The Great Gatsby Character Traits

902 Words4 Pages
The American Character is the fusion of many different qualities that an American considers himself to be. In the year of 1776, America gained its’ freedom from Britain, guided towards the concept of freedom, rights, and many other qualities that together create an American from today. One of the qualities that make an American character is that of hoping to live the American Dream. Hoping to live the American Dream means that a person living or coming into the US, has the hopes of living the dream of having wealth and freedom that is included in living the American Dream. This idea of the American Dream is what unites our “United States” of America; we are united in the dream and hope of achieving our individual versions of the American Dream.…show more content…
“It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a gray, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track” (Fitzgerald 26). We know that this child is a an immigrant because it states clearly that he is an “Italian” boy and since he is also “gray” and “scrawny”, it resembles how he and his family have had their hopes and American Dream washed away. The “torpedoes” are fireworks the the Italian boy is setting up sometime close to the Fourth of July. Fitzgerald uses the term of “torpedoes” because it resembles the creation of a bomb by the boy; the bomb that resembles the violence that people that are washed away go through. When Fitzgerald describes this scene to us, he shows that this immigrant boy (and possibly his family) haven’t been able to achieve their dream of the American Dream. By washing away from society’s rich, they end up in the valley of ashes which is where everything that the rich people don’t need anymore end up in. The concept of hope is showed by Fitzgerald when the boy sets up his fireworks to celebrate the day of…show more content…
“Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible one… The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe” (Crevecoeur 2). In this letter, Crevecoeur is basically states that America is a great place to live in. One can be free and be equal in power with one another. Realistically today, this isn’t the case in the US due to the fact that it has usually always been that the rich are in a way higher societal rank than those with less money. Even though this isn’t true today, Crevecoeur’s letters represent perfectly the reason in which many people emigrate from their old countries into the US in the idea of obtaining the American Dream. Similarly, people today hope in an attempt to achieve more wealth and a better lifestyle than how they are living at that time; if all they do is simply just immigrate into the US in the hopes of success. Since people that immigrate into America struggle, there has to be a reason in which restricts the immigrants from achieving their American

More about The Great Gatsby Character Traits

Open Document