지도는 어떤 곳을 여행할 때 꼭 필요한 것입니다. 지도를 보고 가면 어떤 낯선 곳에 가도 길을 잃어버릴 걱정이 별로 없을 것입니다. 하지만, 전 지도에만 의존하고 싶지 않습니다. 지도에 있는 길만.. 남들이 다 가는 길만 가고 싶지는 않습니다. 지도가 없으면 꼼짝 못하는 사람이 되고 싶지는 않습니다. 지도를 따라 가는 것도 중요하겠지만, ‘나만의 지도’를 만들고 싶습니다. 지도에서 볼 수 없는 곳에 가고 싶고, 지도 ‘밖’의 지도를 그리고 싶습니다.

지금 저는 한국을 넘어 세계로 나가 ‘나만의 지도’를 그리려고 준비중입니다. 다른 나라에 가서 공부를 한다는 것은 다른 언어로 새로운 곳에서 새로운 친구들과 공부하는 것만을 의미한다고 생각하지 않습니다. 지금까지와는 다른 생각을 갖도록 내 생각의 틀을 깨고 새로운 도전을 하고 싶습니다.

Theme: Whiteness as the standard of beauty
Motifs: Whiteness and color

Manipulated by the social convention of racism, Pecola had a distorted standard of beauty which led her to be a racist against her own race. According to the standard established by the society, whiteness was superior to what she had, which was blackness. The distorted standard of beauty instilled inferiority on blacks’ physical beauty; vulgarity of culture, emotion, and sexual innocence; and unhappiness with the hopelessness in Pecola making her believe that the factor of those is her beauty.
Straightened hair and blue eyes, which were shown in the white doll, were unreachable standards of beauty for blacks. Due to the standards, whiteness was what black people could only admire, making them feel inferior to whites. The ugliness of Pecola was already decided since she had black eyes. When Pecola was born, Mrs. Breedlove said, “If they looks in her eyes and see them eyeballs lolling back, see the sorrowful look, they’d know…But I knowed she was ugly” (125-126). Even motherhood didn’t recognize the beauty of Pecola. Having the popular standard of beauty, people considered Pecola’s black eyes to be the source of her ugliness. This led Pecola to obsess about the inferiority of her eyes, which later made her insane. As well as blonde straightened hair, black people can not get blue eyes. When Mrs. Breedlove could not get along with other richer black women, the standard of beauty was focused on the hair of whites. She remembered, “They were amused by her because she did not straighten her hair” (118). Their admiration of strengthened hair was not from real beauty but from the desire of being white, which the society set up as the standard of beauty. Straightened hair symbolized their desire to be white. Having a feature of the blue eyes and straightened blonde hair, the blue eyed doll triggered the inferiority of the color of black. While comparing herself with the doll, Claudia indicated, “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs-all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (20). A girl wanted a doll since it is beautiful; therefore, the beauty of the doll clearly showed how the standard of beauty was focused on the whites. A doll was similar to a means of a celebrity or a model to children showing what a trendy, pretty girl looks like. A doll taught both black and white children that the white, blue-eyed girl is what people preferred and adored. Black girls playing with the white doll could only learn the superiority of whites. Realizing the distance between the beauty of blacks and the preferred beauty of whites through the comparison of their hair, eyes, and the social preference revealed with a doll, black people became the puppets of the standard of the white society.
The corrupted idea of the social norm of beauty was transformed and developed into a stereotypical belief of blacks' vulgar deeds, inhumane emotions, and besmirched sexual innocence. When a white woman with a blue-eyed black cat, reminds her old days, she views the blacks with a single prejudiced story. She considered the culture and deeds of blacks vulgar, “The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature…” (83). She made all the blacks to have a nature of uncivilized cultural and personal characteristic since they were born. This stereotype initially came from the difference between their cultural view of the beauty. She should respect the different culture; however, believing in the superiority of whites’ attraction of their beauties, she could not break her single story, the standard of beauty. Vulgarity in blacks’ culture, ideal beauty even denied the motherhood of the black. When Mrs. Breedlove was giving a birth to Pecola, Mrs. Breedlove experienced a savage racism. The white doctors observed her and said, “They deliver right away and with no pain. Just like horses” (125). Due to the difference of the physical beauty, skin color, the mother’s sacrifice for her baby was humiliated. Having a lower status in the dominant belied principle of beauty, her identity of a mother and a human was degraded and compared as an animal. Her beauty as a mother was disregarded; furthermore, the social criteria of beauty led a sexual harassment to her. Just since she was an ugly black girl, after she was raped by Cholly, she had to face the real harsh society. Other neighbors of her made a rumor about her instead of having a compassion on her. They mostly said, “’What you reckon make him to do a thing like that?’ ‘Beats me. Just nasty…How come she didn’t fight him?” ( 189). Pecola was raped by her own father even before she got to middle school, yet no body tries to talk to her or feel compassionate toward her. They all hesitate to talk to her or even blame her that she might have wanted the rape. There was no victim but only the sexually impure black girl. If she was from the white wealthy family, this wouldn’t happen, and even if it happened, people would care about her more than how the people reacted at the incidence of Pecola getting raped. As the black was not what the standard of beauty had base on, the culture, motherhood, and the sexual innocence were all viewed distortedly and became as the stereotype of the black.
To the blacks, black was the antonym of the beauty as well as happiness and hope. Wealth and beauty were what white had and black lacked of. Whiteness was the beauty itself which wealth and happiness comes along with. When Frieda and Claudia went to the house of Mrs. Breedlove working in, they admired the whiteness saying, “The lakefront houses were the loveliest…It was empty now, but sweetly expectant of clean, white, well behaved children and parents who would play there…” (105). The blacks felt extreme superiority of whiteness. To the blacks, whiteness was a synonymous of happiness, while all of their unhappiness caused by their blackness. Claudia blamed Pecola’s blackness for Pecola’s unhappiness, “If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too” (46). Believing in the prejudiced standard of beauty, Claudia believed blackness hinders all her happiness. This strong inferiority got bigger as they blame their race more for any happening of unhappy incidents. This later even made the blacks to blame each other’s blackness. When the three little black guys were bullying Pecola about her race and her father, Claudia says to herself, “...their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness ...” (65) Claudia indicated that they bullied her because of their racism against their own race. Claudia knew that they were just expressing their own inferiority and hopelessness to Pecola to express their unhappiness. Thus, believing all their abject poverty, hopelessness, and the sense of inferiority toward their own race were all caused by their beauty, the blackness, they could only abhor their color.
Having the standard of beauty which white society preferred, blacks could only be more inferior and unhappy admiring the whiteness. The disparity between the whiteness and the blackness grew as they believed more in the distorted standard of beauty causing extreme inferiority to the blacks. As a standard depends on the features of the creator of the standard, whites produced the standard for themselves, which could only give extreme inferiority to the blacks.

The History Teacher - Billy Collins
Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"
The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.
The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.

“We Talk With Our Eyes.”


