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The effect of the American dream
The effect of the American dream
American dream reflected in American literature
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The Great Gatsby was published by F. Scott Fitzgerald during the peak of the Roaring Twenties. During this period in history, America was rising into economic prosperity and growth. The citizens of the nation were looking for their chance to become great, to gain fame, or in essence, to achieve the American Dream. Fitzgerald’s characters illustrate multiple perspectives on what the so-called American Dream is. Through these illustrations, he remarks on what the country of America has become and the extent to which it affected the different classes. Through the lens of the American Dream, The Great Gatsby could be examined by both an optimistic and a pessimistic viewpoint to generate a supporting and dissenting opinion of the American Dream.
When seen with a sanguine perspective, Fitzgerald’s character of Jay Gatsby exemplifies the nature of the American Dream. As a child, Jay Gatsby lived and worked with his parents who “were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people” (Fitzgerald 98). His meagre upbringing allowed for Fitzgerald to fully develop him into the epitome of hard work and success. Because Gatsby was “quick and extravagantly ambitious,” (100) he was able to
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move beyond his stature and develop into a “colossal affair by any standard” (5). The elevation of his reputation conveys the evolution that can occur within a person due to the nature of modern society. An optimist would see Gatsby as the emblem throughout the book to base the American Dream off of it and as proof it could be achieved. He started at the bottom, and rose the very top which, when looked at positively, illuminates the hard work and aggressive goals that allowed him to be there. These values are inherently good things, which is the reason a romanticist thinker would gravitate toward Gatsby and the positive image of an iconic American symbol. At the same time, Gatsby could be seen as an adverse example of the American Dream whilst using a cynical stance. When Gatsby was on the dock with Daisy during chapter 5, he has seemingly achieved all of his hearts desires, but had realizes that the “colossal significance of [his life] had vanished forever” (121). Once Gatsby achieves the American Dream by most definitions of the term, he realizes the extent to which his life has now become meaningless. A pessimist would see Gatsby as the paragon of true essence of the illusion of the American Dream. This essence of the American Dream as seen through Gatsby is ephemeral. Once he achieves his heart’s desires, after following goal after goal, after getting the girl, the implication of all these things became negligible. Through Gatsby, the crux of American society, the ability to improve one’s status, is seen as fleeting and a majestic deception. Through the same skeptic stance, Fitzgerald’s use of George in The Great Gatsby suggests a deleterious elucidation of the American Dream.
When the narrator first introduces the audience to George, he is described as a “blond, spiritless man” who, when visited by the narrator, has a “damp gleam of hope [spring] into his light blue eyes” (25). George is generated as a man who has lost hope in his society and his system. George works hard, has a wife, but somehow is unable to separate himself from his lowly stature. Fitzgerald is asserting through George that the American Dream at inception was a fundamental principle of society but is fundamentally improbable with normal methods and strategies. A pessimistic standpoint highlights the proclamations of misapprehensions that can be interpreted in the
novel. On the other hand, George denounces the stagnant nature of the American Dream and proves that everyone has the opportunity to have a central role in society. When the narrator found George, he was in his own shop. It was labeled “GEORGE B. WILSON, Cars Bought and Sold” (24). The fact that Fitzgerald stresses the name of the shop corroborates that George is proof of the American Dream. George Wilson was able to create a business, find a wife who was desired by many, and establish a name. Even if he was not as extravagant as Gatsby, he was content in his ignorance of the world that the narrator and Gatsby enjoy. Fitzgerald provoked a new thought of what the American Dream is, and whether it really needs to be full of fame with George as a character. With the optimistic ideals on the forefront of the mind, George validates that no matter the trial and tribulation life brings, the American Dream is possible. Through the use of his characters, F. Scott Fitzgerald comments on the American Dream and its definition in his society and its implications beyond. George, the epitome of a working-class man, shows his courage in the large world by trying to succeed in his own practice whilst arguing for the stagnant nature of American classes. Gatsby is the success story of the American Dream who seems to be at the peak of sophistication, yet always seems to fall short of his expectations. Fitzgerald’s theories of his characters can be seen more clearly when viewed by the two opposing viewpoints of optimum and critical opinions of the American Dream. Through the juxtaposition of the ideologies of the American Dream, Fitzgerald achieves separate versions of a supreme motif in his country that allow the novel to be an investigation into one’s own assertion of what America truly stands for.
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.
The character of Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s commentary on the logical fallacies of the American Dream are closely intertwined, which is why Fitzgerald goes to such great lengths to separate the two. By distinguishing Gatsby from the flaws he possesses allows the reader to care for Gatsby, and the impact of his death all the more powerful when it finally occurs. By making Gatsby a victim of the American Dream rather than just the embodiment of it, Fitzgerald is able to convince his audience of the iniquity of the American Dream by making them mourn the life of the poor son-of-a-bitch
...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 Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, illustrates one man’s efforts to reestablish a romantic relationship with his old flame. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald portrays an overarching theme of the “American Dream”. A majority of the characters in the novel have achieved financial success and independence, but none ever truly achieve emotional content. The author wove his opinion of the American dream into the novel by displaying characters who always fall short of an ideal life. Fitzgerald makes it clear that he believes that the American dream is no more than an ideological concept.
