Naturalism and the disintegration of the American dream: Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

American literary naturalism portrays the individual as selfish, cruel, egoistic and as a victim of his/her environment. ?American dream? is one of the most frequently used concepts of American Literature and contradicting naturalism, exhibits the individual as not succumbing to his/her fate and endows the individual with the power of turning conditions to his/her advantage.American literary naturalism and the ?American dream? are different from each other in terms of their ideologies. This difference stems from one?s being pessimistic and the other?s being optimistic In this work, the similarity between American literary naturalism and the American dream has been emphasized in terms of the literary works, characters and situations in the works and these similarities are shown by means of a case study. For this purpose, in this work, American literature?s most remarkable masterpieces- Edith Wharton?s The House of Mirth and F. Scott Fitzgerald?s The Great Gatsby have been compared. Through the result of the comparison, the seemingly different ideologies of the naturalist movement and the American Dream?s similarities have been emphasized in various respects.