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Changes In The Great Gatsby

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Times Have Changed The phrase “work hard and it will get you to high places” doesn’t apply anymore. I grew up listening to my family’s immigration story of how my parents came over with only two bags. They struggled financially to the point where both had minimum wage jobs, and took night classes at Portland Community College. But they rose out of the poverty cycle because of their perseverance, supportive family and a little bit of luck and opportunity. That was more than 20 years ago. Many things have changed in 20 years and it seems every year the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It seems that nowadays, in order to fully obtain happiness, money and possessions will achieve that for us. The cliche saying of “money doesn’t buy happiness” has never felt more right. Having wealth and being financially …show more content…

This shows that the American Dream is an illusion because if having everything is suppose to bring happiness, then why are so many wealthy citizens unhappy? Fitzgerald brought many keys points into notice such as crime, glamour, corruption, money and materialism using Gatsby’s situation, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, and Valley of Ashes to symbolize the decay of the society. In all honesty, I think it is much harder to obtain stability in today’s society because of the huge role that gender, race and background plays. Even in today’s time, discrimination is still so prominent from daily protests and politics to college admissions. There have been court cases filed against Harvard and other Ivy League schools for discriminating against Chinese, Japanese and Korean applicants. Shouldn’t hard work and ambition be rewarded not disregarded? Why do colleges demand different scores from different races? The American Dream is working hard for stability and be rewarded for that substantially, but instead so many systems in place contradict it. In the book Nickel and Dimed, the author assumes the role of a woman in the poverty cycle who starts fresh and finds

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