Everyone has dreams of being successful in life. When the word American comes to mind one often thinks of the land of opportunity. This dream was apparent with the first settlers, and it is apparent in today’s society. In F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925), he illustrates the challenges and tragedies associated with the American dream. By examining Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, and Myrtle Wilson through the narrator Nick Carraway, I understand the complex nature of the American dream. Jay Gatsby represents the cost complex of them all.
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.
F. Scott Fitzgerald inquires about the American Dream through the characters in his publication. Jay Gatsby was born into a meager family, but he does not allow that to cease his hard work towards success in life. He addresses many personal goals for himself that he meets throughout his life. Nick Caraway, Gatsby’s neighbor and the man of which the story is told through his eyes, explains Gatsby’s determination as “an extraordinary gift for hope”. One goal is to gain Daisy Buchanan’s attention once again. When Gatsby goes off to war, Daisy marries a man of similar abundance. Gatsby’s plan is to purch...
Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has indisputably been one of the most influential and insightful pieces on the corruption and idealism of the American Dream. The American Dream, defined as ‘The belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone,’ was a dominant ideal in American society, stemming from an opportunist pioneer mentality. In his book ‘The American Tradition in Literature’, Bradley Sculley praised The Great Gatsby for being ‘perhaps the most striking fictional analysis of the age of gang barons and the social conditions that produced them.’ Over the years, greed and selfishness changed the basic essence of the American Dream, forming firmly integrated social classes and the uncontainable thirst for money and status. The ‘Roaring Twenties’ was a time of ‘sustained increase in national wealth’ , which consequently led to an increase in materialism and a decrease in morality. Moreover, the
While there are numerous themes throughout the text of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the most prominent is that of the American Dream. The American Dream is the idea that any person, no matter what he or she is, or from where he or she has come, can become successful in life by his or her hard work; it is the idea that a self-sufficient person, an entrepreneur, can be a success. In this novel, however, it is the quest for this ‘dream’ (along with the pursuit of a romantic dream) that causes the ultimate downfall of Jay Gatsby.
The thesis of Kimberley Hearne’s essay “Fitzgerald’s Rendering of a Dream” is at the end of the first paragraph and reads “It is through the language itself, and the recurrent romantic imagery, that Fitzgerald offers up his critique and presents the dream for what it truly is: a mirage that entices us to keep moving forward even as we are ceaselessly borne back into the past (Fitzgerald 189).” Hearne’s essay provides information on the misconception of The American Dream that Fitzgerald conveys through “The Great Gatsby”. She provides countless evidence that expresses Fitzgerald’s view of The American Dream, and explains that Fitzgerald’s writing of the novel is to express to Americans what The American Dream truly is.
The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, perfectly symbolizes many emerging trends of the 1920’s. More importantly, the character of Jay Gatsby is depicted as a man amongst his American dreams and the trials he faces in the pursuit of its complete achievement. His drive to acquire the girl of his dreams, Daisy Buchanan, through gaining status and wealth shows many aspects of the author's view on the American dream. Through this, one can hope to disassemble the complex picture that is Fitzgerald’s view of this through the novel. Fitzgerald believes, through his experiences during the 1920’s, that only fractions of the American Dream are attainable, and he demonstrates this through three distinct images in The Great Gastby.
In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald explores the idea of the American Dream as well as the portrayal of social classes. Fitzgerald carefully sets up his novel into distinct social groups but, in the end, each group has its own problems to contend with, leaving a powerful reminder of what a precarious place the world really is. By creating two distinct social classes ‘old money’ and ‘new money’, Fitzgerald sends strong messages about the elitism underlying and moral corruption society. The idea of the American dream is the ideal that opportunity is available to any American, allowing their highest aspirations and goals to be achieved. In the case of The Great Gatsby it centres on the attainment of wealth and status to reach certain positions in life,
Scott Fitzgerald’s presentation of Jay Gatsby was a heroic one. He overcame a poor childhood, fought very hard for his dreams, and achieved them. In the 1920’s it was very difficult to change classes of people. Gatsby was able to do this with a lot of hard work. Even though he didn’t acquire Daisy he still achieved the riches he wanted. Jay Gatsby’s persistence tells the audience that anything is possible. No matter what the circumstances people can achieve their dreams. Jay Gatsby’s dreams were very admirable and he is an obvious hero.
Since the early colonization of America, the American dream has been the ultimate symbol for success. In retrospect, the dreamer desires to become wealthy, while also attaining love and high class. Though the dream has had different meanings in time, it is still based on individual freedom, and a desire for greatness. During the 19th century, the typical goal was to settle in the West and raise a family. However, the dream progressively transformed into greediness and materialism during the early 20th century. The indication of success soon became focused on wealth and luxury. The Great Gatsby is a story focused on the deterioration of the American dream. Throughout the novel, Jay Gatsby is shown with a desire to achieve his dream by all means. Utilizing the Roaring Twenties as part of his satire, Fitzgerald criticizes the values of the American dream, and the effects of materialism on one’s dream.
The author of “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald, presents a wide range of themes and symbols that can be interpreted by the reader throughout his book. One of these themes that recurs throughout is the death of what we know as the “American dream”. The American dream is an ideology that every US citizen has an equal opportunity to succeed in America. In his book we are presented with four settings. The East Egg, where the elite and old rich live.