Examples Of Escapism In The Great Gatsby

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Drew Cabral The American Experience Mr. Connolly May 1, 2024 American Dream Facade During the midst of the early twentieth century, millions of impoverished victims aspired to become something great, something unattainable. Shooting for the stars created an unrealistic and idealistic facade of the American dream, resulting in additional suffrage of these escapists. This belief arose during the “Roaring Twenties” when the nation's wealth practically doubled and the opulent tycoons profited tremendously. In Fitzgerald’s legendary novel, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, a dreamer trying to keep up with the higher society of East Egg, spends the last five years of his life devoted to his one goal, his American dream. In this skyrocketing capitalistic …show more content…

Through throwing lavish parties and taking the blame for her murder, Gatsby will helplessly do anything with no hesitation for Daisy, which ultimately leads to his deaths. Daisy Buchanan is Jay Gatsby’s American dream, and he is endlessly devoted to accomplishing his implausible fantasy. Fitzgerald utilizes a key motif, a green dock light, throughout the entire span of the tale to indicate Jay Gatsby’s longing for Daisy love and his idea of the American dream. He has set unrealistic expectations to acquire her as if she were a possession, tagged with a costly price tag. Gatsby, similar to other rising moguls, sees everything as their capitalistic value and will do whatever it takes to obtain the most merit. He’s fixated on this notion, determined it will solve all his problems. When he notices the green flickering dock light illuminating the sky from across the bay, he reaches out as if he could physically grab it and capture her: “he stretched out his arm towards the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was …show more content…

The color green is often associated with money, hope, and prosperity. Fitzgerald employs green throughout the story, typically when writing about Gatsby to emphasize his desire for his American dream. When Nick Carraway, our observant neutral narrator, watches Gatsby reach out and attempt to embody that green light, he notes that Gatsby is nearly quivering out of his obsessive passion for his delusion of the American dream. Furthermore, Gatsby’s false imagination of Daisy he’s cultivated over the last half a decade leads him to set unreachable expectations for his first interaction with Daisy: “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. [...] I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed—that voice was a deathless song” (p.95-96). Gatsby spent every moment of the last five years waiting for this moment, and then

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