Nowadays, more and more people are trying hard to seek a job in America since they believe that the American Dream could help them to succeed, to search their own value of life, such as Amy Tan. Nonetheless, does that actually work? Why not searching the answer from “The Great Gatsby”? This novel was written in 1925, about how the American Dream goes up in smoke that reflects from the representation of the main character, Jay Gatsby. The young general Gatsby met his beloved person Daisy Buchanan at a dance party and they fall in love so deeply. But he has to leave and Daisy promises that she will wait for him coming back. However, she gets married with a successful businessman Tom Buchanan. He spends his whole life pursuing Daisy but the tragic …show more content…
However, her scary feeling and pursue of the status keeps her away from the event as well as Gatsby. At last, Gatsby is killed by the dead woman’s husband, with few residual impossible dream. What’s interesting, Gatsby and Daisy are the reflection of the author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. When F. Scott Fitzgerald’s was still young, he went to St. Paul academy in 1908 and his first saw his article was published in school newspaper. At Newman School in 1909, he met Father Sigourney Fay who found that he had talent in writing and encouraged him to keep writing. To improve his writing skill, he attended Princeton University in 1913 and became friends with some people who would be some famous writers. F. Scott’s reputa-tion was extremely high during the Jazz Age. The decade of the Jazz Age was his most bril-liant period during his lifetime; but his career was on the decline later and never rose again. Nevertheless, his wife was a mammonist just like Daisy in the novel. She used to refuse F. Scott Fitzgerald’s courtship because he did not have the amount of money that she …show more content…
When Mr. Fitzgerald’s writing career was on a decline ten-dency, she was not satisfied any more and practiced dance everyday which caused her psy-chosis to break out. Their daughter had to get into the best school and wife had to enter the best hospital. Mr. Fitzgerald eventually could not hold the pressure any more and began to drink excessively. He passed away because of the heart disease caused by the excessive drinking in Hollywood, Los Angeles at forty-four years old. In the novel, Gatsby’s love to Daisy is a symbol of the young men ’s pursue to the American Dream. He spends five years to be rich but he feels empty at last. The dream is not alive, it’s just a desire with-out ideal. With the unlimited desire of the status, the American Dream will be distorted one
Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald criticizes the American dream very elaborately and shows the idea of the American dream to be connected with the goal of achieving wealth. Fitzgerald does not praise wealth in the Great Gatsby but condemns it by drawing attention to the dreadful fall made by Gatsby. Fitzgerald finds the desire of wealth to be a corrupting impact on people. Throughout the novel, the characters with money contradict the idea of the American dream. They are portrayed to be very snobbish and unhappy people. The American dream in the novel is shown to be unachievable. For some time, the American dream has been focused upon material things that will gain people success.
The American Dream is an ideal that has been present in the majority of American literature including The Great Gatsby. Although this phrase has become a cliché we sometimes put it into use without knowing the meaning. What exactly does this famous American Dream mean? Some might say that it is a journey to wealth and prosperity, while others might say that it is nothing else but the beautiful promise of settling down, having children, being able to provide for your family, and basically living a pleasant worry-free life. However, over time, the original expedition for resolution and freedom has evolved into a continuing
Fitzgerald, like Jay Gatsby, while enlisted in the army, fell in love with a girl who was enthralled by his newfound wealth. After he was discharged, he devoted himself to a lifestyle of parties and lies in an attempt to win the girl of his dreams back. Daisy, portrayed as Fitzgerald’s dream girl, did not wait for Jay Gatsby; she was consumed by the wealth the Roaring Twenties Era brought at the end of the war. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald presents the themes of wealth, love, memory/past, and lies/deceit through the characters Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom.
The American Dream There is no set definition to be found anywhere of the true meaning of The American Dream. Any hope, dream, or goal pursued by anyone in the history of America is an American Dream. In modern times the accepted dream seems to be 2.5 children, a house with a white picket fence, and a perfect spouse. However, as it is shown throughout literature from the early days of America to contemporary times, the American Dream is not always so simple a concept. America was originally founded on the dream of freedom.
The Great Gatsby is a story of the American Dream. The Great Gatsby is a view into the society of the 1920's masterfully created by Fitzgerald. In this society, the one and only Gatsby falls right into the middle. Gatsby is an exemplary example of one trying to live out the American Dream.
The freedom in self endowment has always been the fuel to the average American citizen and his drive toward success. In other words, Americans always strive to achieve the ever so revered American Dream. What is the American Dream? David Kamp describes the American Dream as "the idea rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."(Kamp). The dream lies deeply rooted in American society and the very mention of it lights a passionate fire in the hearts of American citizens everywhere. The idea behind the dream is that if an individual has sufficient willpower, he or she has a fair chance of achieving wealth as well as the freedom and happiness that come packaged with it. Essentially, it offers the opportunity of achieving spiritual and material fulfillment. It promises success at the cost of hard work and perseverance. Over time however, this idea of attaining success through hard work and perseverance has been skewed into one which exploits greed and carelessness and The Great Gatsby is an excellent affirmation of this. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald derides the gradual corruption of hard work and perseverance in the American Dream by utilizing the motif of driving and incorporating it with the the ideas of greed and carelessness.
