Time Essay example -- Literary Analysis, The Great Gatsby

Time, the most impersonal and brutal of juggernauts, cares for neither civilizations nor their cultures it destroys with a simplistic ease that even the most ardent of strugglemongers could never achieve. How indeed can something as simple, as pure, and as vulnerable as a dream stand against the slow but steady stream of time, that beat generation like particles of sand against the bottom of an hourglass? For a dream to continue to prolong the minds of the masses generation after generation, it must adapt--change to better fit the mod circumstances that a change in time invariably evokes. alone as a dream changes, is it as pure, as innocent, and as marvellous as it once was? Could the American dream, which has hereto defined the very invigorate of the era, have lost its original luster in its adaptation, mutation, and perversion? The American dream has traditionally been defined as the ability to achieve satisfaction, success, or greatness, through work. It states, r ather ideally, that the only obstacle to greatness is contained within the dreamer and not the world that if we as individuals work hard enough energy can escape our grasp. Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby, explores the ever-elusive nature of the American dream as he questions the very basis upon which we identify ourselves with. Fitzgerald does not, however, question whether the American dream drives us towards greatness as it once did rather he questions the deficiencies present in our ability to drive, and the path that we take. With every blossoming and wasting away flower, change of season, and revealed faade, Fitzgerald chips away at the illusionary greatness that so pervades the mood of the American dream, showing how its adaptations pervert its original spirit, an... ...onger attainable. The American dream has traditionally been defined as a westward movement, but with the census and food turner declaring the frontier closed, the American dream has been forced to evolv e. With nothing lying to the due west to explore, people go back East. Nick experiences this after returning from the war and feeling as if the Middle double-u was like the ragged boundary line of the universe (3). However Fitzgerald constantly asserts that the East has a quality of overrefinement (176). Going back West from prep school however, involves long light-green tickets and an unutterable awareness of our identity with this countrybefore we melted indistinguishably into it again. Thats my Middle West. (175-176). The West therefore is the true attainable American dream, but because the frontier is closed the American dream is behind usbeyond the city (180) and in the past.