Apathetic eyes extinguish a cigarette and the hope of this bleeding heap lying on the floor. With a “pshhhhhh”, the half-burnt cigarette is rubbed in the wound on his back. The cut, covered with magenta blood mixes with the hoary fragments of asphalt. From his eyes to his chin and down the length of his short, muscular body, tears, the so-called most abstract form of human emotions, roll down. His screaming deafens my ears and gives me empathy. The three high school smokers are giggling like insane homicidal maniacs. They are drawing a constellation on the bleeding guy’s back with the ash of the cigarettes. Their swift breathing betrays their excitement. Their screaming, high-pitched voices make me feel nauseous. Their pompous eyes look down at mine revealing their superiority over my inferiority. Manipulated by the rancor, my mind plays a hundred scenes of me killing them. I imagine holding a sharp stone and striking their heads until my eyesight blurs because of their blood on my face. Until their eyes lose their focal points, I hit as hard as I can. I put a cigarette on their bleeding scars to stop the bleeding. Like a plastic bag flying, then getting caught under a car on the street, I want to assure them of their futile existences in this world. However, this only happens in my fantasy world. The reality is harsh. I am so threatened by their cruelty that I lose my nerve to stand up for my friend who is bleeding on the floor. My friend is no more than a red carpet for them to step on in their glory. My consciousness gives me a sense of guilt, “I need to help him.” At the same time, the feeling of betrayal loosens my fist. He is a villain, the cause of unfortunate incident in my life. He took advantage of me using my innocence in buying cigarettes. He drags me down to the road of disobedience, which will leave me only regrets in the end. Confusion abruptly dominates my mind.
“Is he necessary or beneficial in my life? Should I follow rationality or sensitivity? Am I rationally making decision if I help him since he eventually helped me in the end? Am I too callous if I ignore his need of my help. He had caused me a world of troubles before he finally lent me a hand.”
Fearing his need of my help, I feel everything around me come alive. Confusions render my mind unstable and make me more emotional. I feel the penetrating stare from my bleeding friend lying on the heartless floor.
I look at him. He looks back at me. I am disappointed at him. He knows it. I had believed in our friendship. He had wanted to share his view of resisting authority. I walk toward him. He waits for me. I stand in front of him, undecided. He lies on the floor. I shade him. He now feels comforts, yet I feel guilty. He believes in me, but I am a distorted hero. I make a somewhat desolate grimace. He smiles. His smile reminds me of my guiltiness. I now admit the guiltiness and stare those three seemingly homicidal guys straight. In an awkwardly confident voice, I clench my fist and shout at them, “This is enough!”

