F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath

963 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: minor characters in the grapes of wrath essay

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath are superb models of individual and settings’ contrasting elements. Each novel is respectively set in different decades and both serve as foils of another. In regards to the “American Dream,’’ Great Gatsby and Grapes of Wrath are examples of two separate, yet similar paths of this vision; Gatsby is the respective “Promised land” and contrastingly, Grapes is “hell on earth.”

The Great Gatsby, filled with its accomplished, ostentatious, and scintillating characters, is the beacon and example of the achievement of the American Dream and the “Roaring 20s”. In the carefree fantasy world of the Buchanans and Gatsby, everything is beautiful, clean, and the availability of any material item is limitless. In particular, the Buchanans are especially haughty and even supercilious in manner. They, like every other denizen of the prestigious Egg sections of Long Island, live a secluded grandiose life. The striking contrast and caveat to this is that the family did not have to work for their own wealth. They are part of the ‘old money’ of the nation and their attitudes, especially Tom’s, are reflective of their lack of intercultural awareness and their secret society mindset. When Tom makes the statement, "Civilization's going to pieces. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be--will be utterly submerged (by niggers). It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things” (Ch 1) it is clear evidence of the small-minded bigoted nature of supposedly sophisticated elite. This quotation also gives insight into the mindset of many Americans in regards towards beliefs about the adduced racial and ethni...

... middle of paper ...

...the idea of an American Dream, much less its attainment, is a dream and a faraway prayer that is mysterious and an intangible concept.

Works Cited

• Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The great Gatsby . New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995. Print.

• Lombardi, Esther. "'The Great Gatsby' Quotes." Books & Literature Classics. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2011.
• "SparkNotes: The Grapes of Wrath: Important Quotations Explained." SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2011. .

• Lombardi, Esther. "'Grapes of Wrath' Quotes." Books & Literature Classics. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2011.

• Steinbeck, John. The grapes of wrath . New York: Viking Press, 1939. Print

Show More
Related

  • How Does Steinbeck Overcome Homelessness In The Grapes Of Wrath

    716 Words  | 2 Pages

    In conclusion the Grapes of Wrath is a literary masterpiece that portrays the struggles of man as he overcomes the adversity of homelessness, death, and the wrath of prejudice. Steinbeck fully explores each faucet coherently within the boundaries of the Joad family’s trials and

    Read More

  • Grapes Of Wrath

    1368 Words  | 3 Pages

    The tale of The Grapes of Wrath has many levels of profound themes and meanings to allow us as the reader to discover the true nature of human existence. The author's main theme and doctrine of this story is that of survival through unity. While seeming hopeful at times, this book is more severe, blunt, and cold in its portrayl of the human spirit. Steinbeck's unique style of writing forms timeless and classic themes that can be experienced on different fronts by unique peoples and cultures of all generations.

    Read More

  • Materialism and Manipulation in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    1054 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...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?

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 1996. Print.

    Read More

  • Racism and the American Dream From 1492 and 1877

    908 Words  | 2 Pages

    "The American Dream is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret

    Read More

  • The Powerful Ending of The Grapes of Wrath

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wyatt, David. New Essays on the Grapes of Wrath. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990. Print.

    Read More

  • Making Hard Choices in The Grapes of Wrath

    905 Words  | 2 Pages

    In literature as well as in life always find themselves making difficult choices.  However, their decisions and actions can greatly affect the outcome.  In The Grapes of Wrath, we learned that the characters also found themselves in tough predicaments.  Nevertheless, the nature of their choices helped to make a triumphant result.  Ma and Tom made hard decisions and survived.

