The American Dream in Novels The novels The Great Gatsby, Of mice and men, and The Crucible, portray to the American dream. The American dream is the hard work people have to endure to be successful in this nation. To some it could be making a family and having a house to support everyone in it. However other citizens are restless; they will go into an extent to make that imagination into a reality. These novels have their own specific way of portraying the American Dream and have different situations as well. In Great Gatsby the story is about a young man named Nick Carraway, who just came out of WW2 and he wishes to follow his dream in New York to become a writer. He starts out by saying, “The Carraway’s are something of a clan, and we have …show more content…
George and Lennie have been struggling to keep a job due to Lennie getting into trouble. This always causes them to always move around and start from scratch. This novel also relates to having the American Dream with what they dream of building together. They want to get a ranch and raise a farm of rabbits. “We’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens” (Steinbeck 10). George especially struggles with keeping Lennie around, its drives him crazy with the amount of trouble Lennie gets him into. However George feels responsible for him and he is like a brother to him. George is not willing to quit on Lennie until the reach their dream of owning a ranch. “I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads” (Steinbeck 74). However dreams are much more different than reality. Lennie is only a ticking time bomb however, he is unpredictable and extremely dangerous. After Lennie killed Curley’s wife, George soon realized that their dream was never going to happen. Lennie could not live in his perfect world with George, it was like trying to fly; impossible. “You...an’ me. Everybody gonna be nice to you. Ain’t nobody gonna be more trouble. Nobody gonna hurt nobody steal from em’”
In the beginning, the farm and the bond between George and Lennie presented to us is so beautiful yet strong. Foreshadowing already appears constantly in the first section of the book and Steinbeck stresses the doom that awaits the pair. The rabbits ran for cover immediately after the footsteps, hinting their American dream is getting away from them. We learn about Lennie’s deadly desire to stroke for soft things, and the dead mouse explains to us that the weak, innocent will not survive. The innocent soft things from mice to Lennie’s puppy all dies because of Lennie’s incapability to control his immense strength, which he has completely no idea how to control which makes him no less helpless than the animals he kills. George recounts the reason why they had to flee from the previous weed and we are made aware that similar ending will fall upon the one and only woman in the ranch-Curley’s wife.
After reading both, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “Paradox and Dream” by John Steinbeck, it is extremely clear that both authors believe the American Dream differs from person to person. Though, the main similarity between American’s different versions of the American Dream is that each person wants more than they have. No matter the social status or salary, each person dreams of more; more money, a bigger home, a better job, etc.
A friendship is not all they have together, Lennie and George have dreams. Lennie and George have worked up the idea of owning their own piece of land together. Lennie wants to tend the rabbits (Steinbeck 11) and George just wants to be his own boss (Steinbeck 14). The only problem with their dream is that it is unrealistic. They cannot buy land to tend and just go days without tending it because they do not want to. Like many traveling farm hands during the 1930s, George and Lennie think they could work up enough money to buy their own place and not give a “hoot” about anyone but their selves. Although their dream is unattaina...
It is a given that every piece of work that people read will contain all sorts of characters. Those characters can range from villains, victims, or venerables. Two pieces of work that easily portray those types of characters is in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, and in Arthur Miller’s tragedy, The Crucible. It is revealed to the readers that Mr. Wilson in The Great Gatsby takes the role of the victim because of the how he was lied too and deceived throughout the entirety of the novel, and in the end died from it. Also, in The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan is almost an undercover villain. It is not revealed to most, but by speculating on her actions she does some things that prove her to be a villain. Lastly, in The Crucible Giles Corey comes off as a venerable,
In this book George is constantly taking care of Lennie and is always reassuring him that they will have their own land and be able to tend the rabbits. George doesn’t actually believe in this dream which shows how he is willing to say anything to make Lennie happy. Also, George is constantly bringing up how easy his life would be without Lennie, he said "God almighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could get a job a work, an no trouble (12). This quote shows how George is aware that Lennie is holding him back from making more money but how he choices to stay with him because they have a genuine friendship. George takes his parental figure role seriously and would never leave him.
The American dream is an idea that every American has an equal chance of success. In the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald shows us this is not the case. Fitzgerald wrote the character Jay Gatsby as a tragic American hero. Jay Gatsby went from a nobody to a millionaire and most people believe that he had achieved the American dream. However, he did not achieve the American dream because he lost a piece of himself in his pursuit of his supposedly incorruptible dream.
