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Society and class in Great Gatsby
Society and class in Great Gatsby
How the american dream is illustrated through the great gatsby
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The False Reality of the American Dream in the Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel that has a large focus on the ideas of the American Dream and social class in the 1920s. In the novel, the people of West Egg and East Egg are people of the upper who have earned money either through inheritance or working hard and have had many opportunities to make their American Dream a reality. The people of the Valley of Ashes are people of lower class who have little to no money and have to work all their lives to make ends meet. Even though both social classes strive for the same thing, The American Dream, neither of them will ever truly achieve it. Fitzgerald uses a vast contrast in the settings of East Egg, West Egg, and The Valley of Ashes to display the reoccurring theme of a pre-set social class and to expose the false reality that the American Dream presents upon society.
F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the people of East Egg and West Egg to show the false reality that is the American dream and how it can never be achieved because the human race will always want more. East Egg and West Egg are full of rich and successful people. The people East Egg made their money through inheritance and occupy a station of very high class and carry themselves as such. The people of West Egg however have earned their money and occupy a position of high class but are still observed as being lower than the people of East Egg. One of the residents of West Egg, Jay Gatsby, went from being dirt poor to having more money than he knew what to do with through boot legging alcohol and organized crime. Gatsby, like all people, has a dream, and his dream is to be a man among the gods and Daisy, a resident of East Egg whom he fell in love wi...
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...ott Fitzgerald displays the false reality that American Dream presents upon society through the immense variation in setting and corresponding wealth, as seen in West Egg, East Egg and the Valley of Ashes. While the people in East Egg have inherited money, those in West Egg acquired it through their idea of the American Dream which in turn has grave repercussions for the lower class. The Valley of Ashes is a desolate wasteland where many lower class citizens live; the result of, “the rich get richer, and the poor get –children” (Fitzgerald 95). For most people, the American Dream will always remain just a distant dream. Fitzgerald’s rendition of the American Dream and its distorted reality is not only an exceptional novel, but accurately echoes similarities in present-day American society.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. New York: Scribner, 1925. Print.
Many forms of literature portray conflicting or contrasting areas in which each place has a significant impact on the story. These opposing forces add to the overall theme, symbolism and meaning of the story. In the ‘Great Gatsby’, by F. Scott Fitzgerald these areas are the ‘East Egg’ and the ‘West Egg’. To illustrate the East Egg represents the former or classic establishment. It consists of wealthy families who have handed down money from generation to generation. However the West egg includes money or fortunes that recently have been acquired. The West Egg sets the standard of the American Dream theme; working hard to become successful. Notably, the Great Gatsby reveals characters that come from both areas and impact the story and other locations.
...on materialism and social class. While novel is widely considered a zeitgeist of the time period, it is also a warning for the American Dream. Although the Dream is not Marxist materialism, it is certainly not traditional individualism and freedom. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby poses a question: what is the American Dream?
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.
In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes the demise of the American Dream. Through greed, pursuit of empty pleasures and cynicism many characters throughout the novel realize that life is not always as luxurious as it seems. Based on the East and West egg, both communities live very expensive lifestyles.
In Scott F. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, men fight over a woman. To stay financially secure, they go into illegal business. Dreams are crushed and lives are lost.
The Great Gatsby a, novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, follows a cast of characters abiding in the town of East and West Egg on affluent Long Island in the summer of 1922. Each of the characters, while part of the same story line, have different priorities and agendas, each character working towards achieving what they think would benefit them the most. As The Great Gatsby’s plot thickens the characters constantly show their discontent of the American Dream that they are living, always expressing their greed for more, three particular offenders of this deadly sin are Tom, Daisy and Gatsby himself. The characters motives stem from a mixture of boredom, a need and longing for the american dream, and simple selfish human desire.
Jay Gatsby is one of the few characters that has come significantly close to being successful in achieving his version of the American Dream, while others were scrounging to have a stable state of living in the “Jazz Age”. F. Scott Fitzgerald shows how the richer occupants in the East Egg have little to none tolerance for the lesser few in West Egg. The symbolism of the green light, billboard and Valley of Ashes assists the plot and emphasizes the themes in the novel.
Happiness symbolises a form of content, a form of satisfaction that can lead to several types of actions. In the Great Gatsby, happiness is portrayed in unusual forms with different characters, however every single character has some form of a dream in mind. Fitzgerald juxtaposes his influence of T.S. Elliot’s use of Valley of the Ashes showing poverty, decay and lost spiritualism with the rich lifestyle of West Egg as he shows the wealth, parties and liveliness of this Egg. The Egg represents the symbol of birth and life, as well as the fragility of society and mainly the fragility of dreams. Each character in the novel has their own interpretation of the ‘American Dream – the pursuit of happiness’ as they all lack happiness due to the careless nature of American society during the Jazz Age.
