American Dreamer Sparknotes

are ideals used to define the American Dream. The American Dream promises immigrants and citizens a chance to pursue a better life, which is portrayed throughout the novel Behold the Dreamers . Behold the Dreamers , by Imbolo Mbue, follows the lives of Jende and Neni Jonga, an immigrant couple from Cameroon, who live in Harlem in hopes of providing a better life for their family. Throughout the Jonga’s journey, Imbolo Mbue proves that the essentials of hard work, education, and strong families are not enough for achieving the American Dream. Jende and Neni came to America in hopes of a brighter future for their family, but come to face with reality and are forced to make an impossible choice.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is in many ways one of the most notable writers of the twentieth century. His prodigious literary voice and style provides remarkable insight into the lifestyles of the rich and famous, as well as himself. Exploring themes such as disillusionment, coming of age, and the corruption of the American Dream, Fitzgerald based most of his subject matter on his own despicable, tragic life experiences. Although he was thought to be the trumpeter of the Jazz Age, he never directly identified himself with it and was adverse to many of its manifestations.

“One of the generalities most often noted about Americans is that we are a restless, a dissatisfied, a searching people,”(Steinbeck America & Americans) John Steinbeck stated this when discussing the topic of the American dream. He believes that numerous Americans are chasing after a dream that is nearly impossible to reach. John Steinbeck expresses his belief on the American dream through a general negative attitude toward the American dream and the failed dreams of his characters.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, a St. Paul, Minnesota native, was born on September 24, 1896. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, had co-written a novel in his youth and often read works by Edgar Allen Poe and Lord George Gordon Byron to Scott during his childhood. While Fitzgerald’s father praised his literary attempts, both of his parents encouraged him to pursue other career paths. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald was steadfast in his literary endeavors, writing for both his high school and college newspapers. He later dropped out of Princeton University in order to join the army and continued to pursue writing, penning both magazine articles and musical lyrics (Adams 10-11).

—F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Scribners, 1994. pg. 352.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896. He was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and his parents were both born in Maryland and Irish. You could say he grew up very lower middle class. Fitzgerald’s views of relationships began at an early age. It was interesting because many of his best books came from the idea that women & men relationships is just a game with one person ending up being a winner. He claimed to forever have a jazz-age attitude that would stick with him for life, and it worked. F. Scott Fitzgerald died December 21, 1940 at the young age of 44.

The American Dream is indefinable. There is no one set of words or characteristics that the entire population assigns directly to its definition. With the American population consisting of people of various races, ethnicities, ages, classes, and genders, it seems trivial to even attempt to attribute a single definition to the concept of the American Dream. It is this inability however, to be confined within one single meaning, that allows for the American Dream to govern the desires and goals of the large and diverse American population. And, regardless of all of the heterogeneity within society, the American Dream is generally a goal of all American peoples. In examining this idea, I began to think about the specific meanings attributed to the American Dream for different types of individuals. I broadly outlined the American Dream for myself, to represent the belief in hard work as a pathway to success and raising oneself in society. Consequently, this higher position in society allows for the possession of increased amounts of power. My definition however, neglects to take into account the certain other societal constructs that could possibly have a decisive role in how to both define and achieve the American Dream for the wide variety of people who pursue it.

American Dream: Noun, the ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity traditionally held to be available to every American. That is the definition of the American dream according to Dictionary.com, but the American Dream is more than a definition, but a way of life for many. Millions of immigrants come to our country in search of this “American Dream” including my grandparents but more and more are disappointed. So does the American Dream exist? Has it ever existed or has it all been an illusion?

" F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, were guilty of many things. They were impetuous, they were known to drink too much, and they were prone to bouts of serious depression and self-destructive behavior, but no one could ever accuse them of frugality" " F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Age of Excess" by Joshua Zeitz.

From the early stages of American literature the dream of success has always been around, even at the very beginning. It has gone on the journey of merely surviving in small amounts of the literature from the native people to thriving in a growing society and being in everything. The dream to myself is becoming wealthy and being successful in everything I do. Today I believe that the dream has become different for everyone, every person has a different dream, a different way they want their life to go.

One of the most influential writers of the early 20th century was a man named F. Scott Fitzgerald. The biggest topic that he wrote about was the American Dream. Fitzgerald uses many different aspects of writing to get his opinion across, such as the outcome of stories like The Great Gatsby and “Winter Dreams”. He also uses the setting and to explain his beliefs. Based of his work, Fitzgerald believes the American dream is not only unrealistic, but also unattainable.

One of the main idea’s that Fitzgerald showed was the innocence of a character and their lose of innocence. We start to see the innocence in the character’s at the begin of the book and as the book goes on

Fitzgerald is a member of the Lost Generation and his life is portrayed through the character Gatsby. Both of these individuals experienced the pain of lost love and crushed expectations because “both Fitzgerald and Gatsby seem to ‘preserve a romantic state of mind’ in order to escape the painful reality that they had lost the women they love” (Sanders 109). Psychological and spiritual

F Scott Fitzgerald: It depends on the readers interpretation but for me personally its Love and Class, both of theses played a huge role in the book. I view love as a foolish thing and I showed this in the novel by the use of the main character “Jay Gatsby”. He fell in love with Daisy which made him look like a fool because Daisy is already with Tom. Class brings me back to the American Dream, which does not exist since we’re all who we are when we’re born. Changing class can lead to tragedy which could be pretty grim for people in World War 1.

How came people did not respect Fitzgerald’s writing in the twentieth century, but why people are respecting and valuing Fitzgerald work in the twenty-first century? Fitzgerald had a hard time to profiting from his writing, but he was not successful after his first novel. There are three major point of this essay are: the background history of Fitzgerald life, the comparisons between Fitzgerald and the Gatsby from his number one book in America The Great Gatsby, and the Fitzgerald got influences of behind the writing and being a writer. From childhood to adulthood, Fitzgerald faced many good and bad experiences that inspired him to achieve his own American dream in a short amount of time.