Cant Buy Me Love/3 Short Stories (check This Out) Essays -- essays res

Can’t Buy Me Love   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The depression was an era of extremes. A person was more than likely extremely poor, or in the lucky upper 1% that was extremely wealthy. The middle class was virtually not existent. All of these income groups, including those characterized in our three stories, wanted money because it supposedly brought happiness, but were actually struggling to cling to the intangible, unreachable feeling of love.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  If money leads to love, Dexter Green has bought it a thousand times over. He wanted not association with the glittering things and glittering people [but] the glittering things themselves† even if they come in the shape of an object, a person, a house, a manner, or as simple as a life (Fitzgerald Dreams 58). He is still the â€Å"proud, desirous little boy† of his youth (Dreams 64). This reincarnation of the Victorian gilded age reinstates the fact those things that look of worth might really be empty of value inside. This glittering hollowed thing for Dexter Green appears as Judy Jones. He wants her; he longs for her because he has everything else. â€Å"Often he reached out for the best without knowing why he wanted it;† just another trophy on his shelf, and seemingly the gift one might give a person who has everything (Dreams 58). He is desperate for the lifestyle, the glittering things, and belonging.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Judy, herself, is a symbol of wealth and to men, the ideal of love. She has proper breeding, incredible beauty, popularity, and above of all, lots of money. Though she is what men want to use as an example of love, she can not love. Rather, she is merely the idea of love and evidently the irony of love. She has no human capacity for it for she is only playing the game to prove that she can â€Å"[make] men conscious to the highest degree of her physical loveliness† and make them fall in love with her in an instant (Dreams 65). Judy had fun with men and â€Å"was entertained only by the gratification of her desires and by the direct exercise of her own charm† (Dreams 61-2). She optimizes the evils of money and loses all that is attractive about her when tied down to marriage. She was a goddess with no morals in the eyes of men but was desperate for power, lust, and the thought of finding love.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Francis and Margot add an interesting tw... ...r have (i.e. money, love, her sister life, freedom from responsibilities).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In Conclusion, all of these characters wanted something they could just not have. Most love, some courage, and some money, but the key here is that humans are driven by want. Money can buy a safari, or trip to Paris, or maybe a day on the links, but money can not buy happiness and money can not buy love. That is why all of these characters and all of us are desperate to feel wanted and loved because it is nothing you can buy; you have to earn it. Works Cited Page Fitzgerald, F. Scott. â€Å"Babylon Revisited†. Fiction `00. Third edition James H. Pickering. New York: Macmillan, 1982. 210-30. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. â€Å"Winter Dreams†. The American Tradition in Literature. Fourth edition. Sculley Bradley. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1974. 54-75. Hemmingway, Ernest. â€Å"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber†. The American Tradition in Literature. Fourth edition. Sculley Bradley. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1974. 1564-90. Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: The New Press, 1997.