How Did Al Capone Achieve The American Dream

Infamous mobster Al Capone once said, “This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.” Al Capone created his empire during Prohibition becoming one of the most prominent bootleggers in America. According to investopia.com Al Capone’s fortune due to inflation would be worth about 1.3 billion dollars. Many would argue that Al Capone did achieve the American Dream but to what extent did he go to amass this fortune. The American Dream is based on the ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Surely he compromised these concepts while accumulating his riches so is the American

dream dead. In a word, yes. The average person no longer has the opportunities or tools to climb up the social ladder. At least this is what F. Scott Fitzgerald hoped to illuminate in his book The Great Gatsby. Using graphic details describing decaying American cities, bleak portrayals of hard-working American citizens, and the hopelessness that was felt by almost everyone Fitzgerald managed to capture the decay of the American dream.

Early in the book, the reader is given a glimpse of the destruction that had taken place in America when they are introduced to the desolate area of land known as The Valley of Ashes. The region is described as being “... a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” (Fitzgerald 27). The Valley of Ashes is the home of George Wilson, who owns a relatively unsuccessful automobile repair shop. He is by all accounts hard-working and devoted to his wife Myrtle who had an affair with Tom Buchanan. Despite all of his hard work and commitment to his job George is stuck in a deteriorating town that has no hope of ever being anything but an area with broken dreams and broken men. Sadly George never achieved the quintessential American dream but not of any fault of his own. He failed to reach a higher level of prosperity because it was not possible to do so.

Unlike George Wilson, Jay Gatsby reached moderate success but his dreams never truly came to fruition.

From a young age Jay Gatsby was devoted to self-improvement, he strived to create a better version of himself. As the events of the novel unfold it becomes clearer to the reader that Gatsby is trying in vain to take advantage of the opportunities that America promises in order to rise above the social class in which he was born. Gatsby accumulated great wealth but he realized that the families who had been rich for generations would never accept him as one of their own so he turned his ambition to a girl he once loved named Daisy who would validate him and more importantly his status. Unfortunately, Gatsby’s ambitions were too high and his dreams unrealistic. Fitzgerald makes this abundantly clear when he wrote “I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” (Fitzgerald who knows where). Eventually, Gatsby himself realized that his version of the American dream was not possible. His dream of rekindling his love with Daisy killed him and along with him any hope of attaining the highly promoted impossible American

dream.

Men who belonged to the lower social classes dreamt about obtaining the American dream but ultimately failed which brings begs the question: Was it possible for women who faced prejudice and sexism on a constant basis to rise above their stations?

Sadly the answer is again a no. Daisy understands this when she tells Nick about what she said when the nurses told her she had had a girl, “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool- that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” (Fitzgerald 21). Daisy had hoped that her daughter would grow up to be ignorant so that she would not recognize and then mourn the opportunities that would be denied to her because of her sex. Although Daisy descended from a family who had had wealth for generations she would never get to taste the independence she so wanted instead she was forced to marry a man who fervently believed that women should not run around as much as they do. Woman of Daisy’s social class had inherited wealth so The American dream was not something they hoped to achieve but girls who had not been born into rich families fantasized about the success that America promised to everyone despite their race or gender. These fantasies never came

true.

Not only did Fitzgerald masterfully use clever descriptions to illustrate his opinions about the decay of the American dream he used symbols. The most important symbol was the green light that was across the bay from Gatsby’s house. Most would argue that the green light symbolizes Gatsby’s dream of recapturing the love he and Daisy once shared but the green light symbolizes much more. It represents the optimism of the American dream. Nick states that “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…” (Fitzgerald 189). Basically, Nick is saying that just the idea of the American dream makes people strive to work harder and be better in order to attain it but by the 1920’s America had become corrupt and the American Dream dissipated into nothingness. In its place was an emphasis on material goods and easy illegal ways to come by money.