American Dream

• 'it was an extraordinary gift for hope.' 


  Hope = vital to everything Gatsby does

  Extraordinary = beyond ordinary
• 'i married him because i thought he was a gentleman... i thught he knew something about breeding.' Myrtle, Ch2

  There is a parallel formed between M and Gatsby through their desires + dreams for transgression of the social ladder, which has been prohibited by their positions.

  
  

  Contrast of 'gentleman' and 'breeding' form a sense of Myrtle feeling hard done by since Goerge is a failure, inable to bring her the extravagant lifestyle she desires.
• ‘All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘you can’t live forever, you can’t live forever.’

  She saw Tom as an oppurtunity to escape.
• Escapism is Myrtles dream
• 'even gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.' 


  In NYC, Gatsby is not beyond the realms of possibility, NYC is a place where dreams become realities.
• 'he [gatsby] did not know that it [gatsbys dream] was already behind him' ch9

  Last sentiment about Gatsby being sad: painting him as pathetic

  The reader can form a sense of pathos for Gatsby

  Gatsby was chasing a dream that was never meant to be his.
• ARITS: is essentially about the main characters struggle to deal with the oppressive circumstances that rule their lives, oppressing their dreams
• ARITS: title references Langston Hughes poem were he says: 'what happens to a dream deferred? does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? or fester like a sore?... or does it explode?'
• ARITS: each character has a separate individual dream:

  B = doctor

  W = wealthy for family

  R = a home for the family

  M = survival in oppressive society (the plant symbolises)
• GG: character dreams are more corrupt in the GG

  G = daisy, the completion to his AD

  Jordan = successful career

  Myrtle = to transgress, leave her husband for T
• GG: Fitzgerald uses the motif of time to foreshadow that an abundance of dreams can make them run away, as well as show the shallow and corrupt nature of the AD
• GG: another theme explored in relation to dreams is inability to escape / conjure the past

  Daisy: she 'can't help the past'

  Gatsby: 'why of course you can!'

  Fitzgerald uses anadiplosis: showing this theme of the past.
• GG: Fitzgerald both explore the dreams of the UC and the WC, yet those that dream most in the UC is Gatsby, whose UC status is tainted by his past
• GG: Myrtle dream appears to be notoriety, her only ‘tragic achievement’ is her death, an oxymoronic statement because her dream was to get notoriety, but she had to die to get it. 
• GG: Myrtle and Gatsby are similar in their dreams, they both are determined to cling to them up until their deaths despite the many obstacles preventing them from achieving them

  Myrtle: 'rushed out into the dusk' literally and metaphorically chasing her AD
• GG + ARITS: both show aspirational characters with their big dreams sitting at the end of an obstacle filled path

  Gatsby + Walter

  Myrtle + Beneatha
• GG + ARITS: Waiter represents the desires to acquire an equal AD, he holds the everyman perspective of the black man in 20th century trapped in the cycle of chasing an unachievable dream, like Gatsby.
• GG + ARITS: symbolism of dreams.

  Gatsby 'green light' is something he WANTS, sense of privilege in how G doesn’t need it but craves it so strongly he convinces himself that he cannot live without it. 

  Gatsby’s dream is privileged, the luxury of having the dream be distant.

  Youngers dream is to live - plants need sunlight to survive.
• ARITS: The natural connotations of the 'little old plant' represents the inequality of society that restricts natural requirements from AA
• GG + ARITS: symbolism of dreams

  Both green, dreams = green

  Connotations of green = growth, abundance, fresh, rebirth, envy
• GG + ARITS

  Plant = tangible and physical and close proximity to the family. It is there and present. A reality

  Green light = intangible, in the distance, no substance to the dream, an idea.
• GG + ARITS: Walter and Gatsby

  Both reach out to their dreams, visualising their futures.

  Gatsby: 'arms stretched out'

  Walter: 'don't you see no stars gleaming that you can't reach out and grab'

  'it's like i can see the future stretched out in front of me... a big looming blank space... full of nothing'
• ARITS: the dream of the house is the most important dream, it unites the family.
• ARITS: Hansberry uses Walters to make a comment on the required epiphany to transgress beyond the confines of the American Dream.
• GG: Fitzgerald uses Gatsby's unattainable American Dream's navigation of his decisions in life to highlight its deception
• GG: Gatsby is used as a vehicle to explore the AD and how it shaped the American society and civilians.

  The 'dream' remains an illusion for the working class whilst for the aristocrats it is superficial and miserable: they want more.
• GG: for some, the AD is the lavish lifestyle of drinking and parties, which Myrtle attempts to recreate with her apartment in the city, but in reality her AD is to escape the suffocating VOA.
• AD = success against all odds