Cultural_Destruction

CULTURAL DESTRUCTION Cultural destruction is a very interesting topic and it can be analyzed in many ways. Culture and history changes all the time, but sometimes those are good changes and sometimes those are bad changes. War is one of those changes and it is main topic about cultural destruction in literature. The important topic is mass killing, but they also write about self-destruction, emotional destruction, marriage destruction etc. “The Sister Carrie” by Theodore Dreiser we can see self-destruction through the main character Carrie. She is kind of addicted to money; she always want to look nice and go shopping, and that is all she has in her life. When she doesn’t have money, she is lost; she doesn’t know what to do. But she doesn’t realize that the money is the only problem, the money is what is destroying her. Her judgments are not clear because of the money. “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a piece of work where we can find examples of cultural destruction. America in the 20th century was all about cheating: cheating in sports, cheating in business – money is easily made, marital infidelity etc. Alcohol is illegal but everybody is drinking. There are no values. Only thing that is important is money. Nobody is happy or satisfied unless they are rich. We can see the difference between East and West Egg, or “the new money” and “the old money”. We can also see many examples of marriage destruction, for example Tom Buchanan and Myrtle. There is no more respect; there is no more love; there are no feelings at all. Nobody cares about marriage and nobody respects their partners. In “The Catcher in the Rye” written by J.D. Salinger main character Holden is great example of self-destruction. He just doesn’t fit in the world and in the society. He considers everybody stupid, boring and phony. The obvious signs that he has same problems are: he doesn’t care about his future, he fails out of four schools, he’s unable to connect with other people etc. The reason for his self-destruction is most likely the death of his brother Allie. At the end, the only solution for Holden was hospital and regular meetings with psychoanalyst. In conclusion, as we can see there are many types of destruction: self-destruction, cultural destruction, marriage destruction, emotional destruction. It is very common topic as we can see; and the reason for that is maybe because we all have some destruction in our life, sooner or later.