The American Dream

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoYUqojYgME

History..

• Stemmed from the “rugged individualism” attributed to these three concepts in the late 1800’s – Puritanism, Democracy and Transcendentalism

• Out of these come the ideas of the American Dream, the idea that one can, if one wishes, make a fortune, rise to great heights and achieve.

Puritanism

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q7FKdhaXig

• Puritanism - the principles and practices of the Congregationalist members of the religious movement who, having migrated to America in 1620, attempted to set up a theocratic state in which clergy had authority over both religious and civil life. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Puritanism... Think The Scarlett Letter, themes of faith in Gatsby

Democracy

• Democracy - free and equal representation of people: the free and equal right of every person to participate in a system of government, often practiced by electing representatives of the people by the majority of the people http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861603633/democracy.html

Transcendentalism

– Transcendentalism - philosophy emphasizing divine: a system of philosophy that emphasizes intuition as a means of knowing a spiritual reality and believes that divinity pervades nature and humanity. It is especially associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and other New England writers.• Example – Ch.1 in Emerson`s Nature• But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays

that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime.

Gatsby • A commentary on the American Dream – not just

the jazz age• It is the American attitude towards life – the

withering American dream• The tension between faith and reality - Jay

Gatsby• Faith – recapturing the past• Reality – Daisy is a .. Green light = green money =

snobbish attitudes• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_aAt6kFius

The Pile of Shirts, etc

• Showing Daisy that he has been cured of poverty – Evidence

• He is not showing them out of vanity or pride, but in humility and reverence, much the same as that which must have exemplified those who were miraculously healed by Christ.

• Gatsby – the archetype of the young hero

Gatsby and Daisy

• Gatsby is mythic – he has no private life, no meaning or significance that depends on his fulfilling his private destiny.

• Daisy – American Dream with the American Debutante dream – it is a thing of deathly shallowness.

• Daisy is a gesture divorced from life and she assumes that Gatsby is like her.

Daisy

• She is only attracted to Gatsby when he appears to her to be a sophisticated, empty man: at no time does she face the fact that he truly is in love with her.

• A character of moral indifference.• ..In the end..he could run away, but he

chooses to stay because he really prefers to die rather than face up to the fact that his dream was not worthy of him.

In the End..

• Gatsby was just a American boy pursuing the American Dream, never knowing that the dream which his idealism has created is not worthy of him.

• He never realizes that what Nick says is true, Gatsby was - better than the whole rotten bunch