Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is an American novel that follows a cast of characters and their experiences living in the wealthy Long Island town of West Egg in the “Roaring Twenties.” The story is primarily based on the extravagant, but also mysterious, life of a millionaire named Jay Gatsby.

The story takes place in the summer of 1922. Gatsby, who was in his thirties, threw lavish parties and was extremely popular in West Egg. This would change when his treacherous past is resurfaced upon meeting his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. It is discovered that Gatsby’s motivation for achieving such great wealth was in fact Daisy. Gatsby grew up in an impoverished family in rural North Dakota. However, his path to success was neither clean nor legal; he participated in organized crime, specifically the illegal distribution of alcohol and trading stolen securities. Upon his return from serving in World War I, Gatsby was determined to achieve wealth and success in order to win over Daisy, regardless of what rules he broke. Of course, nobody in West Egg knows Gatsby’s corrupt background, and so he is seen as an icon and celebrity. In reality, he is a solitary man who lives in his own personal bubble, trying to relive the past. When his friends try to help him better himself, he cannot because he is too caught up in his own world and refuses to change. He fails to accept the truth, which is that Daisy is now married to Tom and that he has essentially lived a lie. Gatsby’s theatrical approach to life would come back to haunt him when he accidentally runs over and kills Myrtle with his car. Gatsby becomes so much of a problem that Wilson goes to his mansion and shoots him.

The Great Gatsby written by author F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel that somewhat depicts the life of people living in the 1920’s in America.  The novel follows Nick Caraway as his life is transformed when he meets Jay Gatsby.  The novel then goes into great deal on the topic of Gatsby’s love for Daisy Buchanan, but she is married to John Buchanan, a scumbag that constantly cheats on her as he makes his way into the city.

More important to the love Gatsby has for Daisy, is Gatsby’s movement up the socio-economic ranks.  He starts his life as a boy who has next to nothing.  He moves his way up the ladder by, allegedly, becoming a bootlegger and making his fortune illegally.  This move by F. Scott Fitzgerald is to show that in order to make your way up in America in the 1920’s, one was forced to do so through illegal actions.  The rich came from old money, only getting richer throughout the years.  Once Gatsby became rich, he was ridiculed for being from new money, and not reaching the happiness he believed he would get from becoming rich.  This speaks more about the American Dream.  One can reach the American Dream, but if you start at the bottom, getting to the top will cost you to do things that can come back to bite you.

Daisy Buchannan is made to represent the lack of virtue and morality that was present during the 1920s. She is the absolute center of Gatsby’s world right up to his death, but she is shown to be uncaring and fickle throughout the novel. At first, I believed her to be immature based on her inability to take responsibility for her actions and decisions. However, I now feel that she simply prefers to ignore her problems because there is no need for her to worry about them because of the power money and charm have provided her.

Proof of Daisy’s glaring personality flaws can be seen in her indifference towards her child, the way she allows Gatsby to take the blame for Myrtle’s death, and her decisions involving Gatsby and Tom. Not only did she choose Tom over Gatsby for the sake of stability, after Gatsby’s death her and Tom move away leaving no address in order to separate themselves from these events. Gatsby is however blind to Daisy’s faults. He only sees her sophistication, wealth, confidence and beauty. That is what Gatsby learned to want growing up in rural North Dakota. He was removed from what he saw as the pinnacle of society. But being born James Gatz, he would have to use any means necessary to acquire the essence of what Daisy represented. The result is the corruption of his morals, and decision to make a living illegally.

In Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, the American dream is presented as an unachievable and corrupt dream of many. As Nick Carraway moves to West Egg, his small house is overshadowed by the expansive mansion of Jay Gatsby. As Nick becomes acquainted with Gatsby, he observes him watching a green light across the water and longing for his lost love, Daisy. Gatsby is considered to be ‘new money’ and as such has in fact reached some level of the American dream. Although Gatsby has become very rich, he still doesn’t have everything he wants and is still striving to get Daisy but he never succeeds in doing so.

