Ruth and Nick: Dreams Deferred

            Throughout the book The Great Gatsby and the play A Raisin in the Sun, dreams remain at the forefront of every character’s decision. While all the characters act for the same reasons, each of these characters possess very different aspirations in life, which is why each character behaves remarkably differently. Many of those in The Great Gatsby act out of greed, while others in A Raisin in the Sun plainly seek opportunities, something that they could never achieve because of the systemic inequalities of American society in the fifties. Unfortunately, few of these protagonists achieve their dreams, and their dreams get deferred, yet what happens to these delayed dreams is different between these two works. These distinctions appear less pronounced, but still very visible, between Ruth Younger and Nick Carraway. Although Ruth and Nick are comparable in that they both act passively and reflect often, they differ in their future dreams, while their backgrounds are also different, which suggests that race and class impact people's futures and what happens to deferred dreams. 

            Throughout these two fictional works, both Nick and Ruth act passively. They limit themselves to few words, yet are aware of what’s going on around them. This allows them to rarely be the center of attention, however that is what both characters prefer. This similarity showcases itself on page seven of The Great Gatsby when Nick declares, “'I'm inclined to reserve all judgments… Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.” This quotation, a rather optimistic message from Nick, describes how he acts reserved and without judgment. He does this in case the people he surrounds himself with during that summer in West Egg change. He knows that this dream will never come to fruition, but he remains infinitely hopeful that the mindset of West Egg will change for good. This even-tempered demeanor is quite similar to Ruth never voicing her pains despite the unimaginable pain she experiences every day. She repeatedly says “I’m all right” when in fact she is suffering greatly. This stoicism and determination to keep pushing forward, despite all the setbacks she faces, reveals itself to the reader many times throughout the play. While Ruth nor Nick feel they can do anything to achieve their dreams, these reserved, hardworking actions help convince the audience to back these two virtuous characters.

            Ruth and Nick both share another virtue: they reflect often. Whether endless alone time folding laundry in the projects of Chicago, or relaxing on a rocking chair outside a small cottage surrounded by the megalomaniacs of New York, both characters spend endless time in their thoughts. This attribute allows these characters to accurately assess the situation they are in and empowers them to make better decisions than the other characters within these works. This is much more obvious in Nick’s case as he unintentionally surrounds himself with people who, “smashed up things… and let other people clean up the mess they made.” Voiced by Nick at the end of The Great Gatsby, this quotation is used to describe Tom and Daisy’s shallowness, as well as the impact of high society lifestyle. While most other wealthy people on the Egg do not acknowledge their atrocious actions, Nick, a Midwesterner, provides a new perspective and flawlessly characterizes those partygoers. Similarly, an astute observation Ruth makes because of her frequent reflection relates to Walter Younger’s constant desire for wealth. Since the odds lay stacked against Walter and his family, he always looks for schemes to get rich quickly. This leads to Ruth ultimately confronting him, “I hopes to God you ain’t going to… start talking to me ‘bout no money.” While Ruth shares a similar passion of elevating the Younger’s social status, she understands that constant obsession with schemes is not the way to achieve goals. This observation holds true and foreshadows how Walter squanders a life insurance check on a shady liquor store investment, putting the family into a dire financial situation. While reflecting on her life with Walter, Ruth passively avoids confronting him while keeping her heart set on the family’s dreams of moving into a new neighborhood.  

While these two characters possess striking similarities, their differences lead to the core contrast between these two literary works: what happens to dreams deferred. One of the most noticeable disparities between Nick and Ruth is their background. Nick, a thirty-year-old white man educated at Yale, brims with energy in contrast to Ruth, an uneducated thirty-year-old black woman who slumps in gloom and despair from her rough past. This makes her appear much older and defeated and provides her with little future opportunities due to the racism and sexism present in American society. In addition, both Nick and Ruth live during different time periods. Nick lives during the roaring twenties with glamourous ornamentation donned everywhere, especially on the island of the Egg, while A Raisin in the Sun depicts the poor slums of Chicago coming out of the Recession of 1958. Because of the remarkably different settings both characters live through, their dreams are acutely different.

Unfortunately for Nick and Ruth, their dreams are unattainable, but it illusionistically appears much more feasible for Nick to achieve his aspirations due to his pompous background and access to fame and fortune. This easy access to wealth and people who have made it leads to his American dream of extreme wealth. While this dream does pivot at the end of the book when he realizes that wealth harms those who possess it, he also realizes that he cannot achieve this dream legitimately. This is shown through many examples; Mayer Wolfsheim and Jay Gatsby accruing their fortunes illegitimately and Tom Buchannan inheriting all his wealth from previous generations. On the contrary, Ruth dreams of living in a nicer neighborhood and in a larger house. She does this out of empathy towards Travis, her son, since he suffers from lack of opportunities as well. This dream, on the surface, materializes, but the new neighbors do not accept the Younger family. They send a welcoming ambassador to greet them in their new home and try to buy it from them since the neighborhood consists of only whites. This ostracizes the family from the newfound opportunities in their neighborhood and leaves to another set of dreams deferred. 

While both Ruth and Nick never achieve their dreams, what happens to these dreams that never transpire relates to class and race, so therefore the aftereffects look different. The way Ruth’s yearnings finalize are captured in lines nine and ten of Harlem by Langston Hughes, “Maybe it just sags/ like a heavy load.” This message suggests that her unfulfilled dream weighs Ruth down as she continues to bear it. She cares so much about the Younger’s future that she cannot let it go, but this does weigh her down and contributes to the tired look on her face. Instead of carrying this awful burden, Nick’s failed dream just wasted his summer, but he did learn valuable lessons in this process. While he never makes it as a bond trader like he hoped when he rented a cottage along the sound, he realized that wealth should not remain a goal in a virtuous life, but rather create fulfilling relationships. This realization bears itself at Gatsby’s funeral when only his father and Nick attend. This stark difference between unachievable dreams was not affected by both Nick and Ruth acting passively and reflecting often, but rather the race and class of these protagonists.