You may say that I'm a dreamer... But I might be the only one?

"Misers hold no belief in a life beyond the grave, the present is all in all to them. (126)" This line hit home for me about the power of tangibles in the world. People have a difficult time grasping what cannot be shown to them, especially the conservative business types. Abstract ideas, whether it be artistic or a concept of an afterlife, have little meaning to them. If an object is not immediately available to the senses, its essense can only exist in the mind, and some imaginations are stronger than others. In this era of modernity, importance in society is being put upon the senses, as visible in Frankenstein, where Victor wanted to create a tangible being. This theme is more prominent in a more "realistic" novel like Eugenie Grandet. This issue in modernity brings out the constant struggle of the "realist" vs. the "idealist," which is a dominant strugle in literature in characters like Don Quixote vs. Sancho, Emma vs. Mr. Knightley, Victor vs. Society and now Grandet vs. Eugenie.
Grandet lives in a realist world. He wants things now, namely money. He cannot grasp an 'idea' as powerful as money, or something tangible is to him. Eugenie is seeing the impact of an idea, in this case love. She starts to see the world differently, noting its distinct beauty. As someone with an artist's heart, I find more power in ideas. But our society at times is not ready for the fantasy, the ideas, the creations. Victor tried to create the ultimate idea: a living being, but immediately shunned it because he knew society would deem the being ugly and unfit. All you have to do is look out of your window in Manhattan to see the how important 'reality' is, how important it is to accumulate material things (I live in the Financial District). This is the ultimate warning of Rousseau: society and civilization teaches us to live in the now, to only envision a world that is present to us, which in this case is seen in the miser that is Grandet. Today, as we move forward in society and civilization, it comes as no surprise to me that the percentage of atheism in America is growing.