Gatsby grew up in a poor family and through bootlegging he became very rich and used this money to try and win back Daisy. Despite finding great success, Gatsby was not satisfied and he strove to gain even more material wealth. Upon finally meeting with Daisy he boasts of the wealth he has achieved and feels as if he has finally reached the American dream now that he is with Daisy. Tragically, his happiness doesn’t last long as after a hit and run car accident, Gatsby is killed. In Great Gatsby, the American dream is an unrealistic goal of many Americans. Forever longing for more and more wealth and success, Gatsby’s American dream is ended immediately after gaining everything he though he wanted.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the most important and well known works in the American literary cannon. The novel depicts America both at its most glamorous as well as showing the rotten core that hides below its guided exterior. During the events of the novel our narrator Nick Carraway immerses himself with Long Island high society and meets the incredible but mysterious Jay Gatsby who gained his wealth and prestige in a single minded goal of winning over Daisy, a former lover who is now married to the wealthy John Buchanan. The Great Gatsby is in many ways a critique of the social and economic conditions of America in the roaring 1920’s. the wealthy and powerful individuals that Nick meets are corrupt and shallow and anything truly beautiful is just an illusion. Gatsby’s vision of Daisy as a pure woman who truly loves only him is a lie only he truly believes and his single minded quest to win her over ends in disaster and death. This tone reflects a growing sense of disenfranchisement and cynicism that was appearing in America at the time. The first world war had destroyed a generation and in many ways killed off the hope and promise of the progressive era. At the same time, growing income inequality had led many Americans to question the legitimacy of the American dream.

The Great Gatsby was a fictional novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a mysterious millionaire, Jay Gatsby, living in Long Island during the roaring twenties. The story was published in 1925 and it accurately portrays the time period in New York City and Long Island including the extreme wealth that was evident during this time for some people. It is a story that depicts the American dream during the Jazz Age as Jay Gatsby hosts immaculate parties to draw in the woman of his dreams, Daisy Buchanan. Although it is a fictional narrative, it presents a very precise representation of the suburbs of New York City in 1920’s America which were marked with tremendous economic affluence and the development of new life changing technologies like automobiles, broadcast radio, movies, recorded music, and even organized crime which became a mass culture.

The story takes place in the fictional town of West Egg in Long Island where Nick Carraway moves into a small house next to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby. Gatsby knows that Nick is the cousin of his one true love, Daisy Buchanan, and therefore befriends him by inviting him to one of his extravagant parties. Gatsby throws these wildly luxurious parties in hopes that Daisy will one day show up and see how wealthy and powerful he is. Eventually he becomes close with Nick and gets him to set up a meeting between himself and Daisy. They have an affair over the summer, but Daisy’s husband Tom finds out. Although Tom is having and affair himself, he is outraged by Daisy’s actions and confronts Gatsby at a hotel in New York City. Tom also informs his wife that Gatsby’s fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol which was illegal because of the prohibition placed on the substance at the time. In the end, Gatsby and Daisy get into a serious car crash with Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, who was driving the other car. Myrtle’s husband believes that the person driving the other car was Myrtle’s secret lover and he finds out that Gatsby was the driver. He therefore shoots and kills Gatsby and them kills himself with the same gun.

Nick holds a funeral for Gatsby but none of his associates show up, not even the hundreds of people who attended his luxurious parties for years. This shows that wealth and power had no real meaning and that Gatsby was truly alone throughout the whole novel. He held all of his parties in hopes that Daisy would eventually show up and immediately be impressed by his affluence, even though he knew she was married. He didn’t care about any of the other guests which showed that although he had such immense wealth, he was sad and alone the entire time. He also had made his entire fortune illegally which forced him to hide major parts of his identity from those closest to him. Fitzgerald purposely portrayed this time period as lacking in moral values to show that the American Dream had been corrupted. He showed the greed and craving for money and pleasure which became the main goal of this generation of Americans. These young men had just fought in World War 1 and had experienced a great deal of trauma which disoriented their sense of morality. Many of these men generated great wealth for themselves with the rise of the stock market as well as illegal ventures like bootlegging and indulged in this newfound materialism.

In the novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy the main character Julian West is a young Bostonian living in the year 1887. One night he falls asleep with the help of Doctor Pillsbury’s hypnosis and he is put into a deep coma. When he eventually awakes, it is 113 years later in the year 2000 and America has become a socialist Utopia. Julian is confused but a man named Doctor Leete helps show him around the new world he has unexpectedly entered and explains to him all of the changes that have taken place over the last century. Work hours have been reduced considerably, goods are delivered almost instantly, everyone retires with incredible benefits at the age of 45, and all of the goods within the society are distributed equally among the citizens.

