The American Dream In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

I believe that the subject that ties these two books together is the idea of the pursuit of the American dream and how each individual in America can pursue their dream in whatever way they choose. The differences between the subjects of these books is what the American dream actually means to each person and if it is actually attainable. Nick, Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy are all searching for their own personal American dream, but it is unclear whether they all can actually attain it. A clear example of the American dream being reached and still not being enough is described early on in the book when Tom character is introduced. He is described as being a former football player who received great fame and adulation for his physical accomplishments
Settling down and having a family are not the dreams see seeks. Money will not grant her the happiness that she is searching for, only education and a life on her own where she can be her own person will do that. Any view that goes outside of this notion of the common American dream of marriage and children Sara meets with extreme resentment. An example I found of the difficulty of achieving the American dream was when Sara discovers that her sister Mashah, who is now married and has a child, much due to the encouragement and influence of her father, is extremely exhausted and unhappy with her new life. Moe realizes this and blames their unhappiness on Mashah even though he is selfish and doesn’t properly care and provide for his family. Sara’s fight with Mashah’s husband Moe is in many ways the climactic point where Sara realizes that traditional values for women and the pursuit of the American dream are not the same for her. Sara confronts Moe, telling him, “You married Mashah because she was beautiful, then you piled your children on her neck, starved her, wore her out.” The dream of getting married, settling down and having children did nothing but ruin Mashah, and this deeply ruins Sara’s ideas of traditional American pursuits of
Learning the author’s history and her cultural background made it easier for me to understand why she wrote the novel the way she did. It made me realize that even though the book is fictional, it is actually quite representative of the real life experiences that Anzia Yezierska had. Her struggle with shedding old-world traditional values all the while being pressured immensely by her family to maintain her long-standing cultural backgrounds directly relates Yezierska, and her characters, to the millions of American immigrants who were struggling with the same identity crisis. She also identifies the struggle that women at the time were facing with their place in society, breaking out of the domestic sphere, and what level of education and success was deemed appropriate. The area of cultural context that that Alice Kessler Harris leaves out was, to me, the racism and inequality of racial backgrounds that was going on at the time. The race issue was such a strikingly obvious issue going on in the US at the time and was never really mentioned anywhere in the preface or in Breadgivers at all, and could have been easily mentioned at some