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The great gatsby and classism
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The Great Gatsby: A Tarnished American Dream
Thesis: In his influential book The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald recognizes and describes many of the less alluring characteristics of the 1920's and the pursuit of the American Dream including dysfunctional relationships, materialism and classism.
The American dream states that people can work themselves up "from rags to riches" by hard work.1 For this reason, the new society has developed dreams of the blind pursuit of material, wealth, and economic success. F. Scott Fitzgerald realizes this big change in society, and considering the fact that he is a fighter for the old values, this novelist tries to warn people not to continue this wrong way. The ideal of the American Dream is based on the fantasy that an individual can achieve success regardless of family history, race, or religion simply by working hard enough. Dysfunctional relationships, according to Fitzgerald's way of writing, are based on infidelity, carelessness, and loveless couples. Materialism, on the other hand, situates wealth as advancement, and money, besides from becoming a shelter from the realities of life, acquires more importance than people. Classism, in the meanwhile, refers to racism, discrimination and snobbery, in the case of The Great Gatsby, present in West Egg. In his influential book The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald recognizes and describes many of the less alluring characteristics of the 1920's and the pursuit of the American Dream including dysfunctional relationships, materialism and classism.
F.Scott Fitzgerald describes and recognizes the pursuit of the American Dream present in the 1920's including dysfunctional relationships. These ...
... middle of paper ...
...that someone might really be happy with money, but without love?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Fitzgerald, F.Scott. The Great Gatsby. USA: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995.
2. http://www.allgatsby.com/gg.php?id=2&PHPSESSID=941b74eeb32ae15afea13a1b661098eb. All Gatsby. Date accessed: March 10, 2003.
3. http://www.homework-online.com/tgg/index.asp. The Great Gatsby Readers. Date accessed: March 13, 2003.
4. http://www.homework-online.com/tgg/quotes.asp. The Great Gatsby Quotes. Date accessed: March 16, 2003.
5. http://allfreeessays.com/student/free/The_death_of_the_American_Dream.shtml. Essay; The Death of the American Dream. Date accessed: March 16, 2003.
6. http://www.onlineessays.com/essays/literature/lit120.php. Great Gatsby: Theme and character analysis of Tom and Daisy. Date accessed: March 16, 2003.
Notes
1 American proverb.
"The Great Gatsby." Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1997. 64-86. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.
...on materialism and social class. While novel is widely considered a zeitgeist of the time period, it is also a warning for the American Dream. Although the Dream is not Marxist materialism, it is certainly not traditional individualism and freedom. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby poses a question: what is the American Dream?
"An Overview of The Great Gatsby." Literature Resource Center -. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Literature Resource Center -. Web.
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This group of supporters was mainly compiled up of farmers, share croppers, and tradesmen. The Anti-Federalists believed that each state should have their own independent government. They were led by Patrick Henry and George Mason. Anti-federalists argued that the new Constitution would eventually lead to the disbanding state governments, the consolidation of the Union into one national government, and as a result would put an end to all forms of self-rule in the states. In debating their arguments, the Anti-Federalists often relied on the expressions and ideas from the Revolutionary War era. This was an example of a centralized national (government) power with an overbearing monarch. They claimed that the United States Constitution represented a step away from the democratic goals of the American Revolution and a step towards monarchy and aristocracy. The Anti-Federalists feared that the Constitution would take away Congress’s power and give it all to the president. Many Anti-Federalists supported a type of government known as agrarian republicanism. This type of government is centered around a society of farmers who participate in local
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One of the most famous contemporary ethnographic studies of women and gender within Islam is Erika Friedl’s Women of Deh Koh, in which her main concern seems to be providing he...
The debate between the Anti-Federalists and Federalists is important because it provides us insight on how the United States Constitution was built and how it was changed. A reason why this debate is so important to understand is because there are people today who don’t agree with the government having so much power. Once one understands what started the disagreement between the two groups of politicians, one will see how both sides sealed the deal for our constitution that we still follow today. I have decided to speak about the Anti-Federalists first because this group of men stood out to me as being very intelligent, creative and brave but unfortunately their plan to help Americans wasn’t successful. Patrick Henry and George Mason, some of the few influential figures, were all about “supporting the American needs”. Originally called the “Federalists” in 1781, they were the first American National Government called the Articles of Confederation, which gave all thirteen states’ government more authority and freedom. The Federalists main concerns were to make sure Americans kept their liberty and states become one Union. The Anti-Federalists main concerns were to make sure Americans had their freedom but have separate Unions. Although the Federalists and Anti-Federalists were different,
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Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print. The.
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