Can't Forget the Motor City vs. the Great Gatsby

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In the essay, “Can’t Forget the Motor City”, the author Paul Clemens analyzes the questionable relationship between his childhood and adulthood.. He tells the story of his childhood and how he “became bookish in a house without books.” Though Clemens tries to “shed” his white trash identity and create a life better than the one his parents had, he understands that his past will always be apart of him and therefore affect him. His father will always be a representation of his past, and though he never comprehended him as a boy, he learns to appreciate his father as an adult. Clemens uses pathos to persuade the reader that while one’s past does not always dictate the future, it definitely plays an influential role in one’s life. Clemens’ story is similar to the life of protagonist Jay Gatsby, in the novel The Great Gatsby. Both men are successful in adulthood despite the environment of their childhood. However, while Clemens manages to appreciate his past and accept how it has molded him, Gatsby lives his life as a rich man and never looks back upon his life in poverty. Paul Clemens utilizes his childhood memories to discuss the idea that a person is not always the product of their environment. In other words, a person does not necessarily behave or act a certain as a result of the environment they live in. He discusses how he was a book smart kid who grew up in a house full of street smart people. While his father often read magazines about cars, he read literature by Hemingway and Fitzgerald. In demonstrating to the reader the opposite personalities he and his father had, Clemens gives the reader a sense that not everyone is influenced by their environment or the people around them. He describes how he often did not share the same views as his father. Since his adolescence, Clemens knew he wanted “to trade up” and create a life better than the one he had; proving

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