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Park, Yong-jun. “Frustration and Wandering of American Dream in The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 41.1 (2015): 45-66. This paper focuses on two American novels, The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye. Both novels revise the meaning of an individual’s quest for identity in America, and while the two works show an ideal progression of identity focused on hope, this paper questions whether or not they should be regarded as hopeful. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald tries to find the ideal values of American dream by chronicling the progress of Gatsby, and also by defending the narrator Nick Carraway. But Gatsby’s ideals are deteriorated by his material success, and the meaning of his ideals is distorted by the weird hopeless moths. Meanwhile, in The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger criticizes American society as conformist hopeless through Holden Caulfield’s wandering and resistance. Most peripheral characters in The Catcher in the Rye stay absurd and phoney through the eyes of Caulfield. He fails to view the world as it is, and his process of wandering is mystified. From these points of view, the reader may find frustration and wandering included within the process of establishing identity, and may also find that certain aspects of the American Dream are nothing more than fictitious propaganda. (Chung-Ang University)