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Post by Teresa Dinh on Jan 30, 2016 19:51:54 GMT
In the Great Gatsby, Daisy, Jordan, and Myrtle showed their role in the American dream through beauty and social class.
Daisy:
Daisy was described as being very beautiful and innocent in appearance. Beauty and happiness are a major part of the American Dream, and Daisy pushes that idea. She made Gatsby happy because he was in love with the person that he thought she was. He even tries to become rich so that he can be with her because he knows that she is money-oriented. Daisy uses her beauty to her advantage so that she can live in luxury. With that being said, wealth/social status is also a part of the American Dream. Daisy was born into a wealthy family. Not only that, but she was able to maintain her wealth throughout the story by marrying Tom too. Money is a huge aspect of living the American Dream, and this further emphasizes how Daisy's status is representative of American Dream.
Jordan:
Jordan was beautiful, young, and single. Jordan is admired by many men, and in the 1920s, male dominance was still evident in society. For many men at that time, the American Dream involved being surrounded by beautiful women. Also, Jordan was born rich. On top of that, her status as a famous golfer puts her even higher on the social ladder. She goes to social events and is friends with other rich people, making the American Dream seem very inviting.
Myrtle:
Myrtle was described as beautiful and seductive, which is partly why Tom had an affair with her. Unlike Daisy and Jordan, Myrtle was born into the lower class. However, she is still able to find wealth through her affair with Tom. This gives the message that the American is achievable by even the lower class, which makes the American Dream seem more hopeful and inviting to people who were not born rich.
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Post by Emily Werkheiser on Jan 31, 2016 20:54:36 GMT
I like your idea about connecting the role of the female characters to the American Dream in the novel and I think you make some really good points! From my interpretation of the novel, I saw the role of the female characters slightly differently. I agree with you on what each female stands for, however I interpreted what happens to them, as showing the corruption and decay of the American Dream instead of how to reach the American Dream. For instance, I think that the end of the novel leaves Daisy's position very open. Like you said, one interpretation is that Daisy's main value and happiness in life was money and luxury, and by staying with Tom, she was able to keep these things and therefore achieve the American Dream. On another hand, I questioned Daisy's happiness at the end of the novel, because although she maintained her luxurious lifestyle, she was still in a marriage with a man who is unfaithful to her and does not really love her. I thought that maybe the main reason she stayed with Tom could have been out of fear, seeing how powerful, short-tempered, and violent he could be, she stayed by his side and chose not to leave him because she feared what he might do to her if she left him. Another character that I think was left for multiple interpretations was Myrtle. As you wrote, one could observe how Myrtle sought out money and a higher social status, which she accomplished by having an affair with tom, and therefore shows the hope for upward mobility and possibility for the lower class to achieve the American Dream. Another viewpoint that I had was that although Myrtle did get to have her fling with a richer man, she ended up being killed in the end by someone from the East Egg. In my mind, this stood as a sign that American society made it impossible for the lower class to ever achieve the American Dream and showed the death of the American Dream in the shallow and materialistic 1920's East coast society.
I think that there were definitely a lot of ways to look at the female characters and their role in the American Dream in the novel, and that looking at all the different interpretations can be really interesting.
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amyyu
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Post by amyyu on Feb 1, 2016 4:41:56 GMT
Emily, I think you brought out really good ideas by analyzing the different interpretations of what the women in the novel stood for in regards to the American Dream. I completely agree with what you said about Myrtle-- she is definitely an important symbol that shows how the difficulty and the struggles that the lower class faced in trying to attain the American Dream. To add on, Myrtle's death can also be seen as ironic because her own desires for wealth and material comforts are essentially what killed her. In attempting to fulfill her dream of a life filled with money and lavish material items, she went to the extremes of beginning an affair with a man of position and power, someone who she could only ever love for his social status and wealth. Myrtle's corruption is however put to an end by a fancy and expansive car. Using Gatsby's big and extravagant car to kill Myrtle represents how Myrtle's selfishness and materialistic outlook "killed" the chance for her to ever fulfill the American Dream. Rather than drive her closer to her dream, Myrtle's affair with Tom prevented her from ever achieving it, seeing that she would only ever be in the shadows of Tom's life and treated as a mistress instead of a real wife-- ultimately hindering her social and economic development.