This novel was published in 1888 during a long economic and social depression in America which lasted about two decades. There was a chain of recessions throughout the 1880’s which sparked the beginning of organized labor unions and worker strikes including the Haymarket affair in 1886. American capitalism was filled with monopolies which exploited desperate workers for cheap labor because of the influx of European immigrants who were willing to work for low wages. The novel does not directly discuss the American economy in this new utopia nor does it ever specifically talk about socialism. However, it indirectly provides a social commentary on the depression in the late 19^th century by contrasting it with this socialist utopia. In this sense, Bellamy was suggesting that socialism was the solution to the economic difficulties during his lifetime in America. The book created a widespread movement in the 1890s for which called for the the nationalization of private property. This political movement became known as Nationalism and it pushed for the implementation of socialism in the United States.

Edward Bellamy described his imaginations of America, creating an Utopian society to let reader compare and contrast the similarities and differences between two different social systems. In the book, Bellamy discussed the drawbacks of America’s high concentration Capitalism, which 10% of the wealthy people controlling the majority of social resources, and also raised his opinions on how to improve the economic/political system of the U.S.

With the development of productivity and a high concentration of wealth, the negative effects began to grow. Thanks to the economic crisis in 1873 and 1883, America was experiencing a recession, in which factories were shut down, and thousands of workers lost their jobs. The rich class, however, did not suffer as much as the workers did, and they created a bigger gap between the rich and the poor. Wages were cut, working hours were increased. Working class people suffered during the age with limited income and obsessive amount of work. Bellamy started with revealing the cruel reality, and criticized the inferiority of the rich class, as well as the huge inequality within the society. Bellamy wanted to create an Utopian society where everyone would live equally; people with various occupations get paid the same amount, they hold equal social status and so on. He was influenced by the ideal of socialism, so he the protagonist sleep for 100 years to introduce this new system to the readers.

Bellamy imagined：“The country would take over the job, and there would not be shops, banks or currency.” Instead, it was a system that the country would allocate the resources equally. I think this is a really unrealistic idea, and it stops people from working hard or pursuing their goals. When China was established, it was claimed as socialism country as well. Right now, China is turning into Capitalism, simply because the idea of letting everyone share equal amount of wealth did not work. The Utopian society that Bellamy imagined is not the correct direction for future development.

What is interesting to me in regards to this novel is that while the differences between the past and present are clear to Julian, it isn’t until he has a nightmare that it truly sinks in how much better the present day scenario was. It wasn’t as if he lived in poverty in the past, he in fact lived quite comfortably in 1887, but even he appears to reap major benefits from the Socialist society he indulges in the present of 2000. His nightmare scene rips him from the reality, back into 1887 where he identifies the world as having been wrong and miserable. Living and surviving in the actual times he did not have much to complain about, but upon getting a taste of a better time he immediately wants to tell his loved ones of the horrors of their time.  The actual sleeping only to wake up 100 years later and the nightmare are the only plot points that are important to Bellamy’s point, most of the story and its themes are instead driven by Julian’s talks with Doctor Leete.

Looking Backwards is a novel about a man name Julian West who lives in the nineteenth century. Through Julian the reader is shown the unfair wealth distribution in society. After falling into a deep sleep Julian wakes up in the year 2000 to a completely different society. Julian is revived from his deep sleep from Doctor Leete. Through Doctor Leete, Julian learns that societal problems has been resolved by basing the economy on public capital rather than private. As a result the government controls the means of production and has divided the national product equally between all citizens. In comparison to society in the nineteenth century Julian depicts this new world as a utopia.

Unlike other texts we have read this term, Looking Backwards displays a political perspective that critiques societal issues in the nineteenth century. Since the Civil War society has witnessed extreme change. The introduction to industrialization has promoted economic growth in the United States. As a result the United States has become one of the one of the most powerful and wealthy nations in the world. Although some may view this development as progression, Edward Bellamy chastises these “advances” in society. In the authors point of view society in the nineteenth century was unjust. In Looking Backwards Edward Bellamy creates an ideal utopia where everyone is equal. Edward Bellamy presents that the introduction to socialism in the twentieth century was necessary for social harmony. Society in this new utopia was based on the overarching idea of brotherhood. Bellamy claims that in this new utopia people felt proud working together as a community and it was unthinkable that any individual should suffer the evils of poverty or hunger.