The thesis provides a comparative analysis of the American Dream's concept in the two essential pieces of American literature: Francis Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Norman Mailer's An American Dream. The theoretical part of the text focuses on the general definition of the American Dream and its development throughout the history of the United States. It aims at exposing the close relationship of the idea of the American Dream and the American national consciousness in terms of self-reliance, individualism and freedom. The analytical part concentrates on isolating the individual literary motifs of each novel that can be regarded as related to the notion of the American Dream. It discusses the central characters as well as dramatic aspects of The Great Gatsby and An American Dream in order to prove the American Dream to represent an essential theme in their literary frameworks. As a conclusion the thesis presents the opinion that each author elaborates this theme differently. Both novels, however, expose the individual version of the American Dream as being defeated in a struggle against the collective nature of the 20th century American society restricting the efforts of an individual for his or her self-realization. Keywords: Norman Mailer, An American Dream, Francis Scott Fitzgerald,...
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:326647 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Kříž, Jonáš |
| Contributors | Chalupský, Petr, Ženíšek, Jakub |
| Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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