Dying Hopes The American Dream English Literature Essay

Dying Hopes The American Dream English Literature Essay Prosperity and freedom are the values in which America was founded on. America symbolizes hopes and dreams in which people claim that anyone in America can achieve with hard work. The foundation of America is based on equality and the American Dream. The American Dream is the idea that people can achieve their goals through hard work and live happy lives. This is also expanded to being able to be treated with equality no matter what your ethnicity is. The idea of an American Dream is older than the United States, dating back to the 1600s when people began to come up with all sorts of hopes and aspirations for the new and largely unexplored continent. During the 1920s many immigrants came to America aspiring to achieve this dream. They wanted a place to call their own, and successful jobs where they would have enough money to feed their families. This is much like George and Lennies dream of owning the little ranch with the rabbits. However, the reality of the American Dream was not w hat it was all thought out to be. People coming America during the 1920s where ignorant and taken advantage of; much like the ranch hands in Of Mice and Men. People were also discriminated against even though America was founded on the ideas of equality. Women and African Americans were seen as inferior; much like Curlys wife and Crooks. During this time in history, the glorified ideas of the American Dream were not true. The reality of the American Dream was largely dependent on social standing and economic background. American culture is made of a great diversity of people. Under the Constitution it says that all men our created equal, but that is simply not the case with the way discrimination was in the 1920s. During this time there was a great migration of of non-protestant Europeans to America; Jews and Catholics. Many hate groups committed crimes against these people, like the Klu Klux Klan. Not only was religion discriminated against, but race was as well. Hispanics and blacks did not have the same rights as white males. They were treated as inferior for being different. Jim Crow laws in the South made it legal to segregate black people from whites. Not only were minority races separated and not treated with equality, but were also given hurtful racial names. Women were another minority group during this time. They were not given the same rights as men. Women suffragists fought for their rights during this time period. John Steinbeck portrays discrimination in the 1920s in Of Mice and Men. I n this novel all of the ranch hands live in poor conditions; they live in rundown bunk houses. However, the conditions Crooks lives in are far more worse. He lives in the barn around the horse manure. The only activities Crooks is allowed to be involved in is working and playing horse shoes. It is even unheard of for him to enter the white ranchers bunk house. Crooks response to segregation is intended to show the results of discrimination. Crooks becomes a separatist, if he is not allowed in the bunkhouse, then the men are not allowed in his room. -Stella Mcintyre. Also, this novel shows how women were seen in the 1920s. Curlys wife is not even given a name in this book. She is only seen as a sex symbol and jail bait. The men on the ranch refer to her as a tart. The character she is given is not even true to her personality, she really aspires to make something of herself and be an actress. However, she is suck there because she married Curly and it is seen as if he owns her. This shows how little of their lives women has control of in the 1920s. This also show that the American Dreams aspect of equality was not as true as it seemed. In Of Mice and Men, the ranch is a microcosm for the capitalist society of the 1920s. Immigrants in the 1920s expected to come to America and own their own land and make a good living. However, the reality of this was that the people they worked for only used them for their own gain. The employers paid their workers as little as possible so their business could prosper while the workers suffered. The workers never got anywhere in capitalist businesses because they were seen as part of the cycle of keeping Americas economy running. The wealthy ranch owners in Of Mice and Men are seen as the Capitalist employers who use their workers purely for their own gain. The ranch workers are seen as the people trying to support themselves unsuccessfully. When they became to weak to work, they ranchers were simply canned. This represents the ideas of Social Darwinism in the 1920s, only the fittest members of society will survive. The American Dream says with hard work people will prosper, but dur ing the 1920s hard work did not gain success. It got people stuck in dead end jobs where they could be easily replaced when they worked to death. Machine Bosses took advantage of peoples stupidity in the 1920s. They helped immigrants get a place to work and a place to stay. This all was seemly good, however, they asked in return for political support for their candidates who did not support hard working people. These new immigrants did not care though, as long as they had a job and money. In the end, immigrants ended up losing everything because the jobs they were given were not secure and the people they voted for did not support them. This is parallel to how the ranch workers were manipulated on the ranch. The ranch hands were caught up in the racial drama with Crooks to see the real problem which was the wealthy owners. With this preoccupation, they could not see that they were going nowhere staying at the ranch working because the only purpose they served for the ranch owners was to make them money. This shows how during the 1920s in America, the jobs were not for the hard working people to gain any thing. It was for big b usiness to prosper. This conflicts with the ideas of the American Dream. In Todays society, the American Dream has become obscured. It means many things to many different people. However, it is still based on social class. It is believed, in America, that anybody can achieve anything. That any person can go from rags to riches. People today are not satisfied with having property to call their own and getting by successfully. Most people want millions of dollars and all the newest things. The American Dream today is very materialistic. For some people who are impoverished, the American Dream is still the same for them, they want to easily have basic necessities available. The American Dream today is much more attainable today than the 1920s, however. Since Americas government has created laws to prevent the unfair advantages of capitalism, people are able to achieve things through hard work. There are benefit programs for the lower-class so they do not have to live like the poor people of the 1920s. Also, it is true today that people can go from rags to ri ches many of Americas most famous and richest citizens today were once poor. But, today the American Dream is about living comfortably, it is based on the greed that has come over America through the years. During the 1920s, immigrants who believed in the American Dream and came to the United States got a raw deal. The dream of most Americans at this time period surrounding the book Of Mice and Men was only a large cesspool of dying hopes. They were treated with hate and tricked by their employers. These people never made any real money because they were stuck in dead end jobs. The reality of the American Dream is that it is based on race and social class. Today, much has changed about the American Dream but it is not free of corruption; now it is based on greed and consumerism. The American Dream is never what it appears to be.

