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Jay Gatsby
Jay Gatsby () (originally named James Gatz) is the titular fictional character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel ''The Great Gatsby''. The character is an enigmatic ''nouveau riche'' millionaire who lives in a Long Island mansion where he often hosts extravagant parties and who allegedly gained his fortune by illicit bootlegging during prohibition in the United States. Fitzgerald based many details about the fictional character on Max Gerlach, a mysterious neighbor and World War I veteran whom the author met in New York during the raucous Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Gerlach threw lavish parties, never wore the same shirt twice, used the phrase "old sport", claimed to be educated at Oxford University, and fostered myths about himself, including that he was a relative of Wilhelm II. The character of Jay Gatsby has been analyzed by scholars for many decades and has given rise to a number of critical interpretations. Scholars posit that Gatsby functions as a cipher because of his ob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Great Gatsby
''The Great Gatsby'' () is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire obsessed with reuniting with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. Following a move to the French Riviera, Fitzgerald completed a rough draft of the novel in 1924. He submitted it to editor Maxwell Perkins, who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work over the following winter. After making revisions, Fitzgerald was satisfied with the text but remained ambivalent about the book's title and considered several alternatives. Painter Francis Cugat's dust jacket art, named '' Celestial Eyes'', greatly impressed Fitzgerald, and he incorporated its imagery into the novel. Afte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics, and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. With an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Rennie (actor)
James Malachi Rennie (April 18, 1889 – July 31, 1965) was a Canadian American actor who performed on the New York stage and also appeared in several Hollywood films during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. He became a U.S. citizen in New York in 1933. Early life Of Scottish descent, he was born on April 18, 1889, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of John and Margaret Rennie, both of whom were Mormon. As a youth he acted in a number of stage productions including roles in such Shakespearean plays as ''Romeo and Juliet'', ''Hamlet'', and ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. It wasn't long before he was bit by the acting bug. In June 1917, during World War I, Rennie enrolled in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and became a part of the University of Toronto's Officers Training Company; while involved in this he and other officers would put on their own productions to show to the general public. He served in France for two years as a British Royal Flying Corps pilot. After the war ended in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
False Prophet
In religion, a false prophet or pseudoprophet is a person who falsely claims the gift of prophecy or divine inspiration, or to speak for God, or who makes such claims for evil ends. Often, someone who is considered a "true prophet" by some people is simultaneously considered a "false prophet" by others, even within the same religion as the "prophet" in question. In a wider sense, it is anyone who, without having it, claims a special connection to the deity and sets themself up as a source of spirituality, as an authority, preacher, or teacher. Analogously, the term is sometimes applied outside religion to describe someone who fervently promotes a theory that the speaker thinks is false. Judaism Jesus is rejected in every branch of Judaism as a failed Jewish Messiah claimant and a false prophet. :"If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Dream
The "American Dream" is a phrase referring to a purported national ethos of the United States: that every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and attain a better life. The phrase was popularized by James Truslow Adams during the Great Depression in 1931, and has had different meanings over time. Originally, the emphasis was on democracy, liberty, and equality, but more recently has been on achieving material wealth and upward social mobility. Adams defined it as The tenets of the American Dream originate from the Declaration of Independence, which states that " all men are created equal", and have an inalienable right to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The Preamble to the Constitution states similarly that the Constitution's purpose is to, in part, "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". It is said to be a set of ideals including representative democracy, rights, liberty, and equality, in which freedom is interprete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Touchstone (metaphor)
As a metaphor, a touchstone is any physical or intellectual measure by which the validity or merit of a concept can be tested. It is similar in use to an acid test (gold), acid test, or a litmus test (politics), litmus test in politics. The word was introduced into literary criticism by Matthew Arnold in "Preface to the volume of 1853 poems" (1853) to denote short but distinctive passages, selected from the writings of the greatest poets, which he used to determine the relative value of passages or poems which are compared to them. Arnold proposed this method of evaluation as a corrective for what he called the "fallacious" estimates of poems according to their "historic" importance in the development of literature, or else according to their "personal" appeal to an individual critic. Origin of the term A touchstone is a small tablet of dark stone such as fieldstone, slate, or lydite, used for Metallurgical assay, assaying precious metal alloys. It has a finely grained surface o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nativism (politics)
