DEMISE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM DURING THE ROARING TWENTIES; A STYLISTICS ANALYSIS OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S SHORT STORY THE RICH BOY

Abstract

This paper aims to stylistically investigate the death of American dream during roaring twenties in the short story The Rich Boy by Fitzgerald using Leech and Short’s model of stylistics. Fitzgerald has used different lexical categories and highly figurative language to reveal the moral, cultural and psychological
downfall of American. He has tried to show the diverse classes, manners, and social stratifications of the American people and the out-and-out or objective existence of American to that of the universal truths and shed light on the facts of life in roaring twenties. The result of the study shows that America did not reach to their desired dream, which was to bring equality and prosperity, in roaring twenties. On one hand America got massive advancement on technological, social, political, and economic level but on the other hand people lost their tradition, culture morality and finally led to bank crash.