Fermin's Digital Portfolio

Fermin Hernandez           

Michelle Clark

Humanities

Period 4

11/13/10

Materialistic Idea

            In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, following the main character Jay Gatsby; it keeps you in awe with the symbolism in the book and what it means. In Death of s Salesman, by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman problem after problem and he finds no solutions for any of them. As a result, he starts to lose his mind and make decisions that he’ll regret later on. Throughout the two stories it made you want to know more about those characters. Thanks to the creativity of the authors. Both stories have similar and different materialism in both of them that make you wonder what they went through all the trouble they went to obtain their material.

Materialism in these stories makes the main characters remember more things about themselves and try to figure themselves out. Gatsby used money to plan these amazing parties to attract Daisy, the girl he loves. As well, Loman uses money to impress his son Biff since he’s the son he loves the most. He would do anything for him and his wife since he wanted them to have the best. These two reasons are great reasons for motivation and it’ll help you succeed more.

Although money isn’t what makes people happy, but it sure helped both protagonists, Jay Gatsby and Willy Loman get what they wanted. Money for Jay wasn’t a problem and it even helped him use it to find the girl he loves so much. As for Willy, he didn’t have the same luck as Jay did, but it helped him to have it as a motivation to pursue his goal of making his family proud of him and keep looking up to him. Although they both used motivation, they were both for different reasons. Money has better causes then to just throw it away since it can cause you problems later on because of it, or just be motivated with money too much and it won’t do you any good at all.

When you think of materialistic people, people tend to think of people that don’t care much about anything but themselves and looks. But with these two characters it makes you feel more optimistic about them since they used it to help others out or have something they desire. They use money as a way to motivate themselves to try harder for something, or just impress someone and attract them. Also, using it to make themselves satisfied. And in the end it just turns out bad and gets to you. People just need to realize that being materialistic for people that don’t feel so great about themselves so they go to money as a way of feeling better.