Money. Greed. Desire. Power. Sacrifice. On too many occasions these themes coincide and cause destruction throughout today’s world on accounts of those who have an avarice for personal gain, seemingly not to care about the damage they leave in their wake.
If this last option seems out of place, perhaps we should turn to literature, specifically F. Scott Fitzgerald in the American Novel The Great Gatsby, Charles Ferguson in the documentary Inside Job, and the Holy Bible to discuss the cost of pursuing a dream.
In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby lost his power as he relentlessly pursued his dream of Daisy, driving “on toward death through the cooling twilight” and going so far as to take the blame for a murder to save Daisy’s reputation. In the end, his dream lead him to death, killing his one source of his power, his dream, in the world he created for her. Why? The loss of his power combines everything: his wealth, Daisy, and his life he created for himself. Gatsby only saw a small portion of the world through his hopeful obsession with Daisy Buchanan. She was his one desire who rendered him powerless by his own lust; leaving his mind lost in hope for her love, which led him to
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Inside Jobs focused on the recession of 2008, and the causes of it being an abuse of power by the CEOs of banks across the United States. Leaders of banks such as Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, the ones held responsible for the recession, had a dream for wealth, to be the richest men in the industry, but “when those dreams turn out to be nightmares, other people pay for it,” leading to the recession in 2008(Inside Jobs).While the CEOs were growing their industry through lending intangible money, they avoided keeping the market “under control” on their quest for wealth, and ultimately lost their positions of power at their companies, a sacrifice for their dream of