Another article in the series about social class...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/national/class/12lewis-essay.html

The Great Gatsby and the American Dream

Read the first few paragraphs and the last section of this article (or the whole article if you are so moved) and respond. Make a specific connection between an idea or quote from the article and a character/event/quote in the novel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/25/american-dream-great-gatsby

A team of reporters spent more than a year exploring ways that class – defined as a combination of income, education, wealth and occupation – influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity. The article you are about to read  profiles one person's perspective on class relations and status. Read it and comment. Do you agree? Disagree? Does it relate to themes or characters in The Great Gatsby? If so, how?
Article below:

DIANE MCWHORTER

Downwardly Mobile in Birmingham

Published: June 12, 2005

The part of Birmingham, Ala., I grew up in was so class-conscious that a boyfriend broke up with me in ninth grade because my telephone exchange was not the socially obligatory 871 or 879. My lapse in standing was the misfortune of being from the nouveau pauvre side of what passed for an elegant family there in the Pittsburgh of the South.

Here is the visual image: My father, a downwardly mobile rogue, is putting in his annual appearance at the Mountain Brook Club, the snootiest of Birmingham's highly competitive country clubs, where his parents (Harvard Law, Wellesley) were charter members. As a club regular myself, I claw the rocks of terminal shame at these family gatherings, especially in the 1970's, when Papa shows up wearing a brown double-knit suit with tan top-stitching. But suave comrades from his suburban youth come by to shake hands, as if he had never left their silver midst. Joe, the colossal bartender, leaves his post to stare into my father's grinning face and clamp him in a bear hug. That is the most shocking greeting of all, because Birmingham is also known as the Johannesburg of America, the national bastion of apartheid. And one of the markers of my father's class rebellion is that he is so "outspoken" against members of Joe's race that he actually uses the N-word, which is verboten among polite southerners except when they are out of earshot of the children.

This scene is the perfect representation of how incoherent yet pervasive class is in America, built on a rickety foundation and decorated with trompe l'oeils that deceive us into thinking that we all do live in one big mansion. Social mobility is real, and goes in both directions, but no one loses track. And there is one class whose indifferent exclusivity remains perpetual: white.

A Look at Social Class: Personal Stories

To start this assignment, choose one of the following statements and respond in detail in your comment box. Do you agree? Disagree? Why? Be sure to specify which statement to which you are responding and explain your reasons.

-It is possible to move from poverty to the middle class. 
-Hard work alone determines success. 
-Being middle class is the American Dream. 
-Poverty equals unhappiness.
-Money equals happiness.
-You can never change your class status. 
-A stable family life is important to achieving success.