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Immigration In The Great Gatsby

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is considered the typical American novel, known for its emphasis and twist on the American Dream. Some people, such as Jeffrey Decker, disagree with this view on the book. Decker insists in his article, “Corruption and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments Skew a Traditional American Tale”, that the loss of faith in the hope of social mobility and the idea of the self-made man in The Great Gatsby is a direct cause of the anti-immigrant attitudes due to the rising tide of immigration in the 1920s. I have mixed feelings about Decker’s argument. He blames the loss of trust in social advancement and the independent man on the rising tide of immigration in the 1920s. On one hand, I agree that the novel does have some …show more content…

The American Dream is a vision held by the working class of America: a dream in which one can achieve all that he desires through hard work and perseverance. The reader sees Gatsby as a self-made man: a man with everything you could possible want in life, a man who has achieved the American Dream to its fullest, and yet, this image is marred by his unhappiness. A barrier between the inherently wealthy and ‘new money’ blocks his ability to win back the girl he loves, placed there by by the embodiment of the upper class in America - Tom Buchanan. Tom never saw Gatsby as his equal because Gatsby was not born with money, calling him a “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” (130). The working class sees this statement as an example of why the American Dream is not worth the effort. They can build themselves up from nothing in order to be acknowledged by by the world, but they will never be seen as equals in the upper class. This situation erodes the promise of the American Dream for the working class and diminishes their belief in the self-made man and social mobility. The Great Gatsby’s loss of faith in the self-made and social mobility is caused not by immigration but by Gatsby’s inability to transcend the barriers between social classes despite the achievement of the American Dream. Without the promise of social mobility through the American Dream, the working class loses faith in the idea of self-made man. The Great Gatsby proves that material success will not guarantee acceptance or happiness and calls into question the worth of the rewards of the American

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David Trask juxtaposes the idea of the American Dream due to social classes and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the arrival entitled A Note on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Trask hones in on the social movement brought about during the nineteen-twenties and focuses on Jay Gatsby- the main character of The Great Gatsby- to show how he is the definition of the American Dream. Trask also attempts to figure out how Fitzgerald got the name Jay Gatsby from his original name of James Gatz. From this he begins to focus on the background of Gatsby and questions if his Western upbringing was a cause of his immediate downfall? It is obvious by the end of the article that social classes are real; with his research readers can be swayed to agree

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The American Dream suggests that every American citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work. One of the major ways that Fitzgerald portrays this is by alluding to outside events or works of literature specifically from that time period. Another major relationship that develops in The Great Gatsby is between Tom and Daisy. F. Scott Fitzgerald alludes to things such as the World’s Fair and “The Love Nest” to display the eventual dismantling of Tom and Daisy’s relationship. Both of these separate plots consolidate under the idea of Gatsby trying to become the epitome of the American Dream, as seen through his strive for a “perfect life.”

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The American Dream is the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success, prosperity, and social mobility through hard work, determination, and initiative. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby attempts to achieve social mobility but ultimately fails due to the constructs of old vs new money. An argument is shown that the American Dream is just that, a dream, and that happiness cannot be achieved through wealth. In the novel, the super poor are stuck in their social class, unable to move because they live in the valley of ashes, which represents poverty and the corruption and social decay that came with the lavish and careless lifestyles of the rich.

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The American dream states that any individual can achieve success regardless of family history, race, and/or religion simply by working hard. The 1920’s were a time of corruption and demise of moral values in society. The first World War had passed, and people were reveling in the materialism that came at the end of it, such as advanced technology and innovative inventions. The novel The Great Gatsby exploits the theme of the American Dream as it takes place in a corrupt period in history. Although the American Dream seemed more attainable than ever in the 1920’s, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby demonstrates how materialism and the demise of moral values in society leads to the corruption and impossibility of the American Dream.

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The Great Gatsby Literary Analysis “They were careless people…” says Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby. In a story depicting the 1920s during a time of prosperity, growth, and the emergence of the America as a major global power, this statement may seem to be contrary. But in reality, Nick Carraway’s description of his friends and the people he knew, was not only true, but is an indication of those who were striving for the American dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that the American Dream is foolish, the people who pursue it are immoral and reckless, and this pursuit is futile. First, F. Scott Fitzgerald proposes that the American dream is foolish.

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One type of social stratification ideology, we saw there, consists of those that focus on the process and amount of social mobility. And we saw that evidence from a variety of sources, including public opinion surveys, shows that there has been and continue to be in American society an ideological belief in the existence of a large amount of social mobility when men have spoken of America as the land of “opportunity”, they have meant that social mobility was easy for people of talent and that many Americans had been able to show themselves of this character. Francis Scott Fitzgerald through The Great Gatsby situates himself among the distinguished group of major American writers of 20th century, including people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, whose works have echoed the illusions and disenchantments of the American Dream. As a concept, the American Dream incorporates a complex of moral, social values and romantic ideologies on social-political level; the dream is the ideal opportunity for all, of advancement, social or in a career, regardless of one’s origins.

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