Comparing The American Dream In The Great Gatsby And The Boys In The Boat

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The American Dream can be interpreted in many different ways, but a universal definition would not fit for everyone. Both The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown and The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald represent different aspects of how the American Dream can be achieved. The Boys in the Boat believe the American Dream is to conquer an inner goal by winning Olympic gold, opposed to Gatsby’s American Dream which is to find love and to have money. One dream is not more valid than the other because the American Dream is an individual dream and cannot be defined. The Boys in the Boat has a shared dream of winning gold in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, but not just the gold, it is the overall satisfaction of achieving something greater than ever imagined. Many of these boys …show more content…

When the book begins, it is assumed that his dream is fortune and “fame,” but as the book continues, it reveals his dream is love. He has a love, Daisy for many years, she is the reason he lives where he does and has the parties he has, just to impress Daisy. Daisy never even showed up to one of his parties until the end. Gatsby bought a big house right across the river from Daisy’s house and and throws extravagant parties to get her to come, all he wants was love. Although he never truly achieves it, he is able to work hard to try to achieve it. That is a part of the american dream, it may not be attainable and Gatsby might be working hard for something that just is impossible for him to achieve . “―I thought of Gatsby‘s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy‘s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could barely fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night” (p. 180,

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