Aspiration and Idealism

#3, Aspiration and Idealism (love, money, peace, harmony, success)

Aspirations are hopes and dreams or goals of a person. Aspiration is desire and could come in many different forms. Each person may aspire different things including things in the subjects of wealth, love, success, happiness and so much more. 
Aspiration may change through age and factors such as culture, religion, and ethnicity may affect what a person aspires. For instance, as a child, my aspirations were to travel in space and become the greatest astronaut who ever walked the universe. As I grow more mature, little by little each day, these ambitions become more realistic as my power of imagination slowly gets drained and replaced with knowledge, facts, and all the long nights spent on studying. Growing up a little more, around secondary school, my dreams became more realistic, hoping to work as an architect (because of enjoying art and a little influence from How I Met Your Mother) and to travel around the world before I die. Eventually, those dreams died a few years afterwards because of the idea of "work for money so you get rich and live a happy retired life" was planted into the deep dark holes of my brain. I changed. Instead of planning to work on what I enjoy, my goals are to work on what would make me most successful or a job that I would make the most money out of whether I like it or not. The final answer, engineering. I love science, but sometimes it makes me feel stupid with all the weird constants and variable. Although it is not what I do best, I am trying to cope with it by trying to force myself into liking it -which is working by far- but however, my dream of travelling around the world would always be there.

The reason of this is because of globalization, the world is spinning faster and faster, new technology entering the world, the iphone with fingerprinting password, more people leading to overpopulation and I'm just a teeny tiny part of it. Compare to the billions of people in the world, I'm just a small particle of the world. What makes me different from the other billions of people? Education. And this is why people tend to take the path that would lead them to the most success rather than the path that would make them happy or satisfied. There level of competition that exists in the modern world is higher than ever. People are competing for everything: jobs, wealth, fame, EVERYTHING. If you snooze you lose, if you want to do what makes you happy, nobody cares, but the future is real dark down that road. This forces people to do things that would make them rich rather than things that would make them happy.

This can also be seen clearer in the novel, The Great Gatsby, in many different characters.

Starting off with Nick, Nick aspires to be rich, leading him into the bond business, which in fact, is not serving him well compared to his colleagues, Tom and Gatsby. Nick is a typical character following the American Dreams, which most aspirations during the American Dream is to become successful and wealthy. Nick has a dream of becoming rich, but in reality, we all know that the American Dream is not as easy to achieve as it sounds and  selling bonds would get him nowhere. He might be richer than before, being able to support himself and buy things he never had before, but he would never become as rich as Gatsby, or even Tom.

Gatsby's story is a story that suits the song "Way Back into Love" by Hugh Grant. Gatsby aspires for love, Daisy's love and he would do anything in order to achieve, and by anything includes setting up expensive parties every weekend just hoping that Daisy would come. Gatsby is stuck in the past and can't seem to move on. He is stuck in his delusion that he could make Daisy love him again and he attempts to do so through his huge pile of money. Gatsby's concept of money being able to solve everything shows that Gatsby is tricking himself and is brainwashed by the power of money. Although he knows that it is impossible for things to be exactly the same as it was but he is tricking himself just to get his hopes up and prevent him from becoming heartbroken.

Jordan is also an interesting character. In my opinion, Jordan aspires for wealth and fame. The reason I believe in this is because of the fact that she cheated the her golf tournament, crowning her as the champion. Jordan is willing to cheat in order to win, showing that she either wants to win really bad, she wants the pot from being victorious, she wants fame from being all over media, or she is scared from losing face or reputation.

Urbanization and Gatsby

WHAT IS URBANIZATION?
Urbanization is the physical growth of urban areas. It is basically when cities expand, resulting in migration of people who live in the rural and suburbs because of believing that the cities hold wonderful things and great opportunities for them to succeed and become wealthy. Urbanization is a rapid growth that occurs through time, causing rural cultures to shift into urban cultures. As more and more people leaves their villages and farms to live the city life, cities expand in order to hold up the capacity of people joining the city.


In 2008, the UN predicted that half of the world's population would live in urbanized areas and by the year 2050, 64.1% of people in developing countries would live in urbanized areas, while 85.9% of people in developed countries would live in urbanized areas.

URBANIZATION IN THE USA

In the United States during the 19th century, the US was becoming a urban country during between 1910 and 1920 due to the rapid transformation from the industrial revolution. This changed American society from an agricultural to a industrial one, increasing the GDP of the country and improving the economy, making rich people richer. Issues that follow include overpopulation and pollution from the factories. The US being one of the first few country to reach the industrial stage also attracted people, both in the US and outside the US to immigrate or migrate into cities to find work in order to live a happy and financially stable life.

As the era of Urban America rises, the population of the US doubled in the 1900 to 80 million since 1870 and by the year 1920, the population to a high 105 million people. The amount of people living in the city also tripled to 40% by the year 1900.

Between the years of 1880 and 1920, there were around 27 millions immigrants in the US, while only around 11 million went back. Most of these immigrants came from South Eastern Europe. By 1910, more than 1/3 of the American population was foreign born, or had one foreign parent, compare to 1890 where there was only 19%. Most of the immigrants went to New York, while others went to major cities such as Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, and other port cities.

By 1900, New York ranked second in city with the highest population, following London, with a staggering amount of 3.5 million people. Chicago (go bulls!) and Philly each had a population of 1 million where in  1860, no city in America had a population that reached a million. This shows the effect of urbanization.

During the time, Urbanization also made social class more clairvoyant and distinctive. There is a new class -the super wealthy class (the nouveau riche), the upper class (doctors and lawyers), the middle class (salesman, clerks, teachers, government ), and the lower class, consisting of workers.



RELEVANCE TO GATSBY
In "The Great Gatsby," the concept of the American Dream of everyone being able to become wealthy through different passages and being able to own your own company can be seen through the character of Nick. Nick comes from Chicago, which at that time (1900's) is one of the cities going through urbanization. Nick's goal was to work in the bond business in NYC and to become wealthy. The American Dream correlates with urbanization because it made people from rural areas move into the cities to search for their time to become famous and rich. We can see urbanization in the story in the West Egg and the East Egg where there is construction going on, showing that the city is expanding due to more people entering the city. We can see the criticism of urbanization through the description of the Valley of Ashes, "a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air" This implies that the land has been corrupted by urbanization through the descriptive language of the construction and pollution going it. This implies that the land that it is being built on was probably used for agriculture activities such as farming in the past. The scenes in New York shows urbanization through the setting of people crowding the cities living in cramped apartments showing that the city is crowded and is starting to get filled up. Symbols of wealth is also shown through transportation (mainly cars) and by the shelter of people. Gatsby's gigantic mansion is a symbol of wealth and success. This shows the difference in social classes during the urbanization period.

Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States
http://www.angelfire.com/super/berletapush/other/notes/Urbanization_1865_1900.htm