Entitlement In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Grapes Of Wrath
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“It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough , it is your God-given right to have it…”(Krakauer). It can be pretty easy growing up in a middle class family in this country, raised with food on the table, toys to play with, generous relatives, and a pretty attainable “wish list” at the holidays and birthdays. Most wants are often met when you are raised well in this affluent nation of ours and this has been the childhood for most Americans. So is it our large middle class then that causes Americans to feel so deserving and entitled? Not really. F. Diane Barth, a world renowned psychologist thinks that the for these children, feeling entitled…show more content… In the The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby felt entitled to wealth and that he could cheat people and break the law in order to do so. F. Scott Fitzgerald highlights wealth in this book, and not necessarily as a positive attribute. In the Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale felt entitled to his role in his community as a leader and a respected priest and his lack of action to confess signifies this. In Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck directly targets the issue of entitlement when regarding the issue between the high up bosses and their lack of concern for the well-being of the migrant farmers. Not only does he criticize these owners, but he also is very persuasive in his efforts to organize a unified movement. The bosses exhibit a great deal of entitlement and that they deserve the wealth at the cost of starvation to the workers. Older American literature traces this issue because of how prevalent it was at the time. Today however, Jay Gatsby would have been caught and arrested, Dimmesdale wouldn’t have had the trouble of claiming fatherhood and would have been able to share the blame due to better gender and sexual equality, and the government would have been all over the great owners for abuse in the workplace. This is the new America. True entitlement doesn’t exist anymore because it can’t. As a nation we have realized that entitlement in itself corrupts the economy and creates an unhealthy