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Examples Of The Dark Side In The Great Gatsby

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Examples Of The Dark Side In The Great Gatsby
The Dark Side
I believe that the American Dream can be defined by having it all. Everyone in America wants to make it to the top. Everyone wants to be rich and famous. But the great power, fame, and success also comes with a dark side. To get to the top you must give part of yourself up. The American Dream may look desirable but the corruption that takes place to get there makes this dream more bad than good. By giving up a part of yourself to get to the top you can never be truly happy once you get there.
In the novel Great Gatsby, Gatsby has it all. He is rich and powerful, and lives in a giant beautiful mansion where he throws parties every weekend. His life and wealth is admired by everyone. But, if you dig a little deeper into Gatsby’s beautiful life you begin to realize it isn’t as great as it seems. Gatsby is not at all happy, and has all of the wrong reasons for becoming the person he is. He is living his life for a woman he will never have. He believes he can get her back even though their relationship was so far in the past. At one point Gatsby says, talking to a friend about Daisy, “Can’t repeat the past?”… “Why of course you can!” Gatsby would do whatever it took to impress Daisy, but he made all of the wrong choices to get there. We find out later in the novel that Gatsby got to be
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The lyrics from this song tell the sad story of the wars faced by this country. “Maybe they’d be happy for a while, but, February made me shiver with every paper I’d deliver. Bad news on the doorstep; I couldn’t take one more step.” The tragic past of the many soldiers lost to wars fought with other nations shows the dark side of how our country got to where it is today. Many good people lost their lives fighting for the freedom of this country, and for the American Dream. Even though the American Dream is a great one, it comes at a high

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