Within the beginning of the story, the dynamic of George and Lennie’s relationship is introduced, one that is uncommon and presents a fatherly vibe. The readers are thrown into the novel at the height of the great depression, an economic catastrophe that shook the world. Within these dark time, an unlikely friendship is in full blossom and we are meet by Lennie and George setting up camp for the night by a riverbed. After the duo’s personalities are expressed, they begin to set up the idea of a commonly shared dream which exists according to Lennie “Because... because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you” (Steinbeck 14). Lennie is seen as a quite simple minded and extremely dim-witted character from just the first
The American Dream had always been based on the idea that each person no matter who he or she is can become successful in life by his or her hard work. The dream also brought about the idea of a self-reliant man, a hard worker, making a successful living for him or herself. The Great Gatsby is about what happened to the American Dream in the 1920s, a time period when the many people with newfound wealth and the need to flaunt it had corrupted the dream. The pursuit of the American Dream is the one motivation for accomplishing one's goals, however when combined with wealth the dream becomes nothing more than selfishness.
To paraphrase Robert Burns-"The best laid plans of mice and men go awry". This is a bleak statement and it is at the centre of the novel's action. George and Lennie have the dream of owning their own ranch and living a free independent life; they would be self-reliant and most of all they would be safe from a harsh and hostile world. Other characters in the book also try to buy into their dream ie, Candy and Crooks. Ultimately, the dream unravels and like a Greek Tragedy, the ending is terrible but also predictable.
"The American dream is the idea held by many in the United States of America that through hard work, courage and determination one can achieve prosperity." Wikipedia: So basically the American Dream is to have money, and a family. Gatsby got his money, but what he really wanted was Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby spent his whole life striving for one thing.
The American dream has been a tangible idea, greatly sought after by many over the course of American History. The dream has eluded many, to strive for achieving in America’s open markets, and become a self-made man from the sweat of one’s brow. The idea of become self-sufficient, and have limitless dreams that take one as far as they are willing to imagine is captured very differently from The Great Gatsby to A Raisin in the Sun. Both novels seem to have the American dream as their subject, but both end up having very different outcomes to how one achieves it, and if the dream is truly in existence, namely with the characters of Jay Gatsby and Walter Younger. The books mainly brushes upon the idea of what the American dream truly is, how one achieves the dream, and what the real fulfillment the dream encompasses.
The biggest dream throughout the story is for George and Lennie to have enough money to go and buy a farm of their own. But then Lennie does something that he can’t change back or hide from, and all hope is lost for him and George to have a farm when George does what he never thought he’d do. “And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger… Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering.” (page 106) This one final scene symbolized all of George’s aspirations, hopes, dreams, ambitions, anything he had, diminishing before his eyes. He made a point earlier in the book, “ I was feelin’ pretty smart. I turns to Lennie and says, ‘jump in.’... well I ain’t done nothin like that no more” (40). He promised himself he wouldn’t hurt Lennie again, he took it upon himself to keep Lennie safe. But George fired that last bullet and killed Lennie, stripping himself of all his hope and ambitions. The other main ambition that was crushed in this story has to do with Lennie and his rabbits. “We’re gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an’ a cow and some pigs… An’ have rabbits!...” (14) This is a recurring event throughout the book; they talk about their future dreams, and Lennie tells everyone he meets about the rabbits he's gonna have, but again that all changes when Lennie messes up badly and kills Curley’s wife. The story displays the reader the visual of, “She struggled violently under his hands… “Don’t you go yellin’,” he said, and he shook her; and her body flopped like a fish. And then she was still, for Lennie had broken her neck.” (91) This visual can help you see where Lennie’s dream of ever handling another living being again diminishes because if he can’t keep an
George started this novel with a dream of living an ideal life with Lennie. “We’re gonna live off the fatta the land,” he’d say. He wanted to go somewhere off the grid with Lennie so that they’d both be safe and not have to worry about other people or Lennie getting in trouble. He wants to escape the harshness of the world that the two live in so that they can both be safe and happy. “I’d be bringin’ in my own crops ‘stead of doing all the work and not getting what comes outta the ground,” he hopes to leave the life of the migrant worker and own his own ranch and be his own boss. As the novel goes on he realises that any of this is probably not possible. No matter how much he saves up he will never be able to get enough money to buy and sustain his dream farm and Lennie is going to keep getting in trouble.
In conclusion, the American dream targeted the individual working hard in the pursuit to become successful and wealthy, with high-quality job and prosperity. In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the American dream symbolizes being free from any kind of restrictions and the ability to have the pleasure in the wide-open Western edge. However, The Great Gatsby criticizes the American dream due to moral and social value decay of the society.
A lot of the time people visualize the American dream as having money; being rich and wealthy. However this may not work for people. They can have all the money in the world but they will never have obtained or reached what they believe is the American dream. A testament to this idea is Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald: