Examples Of Strikes Out In The Great Gatsby

America Strikes Out

Like baseball the American dream is a widespread and popular phenomenon. While both may serve to promote hope, unity and patriotism, one is a grandiose and unattainable illusion. Today we must face the truth and ask ourselves, is it the American reality to strike it rich or just strike out? Writes Laura Straede.

In any game there are winners and losers. Why is it that so many fail? Is it the booing of the crowd, of society? Is it the fast backspin on the ball so cruelly thrown? Or is it the batter, unprepared for his single strike? As the illusion of the dream shatters we realize, success is not a game of baseball. At least not a fair one.

Today America lives under a deceitful pretense. An endless pursuit of Gatsby’s green

light. This American Dream, unlike a game of baseball, is an idealist illusion- an illusion tragically unattainable for the greater majority. The once bright salvation of the Dream is now little more than a desperate hope, a hope shattered by the moral, social and personal corruption of post war America.
James Truslow Adams defines the Dream as a life “better and richer and fuller for every man”, a life where everyone “shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable”. This noble idea is shattered by the phase “innately capable”. Hard work does not equate to achievement. However, if the Dream retained this pure hope, it may not have been so easily corrupted and shattered.
The shattering began in the 1920’s that saw the “pursuit of happiness” quickly become the pursuit of wealth. Even after recession hit, consumerism ran rampant, motor cars and colossal houses were the newest trend. The Prohibition was implemented and ignored. Racy parties and a new breed of woman emerged- the Flapper.
It is in this time, the summer of 1922 in Long Island New York, that The Great Gatsby is set. Author, Scott Fitzgerald explored the illusion of the dream through the character of Gatsby, a poor and uneducated boy from North Dakota with an “extraordinary gift for hope”. Gatsby was able to transcend wealth class and reinvent himself as an Oxford educated, war hero. Why? For the sole purpose of fulfilling the most unrealistic of dreams- his own American Dream.
Fitzgerald, like many literary commentators explores the foul social climate of the 1920’s and linked this to the unattainable and illusory nature of the American Dream.

East and West Egg clearly symbolize the class divide between the highest pedigree of society and those they look down on. East Egg is home to the aristocratic families who hold a perceived superior social standing to the new wealth. Gatsby, who belonged to this new wealth class is described as “Mr. nobody from nowhere” by Tom Buchanan. This exclusion serves to remind the dreamer that although they may be financially successful the dream will still elude them.

This class divide continued through the decades. “The Talented Mr. Ripley” was driven to overcome his low class status during the 1950’s. This movie, produced in 1999 by Anthony Minghella explores protagonist Thomas Ripley as he learns, through the simple act of borrowing a jacket, the only way attain social mobility is to become a “fake somebody”.

How can the Dream remain pure when social mobility can only truly be attained through reinvention and moral corruption? We must recognize the Dream is not a stark choice between the streets and the

penthouse.

Like Mr. Ripley, the pursuit of an unreachable dream had Jimmy Gatz, nobody, emerging as Jay Gatsby, celebrated millionaire. The pursuit of social mobility saw Gatsby sacrifice his Mid-Western values to become a bootlegger to amass his fortune. Through the character of Gatsby, Fitzgerald caught the contradictions of an idealist illusion- money or morality. Society in the 1920’s tolerated criminals such as Gatsby so long as he picked up the check.
Ripley is “talented” in the same way Gatsby is “great”.

Both are romantic dreamers with the ability and vision to make something of themselves. However, this reinvention is a house of cards. It didn’t take long before Thomas Ripley saw his self-made reality begin to crumble.

Through reinvention the corruptive nature of the Dream is self-evident. Rigid social class corrupts. A system in which odds are unfairly stacked against the poor corrupts. The mad consumerist scramble corrupts.

It is this corruption that sees narrator Nick Carraway retreating back into the safety of the Mid-West. Money and social class gave the Buchanan’s the right to be “careless people” to “smash up things and creatures”. Like Myrtle Wilson, killed by a gold car, racing through the Valley of the Ashes.

Today America faces another recession. President Barak Obama, a man who believes “only in America is my [his] story possible” declares this the “American Dream in reverse”. The characteristic hope and optimism is crashing as the illusion of the Dream crashes. There is a “nagging fear that Americas decline is inevitable” as 54% of the American population no longer believe in the Dream.

How can a nation succeed when its national goal is a collective

impossibility?
Gatsby epitomizes America itself: idealistic, full of potential, easily corrupted, endlessly yearning and endlessly failing. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.”
Is it Americas future to endlessly strive for an incorporeal green light?
America must reevaluate its national ideal. America must break free from the push and pull of illusion and self-delusion. For fear that America will “beat on, boats against the current, borne backs ceaselessly into the past”.
Is it the American reality to beat on, senselessly striving for an unreachable goal?
America must listen to the warnings of generations of literary commentators. Jay Gatsby, Thomas Ripley and many other literary figures are cautionary tales. The American people are doomed by their endless pursuit of the home run.