Looking straight at the back of the head in front of me, my eyes do not move. The long cynical stares stop my breath for a second. Unlike my stationary eyes, my fingers resist immobility and scratch my right thigh slowly. As the second finger reaches lower to scratch my knee, “Whoop!” The gigantic man pulls his hat, on which “Marine” is written, low to look serious and gives me a cavalier glare. That gorilla pounding its chest threatens me. He reveals his thoughts, “Stop moving!” My eyes shrink, and one drop of sweat creeps down my back under my shirt. This spiritual education uniform shirt gets wet so easily, showing everyone that I am wincing under my teacher’s threatening gaze. However, the dominating silence of the classroom chokes me. I can’t open my eyes properly. This run-down room looks like an archaic gas chamber where smog suffocates me. The ignorant Minister of Education has a delusion that through this mandatory spiritual education retreat for local public school students in Korea, he can make us all like Gandhi. Not knowing what their intentions are, I am just following the militaristic teachers’ commands: standing in a straight line, not even moving my eyes, and not making any sound. I feel kidnapped; my hand and mouth are manacled; I am dragged to an unknown destination. As no one among the 300 students is standing up for his or her freedom of expression, movement, or communication, I am a puppet of the decision made by the majority of my peers. However, my curiosity is not oppressed by the fear; I look behind me to see what the teachers are doing. I feel temporary euphoria from my disobedience, like a middle school smoker. I am proud of my bold deed because I now know their ransacking our possessions, our bags behind us. Their whipping hands look for restricted goods. Unlike my temporary pleasure of defiance, my heart is beating hard, making me so deaf that not only my auditory sense but also other visionary, taste, olfactory, and tactile sensations are numb. Like a terrorist passing an airport check point, my nerves are stretched. My mind feels like it has collapsed. My whole body shakes with such extreme apprehension that I look like I am having a major epileptic fit. I try to alleviate my stress by picturing the possibility of not getting caught. I am worried about the unfortunate outcome. There are two cartons of cigarettes wrapped in foil to look like snack packages in my bag. I initially followed the rule innocently, not possessing any dangerous items; however, teenagers believe mostly in friends’ words. Park Gi-won, my hometown friend, dark skinned and short but muscular, persuaded me to buy cigarettes like a devil whispering to me, promising me a fleeting euphoria of disobedience. He stimulated my curiosity and finally convinced me to buy four cartons of “Black Devil Hazel Taste.” Having a fantasy of smoking US cigarettes, I paid more to get the imported goods which had traveled across the Pacific. As I have never smoked before, I wanted to deviate from the social norm. A desire for deviation comes from curiosity, and the desire trapped me.
The gloating teacher holding my bag calls me, “Hey, the third one in line number 4.”
My panicked mind is now trying to find an excuse; “I honestly was going to smoke only one time. That was all. You probably understand that everyone once has a time when he or she is curious about the feeling of smoking. I actually did not buy them. My friend bought them and forced me to keep them in my bag. He is now pretending that he does not know me. I am innocent. This is all because of him.”
However, he does not give me a chance to tell him an excuse. He just points at the stage where the students sentenced to be punished are gathered. I do not make a sound but blame my fate.
As punishment for owning the cigarettes, I am forced to stand with other condemned students in the middle of a field, under the hot sun of July, forcibly participating in a physical activity. We are sentenced to pass a right-angled triangle obstacle and climb a three-foot wall. Both are made of wood, so the rough surfaces scratch us mercilessly. Their geometric shape depresses us even more. This course is called “The Rollercoaster.” We crawl up the hypotenuse line of the triangle, and using inertia, we run down as fast as we can to catch a loop on the top of the wall.
“Life is a rollercoaster. As much as you go down, you can go up. There is one day when even guys like you could reach the top,” the supervising teacher scolds at us. These sentences are supposed to sound like encouragement. However, our frustrated grimaces clearly show our lack of motivation.
He encourages us strongly; “If there is any rollercoaster which deviates from the route, he will hold a rabbit-jumping-in-a-squatting position for two hours.” Now, competition is added as a rule in this game. Strong ones survive. I hear the teacher’s whistle.
