Dreams

Dreams are a very important part of living; they give you a reason to get out of bed and work towards achieving it. However, your dreams can affect everyone around you and they don't always react the way you'd like them to.






In "A Raisin in the Sun," all the characters have dreams, and they all affect the people around them differently. Mama's dream to own a house with a garden and lots of light leads her to buy a house in an all-white neighborhood, which makes Walter angry and the family nervous. Beneatha's dream to embrace her heritage irritates George, but Asagai wants her to embrace her background too, as he has. Walter's dream to be able to provide for his family creates the biggest issue with the family however; he invests their last $6500 in his friend's liquor store thinking he'll make money, but his friend runs off with the money. His dream of being able to provide for his family is shattered and all their money is gone, leaving everyone angry with him.

My dream is to either own my own pastry shop and become a pastry chef since I love baking, or become a hairstylist. My mom, however, doesn't really like the idea of her child not having a "real job." But, she still supports me and has taught me everything I know about baking.

The Wealthy

Not all, but a lot of wealthy people believe that because they're rich, they don't have to do anything for themselves and they don't care about other "lower-class people." 

In The Great Gatsby, people like Daisy and Tom are rather wealthy and don't care about anyone except themselves. When Daisy hits and kills Myrtle, she doesn't really care and though Myrtle was Tom's lover, all he does when he finds out is try to get Gatsby in trouble. Even when Gatsby dies, none of his friends care enough about anyone but themselves to come to his funeral besides Nick, Gatsby's father and Owl Eyes. In "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," the Washingtons have found a huge diamond and live on the "only 5 acres of unsurveyed land" and don't want to be discovered. Because they don't want to be found and share their wealth, they shoot down any planes that fly overhead and take any passengers prisoner. They also have hundreds of slaves to do everything for them under the impression that The South won The Civil War and that slavery is still legal. 

Even in modern day the wealthier people tend to just pay people to do everything for them rather than do it themselves. For example, Danny Worsnop, lead singer of Asking Alexandria, said in an interview that when he was just starting out, he "knew everything"; when they were playing, what time to be onstage, what time to be back to the bus, every detail. But he says now that they've made it big, they just pay people to do things for them. He says now he doesn't know where they're playing the next day when he's on tour, he doesn't even know how to plug his microphone
in because it's easier to just hire someone to do 
these things for him.

Of course, not all wealthy people are like this; JK Rowling for example has donated so much money to charity that she isn't a billionaire anymore. However, it seems that many people, once they become rich enough to do so, would rather pay people to do everything for them and lose interest in other peoples' lives.

"The Gay Gatsby"

The question of whether or not Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway are gay is very controversial because it is left unanswered and therefore open-ended. I think that Nick is, though he may be unaware, gay and has a major thing for Gatsby.

I read a Lit. Crit. on The Great Gatsby through a "queer lens" as the author puts it; the author of the text very strongly believed that Nick was gay and provides a lot of evidence. Although some of it is a stretch, some of what it said would support my stance. For instance, Nick wipes Mr. McKee's face with a cloth and winds up in his bedroom where McKee is naked...then leaves at four in the morning with no memory of what happened. Tell me that doesn't scream, "I JUST DID NAUGHTY THINGS WITH ANOTHER MAN!" Now of course, this is just my opinion, and just one interpretation. 

 Now there were also rumors that Fitzgerald was gay; Zelda even accused him of having an affair with Hemingway, his best friend. Zelda may have been right however; not only did Fitzgerald cross dress later in his life, but Fitzgerald and Hemingway liked to joke about "pederasty, anal eroticism, and other forms of perversion." (Mayfield 133) I think that Fitzgerald was using his writing as a way to express his homosexual feelings.