In Hansberry's domestic realist tragedy depicting the reality for African American families in 1950s South Side Chicago and F.Scott Fitzgerald's post-war literary-realist tragedy of the Jazz Age American Dream depicting the corruption of the aristocratic New York Elite, they both observe the zeitgeist of their contemporary society.
The concept of the American Dream was seen in the early writings of the French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville, who suggested that unlike Europe, the ‘new world’ of America provided equal opportunity for all, yet both Hansberry and Fitzgerald suggest that this is not the case and that society crushes such aspirations.