I run. I climb. I roll over. I jump. I sprint. I fall. I fall…I fall. I am screwed. I look behind. There are only three guys left. I am stuck in front of the wall because I am not used to using this kind of loop to climb up. I am an onlooker in any physical activity, so I know that I will be a failure in this challenge. However, I have an ally, whose short, muscular body is much more accustomed to physical challenge than mine.
“Ya! Put your foot in the gap between the trees and step on it.”
“Why?”
“Just do as what I say.”
“I still can’t reach the loop.”
“Then hold my hand now.”
“You really think that you can lift me up with your one arm?”
“Jump! Then I will lift you up until you can reach the loop.”
The watching teacher shouts at the boys now trailing behind me, “You other three! You guys are the rabbits!”
“Let go of my hand now.” I follow my friend’s advice, but words of appreciation for his help stick in my throat.
“I won’t say thank you to you. You know why.”
“Come on. I was not pretending that I don’t know you. I just did not know that you got caught. You are making no sense now because you knew that we don’t believe in friendship. We are not like 15-year-old buddies. We are coworkers. We feel excitement of disobedience together.”
“Whatever, you fraud!”
“Watch out for the three losers behind you. They will beat us senseless if they ever catch up us, No one wants to be last. No one wants to suffer from humiliation of the rabbit position.”
He cares for, helps, and advises me, yet the teacher scares, orders, and punishes me. This is why I listen to him a lot. He has no pretense in his words or his deeds. He has taught me more than those pretentious teachers about real maturity. The process of maturity is through the realization of the pretension of society. Do all these teachers, former soldiers, care about us significantly? They really believe in cultivating morality in us. They are teaching us that violence on peers is an uneducated deed which violates the rights of humans while they are using violence on us. They consider violence acceptable in terms of educational uses since pain is the most dramatic and effective way to teach a human a lesson. The fact that they are older than us does not conceal the ignorance in their words. If becoming like those teachers is what youths mature into, I want to stay immature rather than become pretentious. My friend and I are not disobeying social conventions but resisting them. Disobedience is deviation. When one cannot survive or win in the face of an obstacle, he deviates. In contrast, resistance is striving for assertion of an idea. The idea might be like a diary that he reads and laughs at when he becomes grown up, thinking that he was immature at that time. I might also later have those kinds of cavalier eyes and speak words of irrational concepts; however, I will not shade the shadow of my hat on my face to conceal my emotion. I am a teenager in whom adolescent, stubborn ideas are normal. I want to stay immature if that is innocent. While I was reason like a 16 year old Descartes, three pairs of grudging eyes stare the two of us.
The three rabbits, puffing their chests out, move their heads toward the dimly-lit parking lot as a sign of provocation in their pursuit of revenge. When I arrive there, I feel chilly under the murky sky. On the side, there are stinking garbage cans where the black street cats are living. A small opaque pond next to the garbage cans darkly reflects the bright stars in the sky. All over the filthy ground, used cigarettes are trashed and stamped. The leader-looking guy, with his pierced ears, exhales the smog of the cigarette, which he holds between his yellow teeth. He flicks the spent cigarette, which spins on the dark air. It falls straight in to the grimy pond. Oily water extinguishes the last fire of the cigarette. Without the light of the cigarette, the parking lot is even darker. With his upside down Nike-logo-looking eyebrows, he glares straight at me. His silent, hate-filled gaze suffocates me. Like the fire, my confidence is extinguished, and I back up like a puppy putting its tail down. Staring at my feet, I feel more fear than humiliation. I only expected swearing like a brawl. Now, this is out of the boundary of my expectation. Jiwon makes the situation worse; he looks straight back at them. I cannot know what they might do to us or how strong they are. Logically, there is no possibility that we will escape them. Revenging their humiliation at our hands, they siege Jiwon. I freeze.
“Should I endanger myself?”
After all, this is all caused by my fault that I bought cigarettes. I blaming Jiwon for making me buy cigarettes am not different than these fearful three guys blaming on us to relieve their anger. I feel harsh guilty; however, my eyes are too frightened to stare them back.

