Explain what you think Fitzgerald is trying to say about society by presenting the idea of illusion so thoroughly throughout the text.
Fitzgerald bases the book around the american dream. The American Dream is “the dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” Firstly we have the people that live in East egg, the ones who have been brought up with money. How does this come into the American Dream. The american dream come with “ability or achievement.” The people living in East egg have never worked in their lives meaning that they haven’t had any sort of real achievement or ability. We also found out that the people living here had no real purpose or meaning in life, they were just there. “They weren’t happy… and yet they weren’t unhappy either.” This explains what the people were like there perfectly. It’s not that they were unhappy, or happy, they were nothing. Emotionless people. Then we come to The Valley Of Ashes, This is where the working class people live. They work and work trying to work towards ‘the american dream’ which never seems to come to them even though they do exactly what the american dream is about. They start at working class and stay there forever. The people that life here seemed to be happy with their lives. Wilson and Myrtle loved each other, it was real love rather than just fake love. They had friends and real emotions. This is just what Fitzgerald was trying to present about the society, By presenting the corruption of ‘The American Dream.’
Discuss how “illusion” is a real idea for teenagers. What problems/challenges/issues do teenagers face each day and how can we relate them to illusion.
Illusion is illuding yourself to something or someone you’re really not. This happens all the time in the world of teenagers. As a teenager myself, most of our thoughts are on what other people think of us. We like to be liked. Teenages sometimes change themsefs to be someone else that is not them just so people like the ‘popular’ kids think we are ‘cool’. We decide to change the things we wear, the things we say and the people we choose to be nice and not nice too. When a teenager wants to fit in, we change ourselves to the ideal person we think everyone likes. If we want to fit in with the popular people, which a lot of teenagers do, we act like them, say the things they say and do things we usually wouldn’t do. An example of a teenager changing themselves to what’s really going on is when some teenagers have problems of their own but keep them to themselves and not let anyone help because we may think it is uncool and someone might start roomers, we keep it to yourself and pretend everything’s okay. We act happy to show everyone that our life is good. Teenagers allude themselves to someone they envy to be, weather it’s a student that aces every subject, a star athlete or just one of the ‘popular’ kids.