A once high, mighty, and pure ideal has become degraded and buried by the merciless greed for money. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby, many of the characters, believed in the Dream and that wealth and social mobility was within his or her reach. Fitzgerald illustrates three specific social classes: old money, new money, and the lower class, with old money and new money taking center stage. Gatsby, himself, represents new money: he climbed the social and economic ladder and succeeded by way of shady dealings of bootlegging. On the other hand, Daisy Buchanan, the love of Gatsby’s life, represents old money.
Explain how TWO of the following individuals responded to the economic and social problems created by industrialization during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jane Addams Andrew Carnegie Samuel Gompers Upton Sinclair After the Civil War, the U.S. had began to enter a period of prospering and development known as industrialization. Even with the vast amount of wealth it created, industrialization had also created multiple economic and social problems, mostly inequality. An entrepreneur such as Andrew Carnegie had responded to this problem by believing in Social Darwinism and advocating the Gospel of Wealth, where Upton Sinclair had attacked the corruption of industries and exposed inequality. A partial believer in Social Darwinism, Carnegie had sought to rationalized the uneven distribution of wealth by fighting the theory of survival of the fittest.
It wasn’t until shortly after his death that Karl Marx’s ideology began to significantly influence socialist movements. Although relatively unknown during his lifetime he has become one of the fundamental economic and sociological figures of the modern era. Many of his theories and insights into the way society functions are still relevant in the expanding capitalist society that exists today. Marx was very critical of capitalism and the division in society between the bourgeoisie and proletariat classes, attempting to highlight the injustice and exploitation of the working class by the wealthy upper and middle class. Marx predicted that capitalism within a socioeconomic system would inevitably create internal tensions between social classes leading to its demise and replacement by a new system, communism.
Outline and evaluate one sociological perspective. Marxism is a key sociological perspective and is referred to as one of Sociology's grand theories. It is a structural theory and is the most influential and widely known version of conflict theory, focusing on the conflicts of social groups within society. Many critics of Marxism focus on the fact that some of Marx's more startling predictions have not yet come true, thus, people are quick to judge his sociological perspective and write it off altogether, I hope to address this and conclude that, in fact, Marxism is still an adaptable and highly influential sociological theory. Karl Marx, born 1818, was alive during a time which saw the biggest period of change in Britain in modern times, a time of Industrialisation.
Prompt. Choose an implausible or strikingly unrealistic incident or character in a work of fiction or drama of recognized literary merit. Write an essay that explains how the incident or character is related to the more realistic of plausible elements in the rest of the work. Avoid plot summary. As humans we naturally want to have control over everything that goes on around us, and we try to stay clear of those situations we can’t control.
Like Durkheim (a Functionalist), Marx believed it was possible to understand society scientifically and scientific knowledge would lead to a better society. However (unlike Durkheim), he believed capitalism would increase human misery before giving way to a classless, communist society, in which humans would be free to fulfil their potential. He believed that history would go through a series of base changes – primitive communism, ancient society, feudalism, capitalism and then communism. The organisation of production in a society shapes the nature of society – refers to this as the base/superstructure. According to Marx – in a capitalist society, the economic relationship of exploitation requires ideologies in the superstructure to cover up inequality – they are not innocent/neutral because they justify inequality and serve the interest of powerful groups.
Instead, they played what “didn’t exist in the world around them” (113). As their values changed, they began to “reject the role of the entertainer, and held themselves above tastes of the public” (112). According to Leland, nonconformism can take two forms: the relinquishing of privileges and the reclamation of privileges. The relinquishing of privileges is when one waives the privileges in order to shed the responsibilities for its actions. A great example of this is the famous quote by Emerson, “Who so be a man must be a nonconformist…” because “to be great is to be misunderstood” (115).
“ The Great Gatsby” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby” brings up one of the most important goals of all people in the 1900s to today. The book centers around a handful of characters who all want similar things. This thing that was desired so much was the American Dream. The American dream set in Fitzgerald’s novel is slightly different than the dream that had begun with the first settlers. In this book the thing everyone strives for is based off of superficial and materialistic goals, the characters all want to just become as rich as they can and mainly care about money and power.
The Great Gatsby may appear to be a simple tragic romance, however this may not have been the case had the aspect of social status not come into play. Social status, or class, played a large role in corrupting the original idea of the American Dream in the story of The Great Gatsby. With the goal to gain the attention from Daisy Buchanan and the East, Jay Gatsby experiences love, tragedy and moral struggle throughout the novel, resulting in the harsh reality that social class is distinguished by more than just wealth. The Great Gatsby teaches a fine lesson on how money cannot buy happiness and therefore, cannot buy love. In the beginning, very little is known about the life of Gatsby but the reader is quickly introduced to his goal of gaining the attention and ultimate love from the woman which he claims to be
Conrad’s, however, is constantly under criticism on whether or not it deserves such an honor, with some holding the view that it even promotes some of the evils of colonialism rather than denouncing them. This is due to the ample racism and metaphors of inferiority present within the story. Indeed, Achebe himself is one of the most vocal advocates of such a stance, stating: “…the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot” (Achebe). Yet, upon careful examination one can see that such racist views expressed in Heart of Darkness are products of the perspectives of the narrators and speak to their own motives rather than that of the book or author.