I hear the yawning of cats, feel these dim street lights reflected by the pond, swallow my apprehension, and stare at my shivering friend on the floor. The beaters are gone, and our awkward friendship makes both of us smile bitterly.

Obedience to the American Dream Arthur Miller won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, married Marilyn Monroe, and has been praised as one of the best American playwrights. However, contrary to his successes, he struggled as a father and husband; he hid his son who suffered from Down’s syndrome for forty years and briefly married three different women during his life. His confusion between his role as a father and his expectation as a successful playwright parallels his examination of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman. In the play, Miller not only criticizes the capitalism of the American Dream but also questions its definition of success. In 1949, when the play was written, the American Dream was to have a happy family, big house, and fulfilling job; Miller questions this definition by reflecting on the failure of these three facets through the figure of Willy Loman, arousing the readers’ sympathy for Willy’s inability to be a responsible leader of his family, a monetarily prosperous homeowner, and a proud salesman. Willy’s belief that having a happy family is achieving the American Dream betrays him as he loses responsibility as the leader of his family. Willy believes that he needs to have a happy family to succeed in his “beautiful town” by getting respect from “upstanding people” (19). In order to achieve respect from his sons, he pretends that he is well-liked: “The man who makes an appearance in the business world is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want. You take me, for instance. I never have to wait in line” (21). His pretense in front of his family illustrates his desire to fulfill the paternalistic aspect of his American Dream. He has a misconception that a father needs to take all the responsibility for his family. This burden of paternalism leads him to manipulate his appearance even to his family, and his pretense expands into a deception of his family members. Pretending to sacrifice his whole life for his family, Willy cheats on Linda and gives her stockings to his mistress, and Biff expresses his sense of betrayal: “[His tears break through and he rises to go]” (95). Biff’s tears show that his image of Willy is collapsing; Willy fails as an example for his son, which means he is a failure as a responsible father. Willy realizes his failure when Bernard questions him about Biff’s depression: “[Willy stares in silence]” (72). Arthur Miller uses the stage direction of “silence” to embody Willy’s realization that his act of betrayal has been passed on to Biff. Willy’s cheating on Linda and Biff’s “[stealing] Bill Oliver’s fountain pen” (86) are interchangeable, dishonest actions which signify Willy’s corruption of Biff. Willy’s failure to be faithful to his wife parallels Biff’s failure to be honest in pursuit of his ownAmerican Dream. Through the interconnection of their failures, Arthur Miller underlines the unremitting inheritance of failure, which suggests the absence of equal opportunity in America. Biff’s revelation of Willy’s feigned pretense conveys Arthur Miller’s message about the cyclical nature of failure: “I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you” (104). Biff indicates that he has inherited his inferiority from his father; at this point, Willy is no longer perceived as responsible. However, Arthur Miller does not simply depict Willy’s failure and his family members’ disappointment in him; the author arouses the audience’s sympathy for Willy. Willy’s failure represents the audience’s own failure to achieve its American Dream. Therefore, Arthur Miller, by showing Willy’s decline as a responsible father and parent, awakens the audience to his idea that paternalism is not needed for the happiness of a family. Arthur Miller critiques not only the paternalistic but also the monetary requirement of the American Dream by portraying Willy’s desire to own “the SALESMAN’S house” (1). His “SALESMAN’S house” represents Americans’ desire to own a fine house; the ownership of a house represents the stability of family life. Willy has spent his whole life for his family, and the house symbolizes his efforts: “Well, that’s a great thing. To weather a twenty five-year mortgage is” (54). The “25 year mortgage” has a meaning beyond its financial cost; the “25 years” is the amount of time he has dedicated his life in business. His experience and pride in his work are shown through his house; furthermore, Willy shows his