How Did Jay Gatsby Chase For The American Dream

Jay Gatsby’s Chase for The American Dream

To fulfill the American Dream is the ultimate ambition of every American. The American dream is to rise from the lowest socioeconomic class and rise to great wealth and life of leisure. The American Dream achieved by many, but also still sought after by many more. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald uses the geography of New York to display the economic inequalities present in the 1920’s, and Jay Gatsby’s chase for the American Dream and the eventual downfall it led too.

The American dream has been a defining characteristic of the American cultural identity.

Americans have trusted that working hard can achieve wealth, position, and power. Fitzgerald expresses that even though Americans

The American Dream pushes millions of Americans to believe in a better future and work hard to achieve this dream. The destructive force of the American Dream tainted Gatsby after he achieved it, but Gatsby still worked from nothing to build great wealth and represent that the American Dream could still be achieved. The American dream pushed Gatsby to try and become successful and wealthy to achieve his goal of marrying Daisy, but at the end it failed. “Americans, while occasionally willing to be serf, have always been obstinate about being peasantry,” (88) displays the strong will of Americans to rise socioeconomic classes and not accept their current situation. “It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach…but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat,” (98) Gatsby had redefined himself at the first opportunity to become a new person and start life anew with first changing his name. Gatsby had grown up poor in North Dakota and he took it into his own hands to become successful by leaving his home and looking for opportunities out East. The American Dream is a powerful force instilled in every American to work hard and to improve every facet of their life to reach higher socioeconomic classes. It allows the poor to dream of the opportunity to rise out of poverty and it also allows the hardworking middle-class to rise to the level of

The East has always been representative in American identity as the founding location of the country and where everything originated. Fitzgerald also uses the preconceived identity of the East to represent East Egg with similar characteristics. Tom and Daisy Buchanan are the examples of the people typically found in East Egg; they have great wealth and representative of the old money that exists in East Egg. The people located in the East Egg are considered as sophisticated people, with great wealth and material possessions. The Buchanans and other East Eggers represent the people who have accomplished the American Dream, some from their own means, but the majority of the East Eggers acquired their wealth through their families and possess old money. They project themselves above everyone else and use their power to dominate over the less fortunate like Mr. Wilson in the Valley of Ashes, because of their perceived wealth and status from their accomplishment of the American