    Read More

  • F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

    1434 Words  | 3 Pages

    F. Scott Fitzgerald uses The Great Gatsby in order to display the wretchedness of upper-class society in the United States. The time period, the 1920s, was an age of new opulence and wealth for many Americans. As there is an abundance of wealth today, there are many parallels between the behavior of the wealthy in the novel and the behavior of today’s rich. Fitzgerald displays the moral emptiness and lack of personal ethics and responsibility that is evident today throughout the book. He also examines the interactions between social classes and the supposed noblesse oblige of the upper class. The idea of the American dream and the prevalence of materialism are also scrutinized. All of these social issues spoken about in The Great Gatsby are relevant in modern society. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses this novel as an indictment of a corrupt American culture that is still present today.

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    885 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is the unbelievable story of a man who was forsaken by his one true love, and his ongoing struggle to reclaim her heart. Fitzgerald does a outstanding job of capturing the idea of the true American dream. The novel highlights the concept of the affluent spending without consequence; this thematic structure of the text parallels the concept of the American dream in current popular culture and for this reason this story is a classic novel shared all over the world.

    Read More

  • Themes Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

    755 Words  | 2 Pages

    F. Scott Fitzgerald penned The Great Gatsby in the midst of the Roarin’ Twenties. It was a period of cultural explosion, rags-to-riches histories, and a significant shift in the ideals of the American Dream. Fitzgerald’s characters all aspired to fill an American Dream of sorts, though their dreams weren’t the conventional ones. In the novel, the American Dream did a sort of one-eighty. Instead of looking west, people went east to New York in hopes of achieving wealth. The original principals of the Dream faded away, in their place, amorality and corruption. The fulfillment of one’s own American Dream is often marked by corruption, dishonesty, and hope.

    Read More

  • Research Paper On The Great Gatsby

    1163 Words  | 3 Pages

    Up until now, the term American Dream is still a popular concept on how Americans or people who come to America should live their lives and in a way it becomes a kind of life goal. However, the definitions of the term itself is somehow absurd and everyone has their own definition of it. The historian James Tuslow defines American Dream as written in his book titled “The Epic of America” in 1931 as “...dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” The root of the term American Dream is actually can be traced from the Declaration of Independence in 1776 which stated “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby Final Essay

    754 Words  | 2 Pages

    As depicted by Scott F. Fitzgerald, the 1920s is an era of a great downfall both socially and morally. As the rich get richer, the poor remain to fend for themselves, with no help of any kind coming their way. Throughout Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, the two “breeds” of wealthier folk consistently butt heads in an ongoing battle of varying lifestyles. The West Eggers, best represented by Jay Gatsby, are the newly rich, with little to no sense of class or taste. Their polar opposites, the East Eggers, are signified by Tom and Daisy Buchanan; these people have inherited their riches from the country’s wealthiest old families and treat their money with dignity and social grace. Money, a mere object in the hands of the newly wealthy, is unconscientiously squandered by Gatsby in an effort to bring his only source of happiness, Daisy, into his life once again. Over the course of his countless wild parties, he dissipates thousands upon thousands of dollars in unsuccessful attempts to attract Daisy’s attention. For Gatsby, the only way he could capture this happiness is to achieve his personal “American Dream” and end up with Daisy in his arms. Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy is somewhat detrimental to himself and the ones around him; his actions destroy relationships and ultimately get two people killed.

    Read More

  • Puerto Rican Obituary by Pedro Pietri

    591 Words  | 2 Pages

    the “American Dream” a dream that is unreal. The American dream was intended for people of

    Read More

  • Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

    647 Words  | 2 Pages

    Will, Barbara. "The Great Gatsby and the Obscene Word." College Literature 32.4 (2005): 125. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.

    Read More

  • The Influence Of The American Dream

    2198 Words  | 5 Pages

    When the term ‘American Dream’ was first mentioned in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, he described it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” (Clark). When Adams mentioned the term, it had much more of an idealistic meaning, rather than the materialistic meaning it has in modern society. At the time of it’s mention, the dream meant that prosperity was available to everyone. In the beginning, the American Dream simply promised a country in which people had the chance to work their way up through their own labor and hard work (Kiger). Throughout history, the basis of the dream has always been the same for each individual person. It

    Read More

More about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath

Open Document