consistent devotion to his family by fixing the house: “Did you see the ceiling I put up in the living room?” (30). That he fixes the house signifies his ownership of the house. However, the paying off of the mortgage and fixing the house belie his ability to achieve the American Dream. Arthur Miller shows the reality of Willy’s failure to pay for his house without the money from insurance when his Linda mourns the loss of her husband: “Forgive me, dear. I can’t cry…I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear, And there’ll be nobody home” (112). Willy commits suicide as a final desperate attempt to fulfill his responsibility as a father by achieving the home ownership for his family through the insurance on his life; Willy gives up his American Dream for his family. Linda is not only talking to Willy but also enabling his family to finally pay off the mortgage and gain the ownership of the house. Arthur Miller, as Linda, is warning the audience about the price paid for the American Dream. A house is one of the basic needs of a human being, yet most people do not own their houses outright. They need mortgages to afford them. Arthur Miller points out the irony of a capitalistic society in which people mortgage their houses to pretend to achieve the American Dream. Therefore, under a system in which home ownership is a measure of success, society forces people to dream of having their own houses, yet people fail to achieve the dream, or like Willy, take an extreme path to achieve it. To reach his dream of home ownership, Willy spends his whole life in an unfulfilling job for which he feels spurious pride. To his family, he expresses his sense of dignity in his job with his philosophy of manliness: “The man knew what he wanted and went out and got it! Walked into a jungle…” (36). He holds faith in the idea that in America, one can get rich quick through adventuring in business. He even considers the adventure of a businessman to be manly while considering himself to be surviving in the “jungle,” However, as the story progresses, the audience realizes that his adventure is his confusion. When Willy asks his boss to let him work in New York, Howard awakens Willy from Willy’s own image of himself: “Kid, I can’t take blood from a stone” (61). The “Stone” signifies the futility of Willy’s dedication to his work, suggesting that Willy is not an adventurous business man but a “kid” who is lost in “jungle.” Willy furiously reacts to Howards’ words: “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away- a man is not a piece of fruit!” (61). By depicting Willy’ feeling of betrayal in his life-long job, Arthur Miller shows the hollowness of “false pride” in being a salesman (63). Arthur Miller’s criticism of the pride of a salesman is prominent in Willy’s admiration for Dave Singleman: “ I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want ‘Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities…” (61). The contradiction between the situations of Dave and Willy signifies the absence of sense of accomplishment in Willy’s job; unlike Dave, Willy wants to settle in one city, is tired of work, and is not satisfied with his salary. Arthur Miller explains that a salesman is evaluated based on the most recent profit the salesman makes. The degree of success for a salesman is not dependent on his or her honesty, perseverance, or loyalty but on the profit that one makes; the job does not encompass a sense of achievement of the American Dream. Arthur Miller, as Charley, characterizes a salesman: “The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you’re a salesman, and you don’t know that” (75). He is defining a salesman as an unfulfilling moneymaker who does not know what he or she does. Thus, by personifying a salesman as Willy, who is betrayed by the job to which he has dedicated his whole life, Arthur Miller questions the audience’s acceptance of professional fulfillment based on being a salesman. Since Arthur Miller finds a sense of nihilism in his dedication to monetary prosperity rather than his family’s happiness, he casts suspicion on the significance of these conditions for the attainment of the American Dream: paternalism, wealth, and fulfillment. His suspicion has been realized as broken families, the mortgage crisis, and dead-end jobs are evident in modern America. He does not redefine the definition of the American Dream but awakens Americans who are living in the “[Land of] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” which is stated in Declaration of Independence. Therefore, through his criticism, he suggests that Americans listen to their individual dreams rather than follow the dream defined for them.

