d of, and Antonia, a Bohemian immigrant whose family arrive in America seeking their fortune only to be confronted by hardship, whose happiness is eventually earned through a lifetime of dignified hard work. On the surface, at least, they could not be any more dissimilar. Gatsby finds comfort in his wealth, he sees it as a way to hide his past life, to assume a new identity, even. His enduring love for Daisy Buchanan is rooted in the fact that he sees her as unattainable - indeed, it is she who drives him to greatness in pursuit of her. Yet as a character he is ultimately a tragic figure, because his wealth cannot buy him wisdom. He is naive, and does not understand that class is not always defined by wealth - there are societies that even he cannot be a part of.
             Contrastingly, Antonia, even as a child, seems wizened and world-weary. It is not wealth or power that are her immediate concerns, but sustenance. Her family, though apparently respectable and comparatively well-off in their homeland, find themselves duped into paying over the odds for what is essentially a glorified cave-dwelling, and though their eldest son Ambrosch is a strong, willing worker and the mother, Mrs. Shimerda is driven and ambitious (often to her detriment as a character), Mr Shimerda is eventually driven to suicide through his longing for his old life. Antonia's lot in life is not much, yet she manages to overcome these hardships and the disappointment of being left alone and pregnant by her husband-to-be to attain eventual happiness by the novel's end. Unlike Gatsby, she has no concept of happiness through wealth; to her, happiness and contentment are found with her family. If Gatsby is the economic realisation of the supposed American dream, the Antonia and her ilk - who, we must remember, are not naturalized Americans, but foreigners - are the people who have made it possible.
             Yet, once we set aside their differences and explore their sim...