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the perception of the American Dream was that an individual can achieve success in life regardless of family history or social status if they only work hard enough.

Gatsby epitomizes the idea of self-made success; he is successful financially and socially and he essentially created an entirely new persona for himself from his underprivileged past. All of the wealth and status which Gatsby acquired, that while on the surface made his life appear to be the precise definition of the American Dream were actually elements which led to it’s demise.

“The culture of consumption on exhibit in The Great Gatsby was made possible by the growth of a leisure class in early-twentieth-century America. As the novel demonstrates, this development subverted the foundations of the Protestant ethic, replacing the values of hard work and thrifty abstinence with a show of luxury and idleness.” (Donaldson, 8)

On the surface of The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald portrays a romantic love between a man and a woman, but inside the real meaning is much deeper. Fitzgerald depicts the 1920’s as a time of decay social and moral values, evidence of this is the greed and the pursuit of pleasure. Jay Gatsby’s constant parties epitomized the corruption of the American Dream as the desire for money and worldly pleasures overshadowed the true values of the American Dream.

It’s written in the American Constitution that every individual has the right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. This right it seems has taken a twisted turn in the early 1920’s.

. These materialistic values consequently led the decay of the American Dream. The new American Dream described by Fitzgerald portrays a world where greed, the pursuit of money and pleasure are above all else. Fitzgerald portrays a world that has lost its way in the corruption of the American Dream.

hen inequality is high and growing rapidly, luxury purchases are sometimes as hard to ignore as a seven- foot sixth grader.

When "The Great Gatsby" was first published in 1925, income and wealth disparities were at record levels. It is thus no mystery that F. Scott Fitzgerald's saga of wealthy Americans during the Jazz Age became an instant best-seller.

But since then, it has again been rising sharply. Disparities today are once more at record levels, which may help explain the resurgence of interest in Gatsby.

New York City is a symbol of what America has become in the 1920's : a place where anything goes, where money is made and bootleggers flourish, and where the World Series can be fixed by a man such as Meyer Wolfsheim.

The wealthy families in the novel such as Gatsby or the Buchanans, were always trying to impress rather than trying to be themselves.

The morals of people with great wealth seem to be less than desirable, but many times are more socially accepted than lower classes.

Nobody’s concerned about politics or spiritual matters – but everybody cares about how they are perceived socially. The social climate demands respectability; it asks people to conform to certain standards

the American Dream has transformed from a pure ideal of security into a convoluted scheme of materialistic power.

Jay Gatsby, who epitomizes the purest characteristic of the American Dream: everlasting hope.

depravity of the modern dream to wealth, privilege, and the void of humanity that those aspects create. Money is clearly identified as the central proponent of the dream's destruction; it becomes easily entangled with hope and success, inevitably replacing their places in the American Dream with materialism.

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration."

The prevailing rule of thumb used to be that the older the child, the more difficult the moving experience will be.

Moving does not have to be traumatic for your children, however; there are many things that you can do as a parent to help reduce the impact for them, right from the moment you share the news with them.

An understanding of personal choice is commonly based in a conception of rationality or rational choice

he central points of this theory are: (1) The human being is a rational actor, (2) Rationality involves an end/means calculation, (3) People (freely) choose all behavior, both conforming and deviant, based on their rational calculations, (4) The central element of calculation involves a cost benefit analysis: Pleasure versus Pain, (5) Choice, with all other conditions equal, will be directed towards the maximization of individual pleasure, (6) Choice can be controlled through the perception and understanding of the potential pain or punishment that will follow an act judged to be in violation of the social good, the social contract, (7) The state is responsible for maintaining order and preserving the common good through a system of laws (this system is the embodiment of the social contract), (8) The Swiftness, Severity, and Certainty of punishment are the key elements in understanding a law's ability to control human behavior.

Goldthorpe posits three requirements for moving toward a less class-based society. First, the link between individuals' social origins and their schooling must increasingly reflect only their ability. Second, the link between their schooling and their eventual employment must be strengthened by qualifications acquired through education. And third, the link between schooling and employment must become constant for individuals of differing social origins.

But it seems clear that higher education does not promote social equality as effectively as it often claims to do and as it is popularly perceived to do.