Gatsby in the garden of eden

Adam Gatz

The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a mirror of “roaring twenties” during which people questioned the existence of unsullied and fair American dream. To reflect this societal norm, F. Scott Fitzgerald sets the place of the story in the east coast of America. The geography setting resembles the bible: “the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east…” (Genesis 2:8). The first pilgrimage from oppressive Britain landed on east side of America, considering the new land to be “a garden of Eden” in which freedom and happiness are granted. However, the pilgrimage’s initial American dream of freedom and happiness, throughout the history, fades out and transforms into obsession on monetary prosperity. To effectively arouse the reader’s empathy for his despair of American dream, F. Scott Fitzgerald symbolically refers Tom’s revelation of Gatsby’s corrupted dream, Wilson’s committing suicide after getting betrayed by his own dream, and Gatsby’s realization of the true image of Daisy respectively to the fall of mankind due to a serpent, the punishment by the god, and the realization of tragic truth by enlightenment of knowledge.



F. Scott Fitzgerald exemplifies American dream’s corruption by showing the transformation of Jay Gatsby’s innocent dream into materialistic obsession and the collapses of his garden by serpentine Tom. Nick Carraway, the protagonist, appreciates Gatsby’s love toward Daisy as he considered Gatsby’s love to be “alive to me” (78). “alive[ness]” shows that Nick is impressed with the purity of Gatsby’s love; pilgrims, the first people to come to America, initially held pure desire of freedom and happiness. As Nick realizes Gatsby’s obsession of materialism, Nick’s impression on Gatsby’s romanticism changes into his sarcastic description of Gatsby. When Gatsby endlessly boasts of his property, he compares Gatsby to “an overwound clock” (90), which illustrates Gatsby’s fixation on his past. As he felt inferiority over his prosperity in the past, he excessively emphasizes his current materialistic possessions. The extreme emphasis even makes his once pure love seems to be changed as his desire to possess Daisy as if she could be a property. By putting the impurity in Gatsby’s love, F. Scott Fitzgerald underlines that initial American dream of happiness has disintegrated into the pursuit of wealth. Tom Buchannan as a serpent in the Garden of Eden seduces Daisy and reveals the dishonesty of Gatsby’s love. When Tom discloses that Gatsby is a bootlegger and is lying about his background, Nick portrays Tom and Gatsby, “contempt for the babbled slander of his garden—as if he had ‘killed a man’” (134). Tom as a “slander” kills the image of Gatsby, who is Adam, the mankind by shading lights on the corruption of Gatsby’s love. F. Scott Fitzgerald symbolizes depravity of American dream with the fall of mankind. The collapse of Gatsby’s image leads to the collapse of his garden. When Gatsby is worrying of his love, he “began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and crushed flowers” (109). As he confuses with his situation between wistful hope with grim reality in his love, his garden embodies his mental instability; vastness of the garden represents the absence of Garden of Eden. Therefore, Tom, serpent reveals corruption of Gatsby’s love, leading to the fall of garden; American dream of freedom is now only a monetary acquisition which might lead to the fall of mankind.