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native-born or indigenous people over those of immigrants, including the support of anti-immigration and immigration-restriction measures. Definition According to Cas Mudde, a University of Georgia professor, nativism is a largely American notion that is rarely debated in Western Europe or Canada; the word originated with mid-19th-century political parties in the United States, most notably the Know Nothing party, which saw Catholic immigration from nations such as Germany and Ireland as a serious threat to native-born Protestant Americans. In the United States, nativism does not refer to a movement led by Native Americans, also referred to as American Indians. Causes According to Joel S. Fetzer, opposition to immigration commonly arises in many countries because of issues of national, cultural, and religious identity. The phenomenon has especially been studied in Australia, Canada, New Ze ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xenophobia
Xenophobia (from (), 'strange, foreign, or alien', and (), 'fear') is the fear or dislike of anything that is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression that is based on the perception that a conflict exists between an in-group and out-group, in-group and an out-group and it may manifest itself in suspicion of one group's activities by members of the other group, a desire to eliminate the presence of the group that is the target of suspicion, and fear of losing a national, ethnic, or racial identity.Guido Bolaffi. ''Dictionary of race, ethnicity and culture''. SAGE Publications Ltd., 2003. Pp. 332. Alternative definitions A 1997 review article on xenophobia holds that it is "an element of a political struggle about who has the right to be cared for by the state and society: a fight for the collective good of the modern state." According to Italian sociologist Guido Bolaffi, xenophobia can also be exhibited as an "uncritical exaltation of another culture" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Status Shift
Social status is the relative level of social value a person is considered to possess. Such social value includes respect, honor, assumed competence, and deference. On one hand, social scientists view status as a "reward" for group members who treat others well and take initiative. This is one explanation for its apparent cross-cultural universality. On the other hand, while people with higher status experience a litany of benefits—such as greater health, admiration, resources, influence, and freedom—those with lower status experience poorer outcomes across all of those metrics. Importantly, status is based in widely shared ''beliefs'' about who members of a society judge as more competent or moral. While such beliefs can stem from an impressive performance or success, they can also arise from possessing characteristics a society has deemed meaningful like a person's race or occupation. In this way, status reflects how a society judges a person's relative social worth and meri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Stock Americans
Old Stock American (also known as Pioneer Stock, Founding Stock or Colonial Stock) is a colloquial name for Americans who are descended from the original settlers of the Thirteen Colonies. Historically, Old Stock Americans have been mainly Protestants from Northwestern Europe whose ancestors emigrated to British America in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the statistical terminology of the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans from the third-, fourth-, and fifth-generations are labelled "Old Stock" unless they are Afro-Americans, Asian Americans, or American Indians. 17th to late-18th century The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the population of the Thirteen Colonies in July 1776 was 2.56 million, and around 3.9 million in 1790 - of which around 3.2 million were of European American stock. About 85% of the White population in 1790 was British: English and Welsh (64%), Scottish, directly from Scotland or via Ulster, (15.8%) and Irish (5.8%). In addition there were Germans (8.9%) Dutch (3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Class
A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the Bourgeoisie, capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network. Class is a subject of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and Social history, social historians. The term has a wide range of sometimes conflicting meanings, and there is no broad consensus on a definition of class. Some people argue that due to social mobility, class boundaries do not exist. In common parlance, the term social class is usually synonymous with Socioeconomic status, socioeconomic class, defined as "people having the same social, economic, cultural, political or educational status", e.g. the working class, "an emerging professional class" etc. However, academics distinguish socia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cipher
In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode is to convert information into cipher or code. In common parlance, "cipher" is synonymous with "code (cryptography), code", as they are both a set of steps that encrypt a message; however, the concepts are distinct in cryptography, especially classical cryptography. Codes generally substitute different length strings of characters in the output, while ciphers generally substitute the same number of characters as are input. A code maps one meaning with another. Words and phrases can be coded as letters or numbers. Codes typically have direct meaning from input to key. Codes primarily function to save time. Ciphers are algorithmic. The given input must follow the cipher's process to be solved. Ciphers are commonly used to encrypt written info ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
