Favorite Literary Movement

My favorite literary movement? Hmmmmmmm, this is a tough choice... I'd say my favorite would have to be realism. It tells it how it is, no beating around the bush or anything. By examining the realities of life and shining a light on human frailty, it shows us what's really happening in the world, outside of our little bubble. The realism novel that I read this year was Huck Finn, and I loved it. It was one of my favorite school books that I've ever read, and I'm just now realizing that this is because it was a realism novel rather than that other romanticism or naturalism stuff that we usually read in school. Twain cut to the chase about what was wrong with society, and continually pointed this out throughout the whole novel. The added regional culture of my beloved rural south added to the novel's awesomeness; as a matter of fact, any kind of regional culture that is added to a novel makes realism pretty neat. Out of all the literary movements we've covered this year, realism was by far the best one.

The American Dream - Dead or Alive?

Let's start out with what the American Dream really is. It isn't a set of values like many people think. It is simply the desire and ability to move up in the world. That said, it is impossible to achieve the Dream, because one is never done moving up in the world. In the past the American Dream has been very much alive, minus times of deep depression such as in the 1930s. It is dead and alive with the economic cycle: when the economy is doing well, the Dream is very much alive, but when the economy is tanking, the Dream is temporarily dead. Right now, we are in a recession, which means that ordinarily the Dream would be dead or barely alive, with only a few people in the nation who can  really improve their lives. But now that CEOs have become total jackwangs in the last few decades, they have made it nearly impossible for normal people to improve their lives, because the CEOs have made sure that they get a huge percent of the nation's income, leaving less for the rest of us. This has further downed the American Dream, as there are fewer and fewer people who are able to improve their lives. A similar situation occurred in the Great Gatsby, but not quite with money. The highest social class looked down on and rejected everyone else who wanted to be like them, even people like Gatsby who were super rich and fancy, simply because they were not born rich. They, like CEOs today, got to make the rules, and suffocated the Dream until it could revive in the 1950s. So with the recession and the oppressive CEOs of today's world, it is clear that the American Dream is dead - for now.