Paradise American Dream

“The American Dream has become a death sentence of drudgery, consumerism, and fatalism: a garage sale where the best of the human spirit is bartered away for comfort, obedience and trinkets. It's unequivocally absurd.” –Zoltan Istvan. In both This Side of Paradise and This Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald comments on the corruption of the American Dream. Throughout the beautiful text and prose of his first and second novels, respectively, Fitzgerald mocks the ghastly nightmare the American ‘Dream’ has become. The former follows the story of the downfall of a wealthy, promising young man struggling to gain romantic success, who enlists in the army along the way, to a poverty-stricken alcoholic struggling to now gain romantic and commercial success. The latter is very much the same tragic story told by F. Scott time and time again.

The corruption and failure of the American Dream is the primary, paramount theme in generally all of Fitzgerald’s works. He draws on its harsh realities in his writing. Furthermore, there are three main topics justifiably note-worthy for in-depth discussion found in his thematic attack of the American Dream. The first among these include the illusion of said dream versus the actual reality of it. The next involves the actual shift from the classical American Dream to the dream that has become a nightmare. And lastly, the final topic revolves around Fitzgerald’s personal commentary attached to all his stories, as he not-so-subtly draws from his real life. He only had one point to prove- that being that the only thing that successfully drives away love and happiness is, in fact, money and the materialistic consumerism it entails.

The American Dream is divided into two parts, both equally c...

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... upper class is pure happiness. Anthony and Gloria Patch are very well off and repetitively parade around to party after exuberant party, living ‘the life.’ However, once again one would be mistaken to believe that happiness could be found in alcoholic binges of promiscuity and expensive shopping sprees alone. This is the perfect demonstration of how vivid a picture F. Scott paints of the corruption of the American Dream to materialistic ideals. The populace became enchanted by the promise that more and more things would make their lives easier and therefore happier.

It is at this point in which reality sets in. The reality of the American Dream is that is impossible. It cannot be fulfilled to completion. This is what F. Scott Fitzgerald’s works attempt to convey to the world. Happiness cannot be achieved through the gain of material possessions or wealth.