George Wilson becomes the victim of the manipulative American dream that he as Adam challenges the god and ends up in committing suicide. If Gatsby is Adam, Daisy is Eve; George Wilson is more tragic Adam who loses his Eve, Myrtle. Tom Buchannan as a serpent seduces Myrtle describes Wilson “so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive” (26). The readers realize Wilson to be “dumb” as his wife is taken by Tom. F. Scott Fitzgerald expands their ignoring Wilson to their realizing that they are actually “dumb”. Just like Wilson getting betrayed by his own wife, the readers who believe in American dream to be egalitarian are getting betrayed by their own dreams. While the dreamers believe their dreams to be achieved one day as they are working hard, their happiness will be taken by any serpent who takes advantage of the system. F. Scott Fitzgerald parallels Adam and Wilson that the serpent not only deceives Eve and Myrtle but also tempts Adam and Wilson to challenge against the god by desiring to be deified: serpent in the bible says, “when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Adam’s desire to be deified resembles Wilson’s considering himself to be omnipotent. When Myrtle gets killed, Wilson interprets the advertisement to be God granting Wilson the divine power: “’God sees everything,’ repeated Wilson. ‘That’s an advertisement,’” (160). Wilson’s belief is the delusion of grandeur which seems heretical. His unorthodox view is challenging the exclusiveness of the god’s power. In the end, just like the way the god punishes Adam with subjection to injury, death, and working, Wilson is punished with suicidal death: “the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete” (162). As Wilson considers himself to be the god who knows the truth of Myrtle’s death, committing suicide for him is getting punishment from the god. Thus, George Wilson is a prototype of a victim who falls in the trap of the serpent which leads him to lose his dream and life.


Ultimately proving the absence of American dream, Gatsby, having loved Daisy in his fantasy world, realizes the tragic true image of Daisy just like Adam becomes aware of evilness through the enlightenment of knowledge. F. Scott Fitzgerald implies the progression of the story through the change of the fruit: “There’s something very sensuous about it—overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands” (125). “[O]verripe” of fruit foreshadows the tragic revelation of the object of Gatsby’s love. As Adam perceived nakedness and evilness by eating fruits of knowledge, Gatsby, by eating “funny fruits”, learns knowledge of truth that he loves not Daisy in the real world but Daisy in his fantasy world. He recognizes the truth when he in his garden kisses Daisy: “At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete” (111). The intriguing image of Daisy in his mind fades away as “the incarnation [of his love] was complete. The completion implies the meaning of conclusion. His achieving Daisy in reality represents the ending of his love. F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests this fading love with the change of the weather: “there was an autumn flavor in the air" (153). That every plants die in “autumn” implies the fall of the earth. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses this nuance of fall to suggest the fall of mankind due to the realization of knowledge. The fall of mankind parallels with the fall of Gatsby’s love in reality. Eventually, Gatsby fails to achieve his dream: “It was after we started with Gatsby toward house…” (162). F. Scott Fitzgerald shows that Gatsby failed in achieving his dream which is love of Daisy. His faded dream represents failures of American dream. As Gatsby died, American dream is unachievable; therefore, F. Scott Fitzgerald, by showing Gatsby realizing his dream which is love to be unreal, suggests the absence of American dream in the roaring twenties.


F. Scott Fitzgerald criticizes the corrupted, manipulative, and absent American dream of roaring twenties by comparing Gatsby and Wilson with Adam in the Garden of Eden. By juxtaposing the different forms representing Adam, F. Scott Fitzgerald is showing types of people living in unreal American dream: people obsessed with money and people who are owned by their own dreams.