Ernest Hemingway: Prelude To A Tragedy :: essays research papers

Ernest Hemingway’s suicide was foreseen by most who knew him well. During his lifetime, he was a very well-rounded, yet seemingly unsatidfied man. He appeared to be afraid of nothing, not even death. In fact, in many of his poems and short stories conceited on death. His hobbies included bullfighting, big game hunting, and war, which all included the same risk: death. Hemingway saw that he was predestined to die, and his only hope was to face the inevitable stoically. He set colassal expectations for himself, and he looked at himself as a failure whenever he achieved a â€Å"less than great† status. Hemingway was very accident prone, and also inclined to become ill rather frequently. Also, his father committed suicide in 1928 due to depression and health problems.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Hemingway was brought up in a somewhat prestigious family, and he was urged to follow the footsteps of his parents. His mother taught him music, and made sure he was well-educated in the arts, while his father wanted him to study medicine. His parents ran a strict household, and disciplined his well as his other siblings. In his youth years, Hemingway loved to go hunting and fishing and engage in war games with his friends.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When World War I began, Hemingway wanted to go fight, but his father forbade him to. Despite his father’s wishes, he went anyway. Unfortunately, because he had less than perfect eyesight, he was not allowed to fight. Instead he accepted a job as an ambulance driver in Italy, where he got a first-hand look at death.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Hemingway traveled all over the world during his lifetime, writing about his experiences and everything he saw. He married four times, his longest relationship lasting only about twelve years. As mentioned before, Hemingway was very accident prone. In World War I, he was hit by some Austrailian artillary and seriously injured his leg. After numerous operations, he ended up with two hundred and twenty-seven scars on his leg. In another incident, he was involved in a plane crash, but no one was seriously injured. They managed to call out another plane, and as soon as it took off, it also crashed. In this accident, he lost virtually all use of his kidneys, which resulted in extremely high blood pressure. He was administered drugs to keep his blood pressure down, but one of the major side effect they had on him was depression. Hemingway developed a very withdrawn, moody personality, and often talked of suicide. His last wife, with whom he was still married, was very concerned about him and sent him to the Mayo clinic to treat

