobody ever gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land.” George and Lennie’s dream of owning a farm, which would enable them to sustain themselves, and, most important, offer them protection from an inhospitable world, represents a typically American ideal. The Futility of the American Dream (*In the context of the novel!!): Their journey, which awakens George to the impossibility of this dream, sadly proves that the bitter Crooks is right: such paradises of freedom, contentment, and safety are not to be found in this* world. George and LEnnies dream: The farm that George constantly describes to Lennie—those few acres of land on which they will grow their own food and tend their own livestock—is one of the most powerful symbols in the book. It seduces not only the other characters but also the reader, who, like the men, wants to believe in the possibility of the free, idyllic life it promises. Candy is immediately drawn in by the dream, and even the cynical Crooks hopes that Lennie and George will let him live there too. A paradise for men who want to be masters of their own lives, the farm represents the possibility of freedom, self-reliance, and protection from the cruelties of the world. George and Lennie's desire to have a piece of property that is all their own and to "live off the fatta the lan'" is a recurring motif in the story (13). They build their dream up to such an extent that even if they...
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...certain amount of respect or an image that will be admired by others (Cain). It’s hard to make a living in most places, especially cities like New York where the minimum wage is $8.75 an hour yet the average rent is over $3000. How is it possible to live an average life and seek social acceptance while trying to stay up to date on the latest trend and trying to maintain a positive image. In today’s time staying...
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...Or how it could be called the great American novel: but here is why, In a novel barely 50,000 words long, F. Scott Fitzgerald manages to address the both aspirational and incredibly delusional nature of the American psyche: the struggle to achieve the great American dream: of being not who we are but who we want to...
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...In A Barbie World! A culture that is saturated by consumerism can be referred to as a consumer culture. Barbie can be used as a tool for consumer culture because she is perceived to be the perfect woman, an unattainable achievement. Barbie has the perfect man, Ken; she has her dream house, and car, and even a dream closet. There are life size Barbies bouncing around in T.V. and print media ads that personify this image. Barbie produces a systematic reproduction of consistency; she doesn't evolve but rather promotes change around her. Barbie’s face or body structure hasn’t significantly changed since her creation. The different nationalities that Barbie is produced in are careful not to lend themselves to stereotypes too heavily. Most importantly, the concept of Barbie hasn’t changed throughout the years. Ultimately, she is still a toy. Barbie promotes change by attaching herself to current trends and issues, such as Presidential Barbie, Olympic Barbie, and Sponge Bob Barbie. By presenting current trends in Barbie form, Mattel successfully promotes these trends to parents and children. The perception of perfection that surrounds Barbie is unattainable; however, consumers consistently find satisfaction or happiness in reaching for these goals. We have a car that works perfectly fine, but we want a new one. Our house has more then enough space, but we want a bigger one. Those shoes match absolutely nothing in my closet, but they're new and in style, so I just have to have them...
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