Idleness does not seem to be an option, because to stop would mean to let disconcerting thoughts about past and future creep into awareness. At the end of the novel, this carefully crafted illusion collapses on itself. Daisy really stood for an ideal life that Gatsby, and a whole nation with him, had elected as final destination but that was out of reach. What Fitzgerald really depicts is a grotesque new rendering of the American Dream , more ephemeral than ever and yet still desperately evoked. During his life, Gatsby had surrounded himself with top-quality furniture, flattering murmurs, noisy crowds perpetually in his house, but when he dies he is only surrounded by silence.

His majestic house, empty at last, becomes a memorial of his faded dream. In a different timeframe, but in a very similar atmosphere, another famous character lives struggling with society: The Catcher in the Rye was published in but the story itself is set in the late s, in the aftermath of yet another world conflict. Exactly like had happened in the Roaring Twenties , the end of the war had elicited a general cry for normalcy.

It was once again going to be an unrealistic goal. WWII was followed, in the United States, by a new phase of economic prosperity and by a general sense of overwhelming enthusiasm.

The new period of peace was welcomed by many as a new phase of the American Dream. The baby boom that followed the war is the ultimate proof of the euphoria and optimism that pervaded the country in the s. The very concept of family evolved, as it was in these years that the now stereotypical image of the American family took shape. Yet, as the story progresses, it becomes obvious that this resentment actually conceals a deeper and more complex tangle of emotions.

There is, in Holden as there was in Gatsby, a visceral longing for human connection , that seems destined to remain unfulfilled.


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However, if Gatsby was consumed by a dream, Holden is consumed by disillusionment. The outcome does not change, as both Holden and Gatsby are profoundly alienated from their surroundings. Undoubtedly, this disillusionment is also rooted in the historical background of the novel. Although war is only mentioned explicitly a couple of times, its shadow never leaves the text.

Salinger himself had fought in the war, witnessing first-hand not only the atrocities of the conflict itself, but also the aftermath of a society gradually losing its values. In its own way, The Great Gatsby was also a novel about war, as it accounted for the restlessness that the war had left behind. And, indeed, death is a topic that Holden thinks about constantly.

While sitting on a bench in Central Park, for example, he feels chilly and immediately convinces himself he will die of pneumonia, even going as far as imagining what his funeral would look like. Interestingly, the reader learns that the boy, James Castle, was beaten by other children after he refused to take back a nasty opinion he had expressed about a classmate. On some levels, indeed, James can be seen as a mirror for Holden , as he represents the extreme consequences of such an uncompromising attitude.

Because he is unable to compromise, Holden does not want to belong or fit into society. Indeed, more than once he makes delirious plans to simply take off and live estranged from everyone, even pretending to be deaf and mute so as to discourage any potential attempt to communicate with him. Although he never does follow through with any of his plans, it is telling of the disgust he has towards his contemporaries. Holden begs to belong not to society, but rather to the grey zone, the ambiguous, the non-defined.

He takes pride in his being unconventional , even in his physicality. If Holden is unconventional, the rest of society strives towards conformity. The first agent of conformity, according to Holden, is academic education. At the very beginning of the novel, the reader finds Holden standing alone on a hill, looking down at a school game where everyone else is, trying and mostly failing to feel a connection to the place so that he can properly bid his farewell to it.

Eventually, Holden realizes he is unable to feel anything but disgust, not merely towards his school but towards the system of education as a whole. Here the novel tackles an important issue, as conformity was a distinctive feature of this decade. Part of the reason is to be found in the technological innovations of the Fifties.

Indeed, as the television started to become a mass commodity, the entertainment that this new technology provided came to be standardized, since the programs available to the audience were still few. As a result, most of American watched the same shows, regardless of social status or geographical location.

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It was only natural, in this context, that conformity would become a defining aspect of society. Moreover, movies and theater continued to attract thousands of Americans, thus further contributing to the shaping of a mainstream culture. Holden is quite vocal in his distaste for these agents of conformity. Movies , in particular, are his primary target. The very notion of people wanting to go to the movies and having the patience to wait in generally long lines to get their tickets is, to Holden, incomprehensible and depressing.

The Illusion of Normalcy

After a fight with an elevator operator at a hotel, for example, Holden imagines that the punch he receives in the stomach is actually a gun-shot and creates a very Hollywood-like narrative in his mind that closely resembles a scene from a war movie. Because of his rebellious attitude, Holden is promptly considered insane , outside the realm of what is accepted and considered normal.

However, his alleged madness is less a pathological condition and more a collective attempt to isolate a dangerously unconventional behavior. Indeed it has been pointed out that. Madness, however, seems to run both ways in the novel, as Holden believes that it is not him, but the rest of society, that has gone mad: The reader is thus forced to at least entertain the possibility that there could be something wrong not in Holden, but in the people around him, effectively questioning the concept of normalcy.

It is only in children that he sees true innocence: The very few people he admires unconditionally are children: Allie, the brother he lost and that is thus forever stuck in childhood, and his sister Phoebe, at times much more mature than Holden himself. It is quite ironic that, in novels like those of Fitzgerald and Salinger, set during presumably prosperous periods, the future is seen with such suspicion.

Classes have been canceled in Ramallah. Christmas parties for kindergartens have been called off. Many restaurants and shops went on strike. On Saturday morning, a huge number of Israeli troops invaded Al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah, forced residents into school classrooms and a football field, and demolished the four-story house of Um Nasser. One of her sons, Islam Abu Hamid, is accused of killing an Israeli soldier by throwing a stone from a rooftop during yet another raid into Ramallah earlier this year.

Israel is confident it will be able to continue to act with impunity. The international community, as always, is silent, which translates to: The Palestinian Authority has its hands tied by various security coordination agreements. When Israeli military battalions invade Ramallah, nobody should be surprised if one day Palestinian security forces decide to actually protect Palestinian homes and civilians. She is a weekly columnist at Al Quds newspaper. A lot of work goes into creating articles like the one you just read. But we still need to pay for editing, photography, translation, web design and servers, legal services, and more.


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Once a person starts watching this video of Yehuda speaking I almost guarantee he or she will want to watch to the end. Imagine if one could get every voting American to watch it. All this is whiny blah blah.

The illusion of 'normalcy' in The Roaring Twenties and in The Tranquilized Fifties - CanadaUsa

If Ramallah is unable to prevent terrorism, if Ramallah views terrorists as heroes, Israel has an obligation to do the job. Now we have I. Halevy walking it back. Do you want Israel to fall victim to Arab terrorism without reacting? Halevy leaves his amazing world record streak in Missing The Point unbroken and intact! How does he do it?! By Edo Konrad December 14, Newer post older post. I feel no sympathy for the settlers — Opinion — Israel News Haaretz. For any other inquiry, contact: Israeli army shatters the illusion of normalcy in Ramallah.

Settlers attack Palestinian civilians following deadly shootings. How did revenge become a military objective?