Table of Contents

Introduction2

American Culture and Identity2

The Social, Political and Economic Concerns in Light of Gatsby3

Integrity and Material Comforts4

Hollowness of the Upper Class5

Valley of Ashes6

Tension in American Culture and Society and the “Dream”7

The Reality of the Dream and Culture8

The Interpretive Framework of American Culture10

Conclusion10

American Culture and Society

Introduction

The famous authors of the contemporary American Literature are all inspired by the authors of the past. For instance, the authors involved in writing speculative fiction, usually cites Lewis of having a major influence on them. While many contemporary works emphasize the value of the American Dream and its attainability, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' contradicts these pieces of prose. The author not only implies that the American Dream in unreal but he also explains that chasing after the American dream results in one own destruction and everyone comes up short in the end.

American Culture and Identity

According to the authors, Americans have "improvised their culture as they did their politics and institutions: touch and go, by ear and by eye; fitting new form to new function, new function to old forms." In regard to cultural identity, America's most precise and unambiguous manifestation of it took place during its youth, when its separation from Europe actualized. Antebellum American life is most accurately documented and described by the literature in which it birthed, written by the people whom it raised, encompassing the beliefs, doctrines, standards, and will of the people for the democracy it intended to achieve (Skipp,2005,87-98).

America; an idea; a hypothetical construct; written into existence by the subversive rhetoric, logic, and innovations of a common group of people with shared political interests. In other words, they were all seeking identical freedom, liberty, and independence from the same tyranny and oppression; they wanted a democracy completely of the people, by the people, and genuinely for the people, these precepts of compassion, trustworthiness, love, equality, a sense of the common good, and an unity through embraced diversity were forever instilled in us...absorbed and embraced by Americans, retaught to Americans, developed by Americans, and so consequently, America was molded, and finally Americans were established, along with the innovative ideologies with which they identify and subscribe to; our cultural identity is simply the personification, embodiment, and exhibition of these attributes (Skipp,2005,87-98).

The Social, Political and Economic Concerns in Light of Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece of American literature, The Great Gatsby, holds a prominent place in both the secondary and the college classroom. While offering a portrait of the Roaring Twenties in America, Fitzgerald gives readers a story of love and intrigue and demonstrates the possibility of social class movement within the United States. Jay Gatsby, the story's central character, exemplifies the economic rise of a poor mid westerner to the heights of financial success. His life's goal is to recapture the love interest from his youth, Daisy Fay, a Kentucky native and former debutante, who is wealthy in her own right and now married to Tom Buchanan. The novel concerns itself with the struggles of reinventing oneself to ...