Blog Topic #4: Text Connections

In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s life story before coming to New York is a story of going from rags to riches. Jay Gatsby, originally named James Gatz, was the son of unsuccessful farm people but swore to be rich one day for he believed that with enough determination and willpower anybody could achieve greatness. Keeping this goal in mind at all times Gatsby ultimately achieved it. Similar to this hackneyed story are those of Horatio Alger’s, a novelist in the late nineteenth century. He wrote such novels as Ragged Dick; Tom, the Bootblack; Sink or Swim; and Jed, the Poorhouse Boy all of which focused on lower-class persons moving to the city and earning their wealth by work, perseverance, and luck. This text-to-text connection of the “self made” man was a common practice of this era for it was the time of rising corporations and everybody wanted a part of it.