Medical Office Basics: Hoarding

Do you have a problem selling, throwing away, or even recycling things? If you do it is very possible that you may have an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder referred to as Hoarding. Another way to tell if you have this problem is if you shop too much. According to the International OCD Foundation, 3 out of every 4 people shop excessively. While collecting research and reading over signs and symptoms that I will cover later in this paper I realized that I may have an undiagnosed Hoarder in my immediate family. The International OCD Foundation states, â€Å"Hoarding is a complex disorder that is made up of three connected problems: 1) collecting too many items, 2) difficulty getting rid of items and 3) problems with organization. † Of the items hoarded the most common are newspapers and clothes, but also commonly includes containers, junk mail, craft items, books, trash, and in some cases animals. Even collectors can eventually fall into the category of being a Hoarder when their collection becomes so overwhelming that they are no longer able to display their possessions in a safe manner. The clutter in a persons’ dwelling must create a health and safety concern, and also significant distress, in order to truly be categorized as a disorder. It is estimated that as many as 1 in every 20 people have a substantial amount of hoarding problems. The act of Hoarding, cluttering of living spaces and keeping items of little to no value, is most commonly found in older age groups but in rare cases can also be found in adolescents and children as early as 3 years old. The reason that hoarding is found so commonly in the elderly is because the severity of the disorder increases with each decade of life. Hoarding is also found to be more dominant in men than in women. Symptoms of Hoarding are believed to begin in early childhood or adolescence and progress each year without proper therapy. Hoarding is one of only two psychiatric disorders that increase in severity and prevalence as you progress in life, the other is Dementia. There are many consequences that come along with Hoarding, one of the worst being evicted from your home or even your house being ruled as condemned. There was a study done that found 45% of Hoarders could not use their refrigerators, 42% could not use their kitchen sink, 42% could not use this bathtub, 20% cannot use their bathroom sink, and 10% could not use their toilet. In many cases finances also become an immeasurable quandary in a Hoarders life due to paying for storage units for their priceless treasures, buying items to add to their clutter and paying housing fines caused by their property appearing disheveled or having â€Å"lack of curb appeal†. There are four primary characteristics of Hoarding. The first thing you could see is depression or anxiety with a family history of hoarding. Secondly people who hoard have difficult time processing information; these problems can usually be interpreted as having Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder qualities. Third, people who hoard tend to form intense emotional attachments to a wider variety of objects than a person who doesn’t hoard. Hoarders attach human-like qualities to inanimate objects. In other words, asking a Hoarder to get rid of an item is like asking them to get rid of a loved one. The last characteristic is that Hoarders do not want to waste objects or throw away items that could be seen as a loss of opportunity represented by the object. As far as treatments for Hoarding there have not been many medical advances. The only treatments medical professionals have been able to come up with thus far are psychiatric treatments, interventions by friends and family, and prescription medications. Although there are medical professionals hoarders could talk to many times they will come up with reasons to avoid getting help such as, cost of treatment, transportation problems, negative views of mental health, low motivation, and lack of public awareness. Future psychotherapy research may focus more on behavioral (exposure treatment) rather than traditional cognitive therapy principles. If you are concerned that you may have some hoarding tendencies there are various types of tests available online to determine if you are a hoarder and how extreme your case might be. There is a test called Saving Inventory-Revised that only involves a test of 24 questions before revealing your score at the end. Another test that would be useful is called the Clutter Image Rating, this test will give you four picture examples of what hoarding looks like and you compare your house with the pictures given in order to rate at what stage of a Hoarder you are. While researching and writing about this topic I learned many things about hoarding that I had not already known. There are many things about Hoarding that you cannot learn by just watching a show on television such as the different treatments that are offered and the things required to classify someone as a Hoarder. I have now come to the conclusion after comparing pictures of a family member’s home to those on the Clutter Image Rating website and now knowing the requirements to being a Hoarder that I do in fact have an undiagnosed Hoarder in the family. References (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ocfoundation.org/hoarding Frost, R. O. (2010). Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Paxton, M. (2011). The Secret Lives of Hoarders. New York: Penguin Group.

Taking Sides An Analysis of A Doll’s House Essay

Time can have a way of changing people sometimes. It can cause people to forget, learn new things and even change views on topics. Such was the case in my own life over the course of two years. When I was a junior in high school, I read A Doll’s House (1879) by Henrik Ibsen for a literature class. The play is about a woman who illegally borrows money to save her demeaning husbands life. Later being blackmailed by a banker, she reveals what she did to her husband who is horrified. In the end, she decides to leave the family to further find herself. After reading and analyzing it as a class, I came to the conclusion that Nora was right in what she did. She was a pioneer of her time in that she spoke her mind and was able to voice her†¦show more content†¦The status of gender then was often affected by society. Women were expected to be maternal, take care of the children, and likewise with the household. They were expected to put up a good front and make it appear as i f the household was fine, even if there was trouble. Langas believed that comparing that to the gender ideals today would definitely not apply to all the households. Due to many activists, females have many more opportunities and the ability to do much more than take care of children and clean. Nora, one of the main characters in the play, did not follow that typical gender norm in that time however through the course of the play. Langas argues that Nora makes two influential decisions through the course of the play, which reveals a clear example of her maturity and nature. Firstly, she takes up a loan by herself, which was illegal then to save her ill husband. Secondly, she radically decides to leave her husband and three children at the end of the play. While there is not as much back story to explain why Nora decided to leave her family, there is more information on the first decision. 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