For Sale —American Paradise (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
More than fifteen million people were dead, and the comfortable Victorian fantasy that Western civilization was steadily moving the world toward a time of universal peace and prosperity had been shredded by four awful years of systematic, mechanized slaughter. Self-denial and sacrifice suddenly seemed silly and pointless; it was better to surround yourself with luxuries and enjoy life to the utmost while you could. “There was an immense, all-pervading disillusionment,” Bruce Catton later wrote in American Heritage magazine. “The nation’s highest ideals had been appealed to during the war, so that to win the war seemed the holiest of causes; the war had been won, but it was hard to see that anything worth winning had been gained; the idealism had been used up, and people had an uneasy feeling that they had been had.” So, with traditional beliefs shattered, “lots of people became materialists,” Catton wrote. “It was easier, indeed, it was almost necessary, to center one’s attention on the material things that were going on in this country,”
What do You think about For Sale —American Paradise (2015)?
