Corey McMullin Assignment 1

Ludvigson’s allusion to Fitzgerald changes the meaning of her poem. Fitzgerald’s most well known work, The Great Gatsby, is a work of grand illusions. Everyone hides their true lives, instead partying and putting on appearances; living the “American Dream.”  Ludvigson’s narrator speaks about the happy life her parents were living- the bright look on her mother’s face, the grand gestures from her father- but it can be clearly seen in Hopper’s Nighthawks that this is not the case. They appear to be sitting in silence, wasting the night away. The five year old narrator was sitting at home wishing up a joyous life for her parents, wishing against the disillusionment of the 20th century that was wrought by the devastation of the two world wars. The narrator mimics Ludvigson, a child of the second world war.