Sam Vandiver Assignment 1

      In Ludvigson's poem "Inventing my Parents," she alludes to many different great American authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald among them. The poem as a whole is a romantic attempt at describing what her parents may have been like when they were alone and she was young. At first glance, Fitzgerald's most famous novel The Great Gatsby may appear to be a romanticization of the American Dream that the author's parents are disagreeing about ("They disagree about the American Dream.") , but upon closer analysis, it is a scathing critique of this all too glamorized ideal. To me, this hidden meaning and the poem's allusion to it suggests a darker underlying message about the relationship of the narrator's parents. This feeling is compounded upon by the diction choices such as "hawk," "shadow sweeping," "and "cold."