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Shepard Dow

Marsh

English 11

3 November 2020

The False Facade of American

When I was younger, all I wanted to do was live just like Shaun White. As an enthusiastic

young snowboarder, I idolized him. Everything I did, from walking to talking, was derived from

his persona. This manufactured facade went on for about a year, before people began noticing

that I was not being myself. My friends and I grew further apart, and I came to realize that I

didn’t know who I wanted to be. The only option in my mind was to be like someone else,

instead of creating my own personality. This is a common problem amongst Americans today.

Too many people are viewing others' success’ and attempting to mimic it. Being successful is

still a goal but people are slowly beginning to know their limits and are choosing to listen to

themselves and live their own lives instead of the one that society tells them to live. For years,

American society has been filled with men and women living an unoriginal lifestyle, derived

from someone else, as we see throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. However,

Americans are finally beginning to forge unique and genuine personas, and Robert Frost’s poem

The Road Not Taken shows us the importance of this change.

Attempting to mimic others persona’s has been a problem in American society for

decades. It has been addressed many times, but continues to plague Americans for the worse.

Almost 100 years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, which highlighted this

problem that is still prevalent today, through many characters and ideals displayed throughout the

story. We are first introduced to the problem of false personas and facades as we come to learn
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the characters of the story are their kin. We view one of Gatsby’s large parties for the first time

through Nick’s eyes, as he describes the people that attend. He says that “Sometimes they came

and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with simplicity of heart that was

its own ticket of admission” (Fitzgerald 41). F. Scott Fitzgerald uses this display of attendees to

show how the upper class at the time was filled with people looking for ways to portray a certain

lifestyle. People flocked to the party in order to live the lifestyle everyone in the upper class was

trying to live at the time. They wanted to live a carefree, lavish, party filled life. However, we see

how this urge to live the “American Dream” lifestyle has impacted the people attending. Many

don’t even attempt to create new relationships, some going to the party “without having met

Gatsby at all”. Fitzgerald brings us to this first party through Nick’s eyes to introduce the readers

to the world of upper class Americans striving for the perfect lifestyle, and how this urge has and

will impact their happiness without them even knowing it.

Along with many of the people that attended Gatsby’s parties, Gatsby himself succumbed

to the issue of not accepting one's true reality, and attempting to live a manufactured life.

Fitzgerald again brings to light this issue through Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, which acts as

the centerpiece of the entire story. As we move through the novel, we learn about Gatsby’s past,

and that he is trying to recreate it with Daisy. Nick also realizes this, and attempts to tell Gatsby

that it is impossible to recreate the past. However, he replies saying “‘[You] Can’t repeat the

past? Why of course you can!’” ( Fitzgerald 117). In this instance, we see how Gatsby has been

consumed by his manufactured future. In this case, he is creating a perfect future from his own

past life, instead of someone else's. The only future he can see himself living is the perfect one

that he created in his head with Daisy. Because Gatsby is overwhelmed by his perfect vision of
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Daisy and their future together, he is unable to see her flaws which ultimately leads to him taking

the fall for the death of Myrtle. This is again F. Scott Fitzgerald using his characters to illustrate

the issue of false and unrealistic dreams and lifestyles that Americans attempt to pursue, and how

they constantly negatively impact the ones who are obsessed with them.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in 1924, when the upper class was filled with

‘copycats’ and unoriginal success stories. Over time, we have slowly seen this norm in American

society deteriorate, as more and more people are creating their own narrative. This change - and

its importance - is simply, yet perfectly described in Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. The

poem begins by telling the reader about two paths that the narrator must choose to travel down.

The two roads were essentially the same, and the narrator chooses, on impulse, to take one of the

paths. As he travels down this path, he notices it is less traveled, yet appears to be the same as

the other. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has

made all the difference” (Frost). Using this ending quote, Robert Frost suggests that our life isn’t

created by making the decisions of everyone else, but the decisions that you truly feel are the

best. The two roads are the same, and the narrator made an impulse decision to travel down one

of them. Despite this decision being the less common of the two, Frost states that it “has made all

the difference”. The decisions you make may or may not be the same as the majority, but you

must maintain originality in these decisions.

Today in American society, unoriginality is still commonplace. Time and time again, we

see fake success stories, or public figures trying to be something or someone that they are not. It

is important to read stories like The Great Gatsby and The Road Not Taken, because they
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illustrate the downsides of false lifestyles, such as Gatsby’s manufactured future that is

ultimately the catalyst for his demise. But, these stories also show us that moving away from this

societal norm is extremely important. People are now beginning to realize how detrimental living

a stolen persona can be to someone's happiness, as I did when I was a young Shaun White

wannabe. As I drove my close relationships away attempting to be something that I was not, I

realized that I needed to be myself. Today, I make it a goal of mine to stick true to my internal

ideals and morals, and stories like The Road Not Taken give me hope that what I realized as a

young kid will be realized across the country.