Through the use of symbolism and critique, F. Scott Fitzgerald is able to elucidate the lifestyles and dreams of variously natured people of the 1920s in his novel, The Great Gatsby. He uses specific characters to signify diverse groups of people, each with their own version of the “American Dream.” Mostly all of the poor dream of transforming from “rags to riches”, while some members of the upper class use other people as their motivators. In any case, no matter how obsessed someone may be about their “American Dream”, Fitzgerald reasons that they are all implausible to attain.
In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, all the characters are, in one way or another, attempting to become happier with their lives. The characters in the novel are divided into two groups: the rich upper class and the poorer lower class(West egg and East egg) though the main characters only try to make their lives better, the American dream they are all trying to achieve is eventually ruined by the harsh reality or life.
In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives the reader a glimpse into the life of the high class during the 1920’s through the eyes of a man named Nick Carraway. Through the narrator's dealings with high society, Fitzgerald demonstrates how modern values have transformed the American dream's ideas into a scheme for materialistic power and he reveals how the world of high society lacks any sense of morals or consequence. In order to support his message, Fitzgerald presents the original aspects of the American dream along with its modern face to show that the wanted dream is now lost forever to the American people. Jay Gatsby had a dream and did everything he could to achieve it however in the end he failed to. This reveals that the American dream is not always a reality that can be obtained. Fitzgerald demonstrates how a dream can become corrupted by one’s focus on acquiring wealth and power through imagery, symbolism, and characterization.
The American dream has an inspiring connotation, often associated with the pursuit of happiness, to compel the average citizen to prosper. In Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s infatuation for Daisy drives him towards wealth in order to respark his love. Due to Daisy’s rich background, the traditional idea of love becomes skewed because of the materialistic mindsets of people in the 1920s. In the novel the wealthy are further stratified into two social classes creating a barrier between the elite and the “dreamers”. Throughout the novel, the idea of the American dream as a fresh start fails. As Nick, the narrator, spends time in New York, he realizes the corruption pursuing goals. Characters such as Gatsby and Myrtle constantly strive toward an the American dream, which Nick realizes to be fruitless in the end.
Setting is essential to any good novel, it envelopes the entire work and pervades every scene and line for, as Jack M. Bickham said, “when you choose setting, you had better choose it wisely and well, because the very choice defines—and circumscribes—your story’s possibilities”. F. Scott Fitzgerald created a setting in The Great Gatsby that not only is an overarching motif in the story, but implants itself in each character that hails from West Egg, East Egg, and the Valley of Ashes. West Egg, symbolizing the new, opportunistic rich, representative of the American dream, East Egg, the established, aristocratic rich, and the Valley of Ashes, the crumbling decay of society, are linked together in the “haunted” image of the East, the hollow, shallow, and brutal land that Fitzgerald uses to illustrate the hollow, shallow, and brutal people living there (176).
The American Dream, a long standing ideal embodies the hope that one can achieve financial success, political power, and everlasting love through dedication and hard work. During the Roaring 20s, people in America put up facades to mask who they truly were. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald conveys that the American Dream is simply an illusion, that is idealist and unreal. In the novel, Gatsby, a wealthy socialite pursues his dream, Daisy. In the process of pursuing Daisy, Gatsby betrays his morals and destroys himself. Through the eyes of the narrator, Nick, one sees the extent of the corruption Gatsby is willing to undertake in order to achieve his dream. Although Fitzgerald applauds the American Dream he warns against the dangers of living in a world full of illusions and deceit; a trait common during the Roaring 20s. The language and plot devices Fitzgerald uses convey that lies and facades, which were common during the Guided Age, destroys one’s own character and morals. Through Fitzgerald use of symbolism, expectations, and relationships, he explores the American dream, and how it is an illusion that corrupts and destroys lives.
The idea of the American Dream is achievable although most often is hard to accomplish and everyone’s own interpretations and expectations make it a near impossible task. Social class and status is also emphasized through the barrier that exists between East Egg and West Egg which symbolise “old money” and “new money” effectively, and the corruption of morals as witnessed and expressed by the narration of Nick Carraway. Fitzgerald shows that for all the lavishness of society there is ultimately unfulfilled dreams, corruption and separation, and in the case of Gatsby a tragic end to a tragic hero of the lower class. “Show me a hero and I 'll write you a tragedy” F. Scott Fitzgerald