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Horatio Alger wrote many influential “dime” novels in the mid to late 19th century. He fashioned the plot of his stories in essentially the same pattern – a young boy of a poor background would, through sheer determination and hard work, eventually work himself up to the throne of success. These novels quickly became best-sellers in Alger’s time, especially popular among the shoe shiners, peddlers, and newsboys of the lower class looking for hope in a bleak setting. The most celebrated examples of men who achieved the American Dream through hard work were Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Both men became very successful though they were born under dire circumstances. The idea of the American Dream came into extreme popularity at this time, and the attractiveness of this vision and optimistic hopefulness never quite faded from the scene though many years passed. Industrialism and the bevy of wealth, or the potential for wealth that coincided, continued to grow through the 1920’s – a fact that Fitzgerald plays up in this novel. The author molds Gatsby into a similar Alger character in order to exemplify how the stories and the dream still pertain to this age. |
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