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Compare the idea of the American Dream from two novels


p375) It's a vacuous lifestyle that reflects the American Dream of equal opportunity and self-aggrandisement. American Psycho' takes this to its extreme, and shows just how rotten to the core New York City is. Politically, Bateman and his colleagues subscribe to the liberal capitalist ideal - anyone prepared to work can make their fortune. He even lectures homeless people on their failure to achieve', or aspire to his hero Donald Trump.
             Bateman is a narcissistic character, in love with himself, literally and figuratively, who aspires to the rank of Perfect Man. But behind his mask of beauty "as the opening scene suggests- hides a monster who attacks those who dishonour his race of Perfect man - beggars, prostitutes, and those like him in whom he finds his own reflection.
             Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas' also uses the idea of the American Dream as a key theme. The plot analyses the unrest and cultural changes of the sixties as just another generation trying - and failing to reach a materialist bliss, a prize that is unattainable to seize amidst a police state where the aged and established crack down on the new generation and all of their ideals and ethics.
             "I tell you, my man, this is the American Dream in action! We'd be .
             fools not to ride this strange torpedo all the way out to the end- (p11).
             Comparing the two novels, the main character in American Psycho, Patrick Bateman, already seems to be living the American Dream, which is in sharp contrast to Fear And Loathing ' where the story follows two men, Raoul Duke a journalist and his Attorney striving for some kind of fulfilment. However, both satirise the time period they are set in perfectly, and the different types of American Dream that existed. Fear And Loathing ' indulges in the mass drugs culture of the 1960's where as American Psycho' delves into 80's Wall Street culture, power and capitalism. Both show how corrupt chasing, living and the whole concept of the American Dream is, and use deplorable and scandalous language and imagery to portray this:.


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