Up until now, the term American Dream is still a popular concept on how Americans or people who come to America should live their lives and in a way it becomes a kind of life goal. However, the definitions of the term itself is somehow absurd and everyone has their own definition of it. The historian James Tuslow defines American Dream as written in his book titled “The Epic of America” in 1931 as “...dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” The root of the term American Dream is actually can be traced from the Declaration of Independence in 1776 which stated “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
Wealth, material possessions, and power are the core principles of The American Dream. Pursuit of a better life led countless numbers of foreign immigrants to America desiring their chance at the vast opportunity. Reaching the American Dream is not always reaching true happiness. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby achieves the American Dream, but his unrealistic faiths in money and life’s possibilities twist his dreams and life into useless life based on lies.
Throughout history, America has always been seen as somewhere where you can go to achieve what you could have possibly never received in your home country. In the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott FItzgerald captures the idea of the “American Dream” and the costs and benefits of achieving or living it. The Great Gatsby is about a man, Gatsby, who pursues to gain wealth and live the lavish lifestyle, which he obtained illegally. However he encounters a problem, a wealthy women, Daisy, who he had to leave for five years because he had went to war has moved on with her life. She is a symbol of finally obtaining wealth to Gatsby which is why she is so important.
A story isn’t a story without a deeper meaning. This proves true with the book The Great Gatsby, a book set in the roaring 20’s where the American Dream was the only thing on everyone’s mind. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald dives into the downside of the American Dream and the problems it causes. Through imagery, flashbacks, and irony, F. Scott Fitzgerald writes of the complexities of the American Dream.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a fictional story of a man, Gatsby, whose idealism personified the American dream. Yet, Gatsby’s world transformed when he lost his god-like power and indifference towards the world to fall in love with Daisy. Gatsby’s poverty and Daisy’s beauty, class, and affluence contrasted their mutual affectionate feelings for one another. As Gatsby had not achieved the American dream of wealth and fame yet, he blended into the crowd and had to lie to his love to earn her affections. This divide was caused by the gap in their class structures. Daisy grew up accustomed to marrying for wealth, status, power, and increased affluence, while Gatsby developed under poverty and only knew love as an intense emotional
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby”, is one of the few novels he wrote in 1925. The novel takes place during the 1920’s following the 1st World War. It is written about a young man named Nick, from the east he moved to the west to learn about the bond business. He ends up moving next to a mysterious man named Gatsby who ends up giving him the lesion of his life.
Gatsby’s American Dream In Scott Fitzgerald of The Great Gatsby Gatsby avoiding all the signs is what lead him to not achieving his dreams, he fails to achieve his dreams because he is blinded by love and a lots of other obstacles. He was in love with Daisy from the first time he saw her. Through understanding this, Fitzgerald shows that we shouldn’t get too caught up in our dream that we forget the reality. Gatsby has been in love with Daisy since he was 18.
The novel The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, takes place in one of the most hopeful times in America: the roaring twenties. Following the Allied victory in World War I, the nation experienced an economic boom that allowed for conspicuous consumerism, prosperity, and debauchery. Nobody exemplified the ways of life in the 1920s more than Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is a man surrounded by mystery. He is extremely affluent, but the source of his wealth is unknown to his peers, and nobody knows where he comes from.
Individuals perceive life merely as a dream. They had a glamorous dream only to grasp it for a second and watch it fade away. The American dream was falsely portrayed through the eyes of Nick Carroway and through the glorious character of Gatsby. The dream was filled with lavish parties and desirable clothes, but if one did not have the family tree money was simply a piece of paper. “He had come a long to his blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”(Fitzgerald, 2004, p. 180). Gatsby did everything to achieve the American dream, but could never fully grasp it since Gatsby did not have old money which he needed to earn the girl. Gatsby had the wealth, had the social backing, but did not have pedigree causing the American dream to stay a dream. The Great Gatsby perceives to be written about a marvelous man named Gatsby but as the story lingers he is just a coward and love-struck man searching for the missing piece to the puzzle. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year records before us”(p. 180). Gatsby is stuck in the past and trying to recreate the memory he shared with Daisy in Louisville, hoping she will fall in love with him again which renders that the American dream is fiction and can not be obtained. “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dream-not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion”(p. 180). The great Gatsby was a love-struck man who was blinded in life by the idea of being together with Daisy. The “magnificent” Gatsby represented in the title was merely a miserable figure in the past never fully attaining the American dream.