Never Stop Dreaming

      I remember being a kid, when everything was a dream. I dreamed out my entire life. I would grow up to be an actress, I would have six kids, a wonderful husband, a mansion, and a purple sports car. Pretty unrealistic right? Now maybe, but when I was seven years old, anything was possible to me. In fact the bigger the dream, the better it was. But I guess as you grow up reality has to set in. Now, I don't aim to be an actress, I want to be a lawyer. I hope I'll have a wonderful husband, but I'll settle for three kids, it's a little more manageable than six. And I think I’ll trade in my mansion and purple sports car for a cute two story house in the suburbs and a nice soccer mom van. This is my new dream. I still like to entice myself by dreaming up unrealistic futures for myself in which I'm living my childhood dreams out, but like I said, at some point you must grow up. Times change and people change, sometimes your dreams must too. However, Beneatha from A Raisin in the Sun refuses to accept this. She wants to be a doctor in a world in which women don't do that. After all, "It's not every day a woman decides to be a doctor," (A Raisin in the Sun). Beneatha refuses to accept this stereotype and tries to pursue her dream, even if she is ridiculed for doing it. So which way is right? Altering your childhood fantasies so they become realistic, or refusing to let go of your dreams? Maybe they both are. After all, C.S. Lewis once said,"You are never to old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." 

57 Songs about dreams: https://spinditty.com/playlists/Songs-About-Dreams-and-Dreaming

Is wealth beneficial or detrimental?

     In my opinion, wealth isn't really beneficial to people. In fact, I think it's more detrimental than beneficial. Now, before I come off sounding crazy, let me explain myself. 

     In The Great Gatsby, the entire novel is characterized by wealth. Who can you marry? Someone who is high up on the social change, and has lots of money of course. How does Gatsby plan to impress Daisy? By throwing extravagant parties to show everyone, especially her, just how much money he had. And Myrtle? She doesn't have an affair with someone who is poor, oh no, she has an affair with Tom who is clearly higher class than her husband, Mr. Wilson.   All their decisions are motivated by their desire for one thing: wealth. These people put wealth before everything else in their lives, and in each case it eventually leads to their downfall. 

      As for the detrimental effects of wealth in The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, I think it’s safe to say that each characters life was severely altered due to the wealth of the Washington family. The sisters, for instance, were merely fools who were kept so out of the loop of the rest of the world that they weren't even aware that slavery had been abolished ages ago. And Mr. Washington, well his wealth led him to the conclusion that he was almighty, he even believed he could bribe God. This platonic conception of himself and his wealth that Mr. Washington holds soon leads to his, as well as his wife and son's, death. 

     So, if you ask me, wealth only leads to destruction and devastation. Bob Marley once said, "The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively," and I couldn't agree more.

 

My Favorite Passage

       My favorite passage from the Great Gatsby is on page 125, paragraph 2. It starts with a rather passive aggressive statement. Fitzgerald writes, "There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind," (125). But he does not stop there. Fitzgerald goes on to explain how Tom's "simple mind" is becoming "confused". And this "confusion" is cause by, of course, two women: Daisy and Myrtle Wilson. He refers to them, not by name, but simple as "His wife and his mistress," (125). This, coupled with the exclamation that they were "slipping from his control," gives the impression that they belong to him.

       This paragraph also discusses the motif of speed. Fitzgerald writes, "Instinct made him step on the accelerator with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving Wilson behind," (125). This supports the claim that speeding makes people feel more in control of their lives. In this passage Tom is attempting to run away from the issues that he has created. He is simply trying to regain some of the control that he has lost. But of course you cannot simply run away from a difficult situation. This is shown by the last sentence of the paragraph, where "Form meets content," (Valentino). This sentence is clearly a run on and could have easily been broken up, but Fitzgerald keeps it as a run on because it symbolizes the fact that the struggle in Tom's mind is not over. This passage very clearly touches on multiple key points of the novel, and that is why I chose to blog about it.