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Post by amandakaliner on Feb 1, 2016 13:22:00 GMT
Emily, the points you made were very thoughtful. To add on, I felt as if the role of women in the American Dream in Great Gatsby, but also in real life during that time was very different from the American Dream of men. To women, the ideal American life in this time period was to settle down with a nice husband, have money, and raise a family. In Gatsby, we see Daisy very different women struggle with this concept. Daisy, who has money and a husband and a family, should be the happiest character in the book, however she feels unfulfilled in life and she doesn't care much for her husband or even her own child. And then we see Jordan, who has money but no family and is, in my opinion, the most self-actualized and content woman in the novel. The point I'm trying to make is that the American Dream for women and the goals that the majority of them wanted to accomplish in the 1920s was very different from that of men, and the women in the Great Gatsby challenge the ideas of the American Dream for women in that time period through Daisy and Jordan.
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Zachary Lloyd
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Post by Zachary Lloyd on Feb 1, 2016 23:45:50 GMT
Whether this is the women's fault or not, their very existence seems to suggest a rather popular recurring theme that the novel procreates. Wealth does not need to be obtained in an honest way to deem you successful, as the ability to have wealth is one of the most important metrics to success in the eyes of the american dream. It is quite possible to surmise that all the women in the novel, even those that played lesser roles, were all symbols of how wealth and status can be amassed apart from industry in the sense of doing something for yourself. Whether the author meant to comment on women as well as on wealth, I think, to add on to one theme, that women were indeed unable to achieve the american dream in any way (maybe apart from professional golf). This is paradoxical in itself to the concept of the american dream. Fundamentally, the american dream is meant to appeal to anyone despite their race or gender or nationality, yet the author chooses many women apart from the extremely talented or beautiful to be nothing more than inheritors of wealth.
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Post by emsykes on Feb 4, 2016 15:07:06 GMT
Bri, I liked your analysis on Jordan. I agree with you that she made the American dream seem very inviting. To add to your thoughts, I think Jordan portrayed the role of women with the power she attained. When Gatsby told her about the romance he had with Daisy, she swore to secrecy. Even when Nick pressed her for answers, she didn't budge. This situation shows the theme of women in the 1920s having more and more power over men. I think this theme also appears when we look at Myrtle. She has a power over Tom. He needs her attention so he provides an apartment for her in the city. Myrtle even uses her power to get a puppy from Tom!The 1920s were a time of change, and the Great Gatsby displays the change in the role of women having limited power to having more power over men.
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Post by margaretpalko on Feb 7, 2016 0:48:29 GMT
Hey Teresa I really like your topic. We have talked a little bit about women and their role in the American Dream, but I am glad you decided to make a whole thread around it. Do you feel that Fitzgerald made these women beautiful for a reason? I think they were so beautiful that they felt that they had to keep up their appearances in order to live their day to day lives. But back to your topic, I think Daisy is a really interesting character. I found that she symbolized the American Dream for Gatsby, but she also symbolized the American Dream in general. She is incredibly deceiving, and artificial, just like the American Dream. She is an illusion, and perhaps this is why Gatsby was not realistic. I found that each main character who was a female represented another part of the American Dream. Jordan Baker, for example, was able to cheat and lie her way through her life. She realized that anyone will forgive your mistakes as long as you have money. This symbolizes the part of the American Dream where there is only success and no such thing as failure. Women in this novel had a very different view of the dream than men, and I think it is important to realize what a profound role gender had on this novel.
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annej
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Post by annej on Feb 7, 2016 4:37:51 GMT
Teresa, these are some very interesting points about the role that beauty has on achieving the American dream. And Margaret, I completely agree with your point that Daisy symbolized how deceiving the American dream was. To answer your question, yes, I do feel that Fitzgerald made these women beautiful on purpose. He wanted to portray that beauty, on its own, will not lead you to happiness or the American dream. For example, Daisy is very beautiful and she could get any man she wanted and, frankly, she did. However, she was never truly happy because she did not have true love. She allowed her desire to stay wealthy affect her decision to leave Gatsby and this hurts her for the rest of her life and even with her beauty, she could not achieve this dream.
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Post by juliamann on Feb 8, 2016 21:58:03 GMT
Teresa, I like your interpretations of the women in The Great Gatsby and would like to elaborate on Daisy. In my opinion, most of why Gatsby loved Daisy was because she was everything Gatsby wanted to be when he was a poor child. We know that Gatsby believes it is possible to repeat the past, "Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can". With Daisy, Gatsby believes he can even go beyond repeating the past by changing it. Gatsby did not want to relive his upbringing in poverty. What he wanted to do was erase those memories and live a life of luxury with the women who is a symbol for that ideal. Daisy can represent a lot of things in this novel, and one of those is Gatsby's desire to live the life he always dreamed of, his American Dream.
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