Social Commentary The Great Gatsby

Regarded as a brilliant piece of social commentary The Great Gatsby offers an insight into the American life in the 1920s. The novel exposes that in the 1920’s the American Dream had entered into a state of moral decay. Joshua Zeitz provided insight on this point in the article F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Age of Excess by claiming,“In reality, the nation’s most prosperous decade had been built on a house of cards.” Joshua’s claim can be applied to the American Dream of the 1920’s and how since it “had been built on a house of cards” it would fail. Throughout the novel F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of the novel, uses analysis and tone to argue that the American Dream is an illusion. The idea behind the American Dream represents the dream

of equality, opportunity, prosperity, and love. Throughout the novel Nick, the narrator, proves that the American dream does not guarantee that any of these components will come true. The critical tone of the novel helps to show the impacts of the failure of the American Dream and how it will always fall apart. In the end it is undeniable that the American Dream is an illusion, which always ends in failure.
The critical tone from Nick in this passage, where Nick describes Gatsby’s car. Helps to bring to light what Gatsby and Nick both envision the American Dream as and how Nick believes it to be an illusion;
I’d seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory, we started to town. (Fitzgerald 64)
This passage reflects a critical tone, as Nick studies Gatsby’s car.

The use of short sentences in the start of the passage gives the reader a questionable vibe. Which pulls out the know-it-all tone, suggesting that Nick is lecturing the reader. Giving off a vibe that Nick is trying to be extremely critical of the car. Nick uses a form of personification to heighten the judgment he has of the car. Calling the car “swollen,” helps the reader to understand how massive the car is and paints a picture of the car in the reader's head. The use of the word “labyrinth” to describe the windshields validates how much Nick is judging Gatsby's car and how much he wants the reader to visualize the car with him. By Nick criticizing the car's windshields it explains how critical he is of every apparatus of the car. The critical tone Nick uses pushes an understanding of the American dream. In this/the passage, to Nick, Gatsby’s car is seen as the American Dream, and this is why Nick is so critical of the car. Nick knows the American Dream is an illusion and that is why he is acting so

judgemental.
In this passage Nick incorporates the illusion of the American Dream and a critical tone to Tom. Tom a college friend of Nick’s and the husband to Daisy one of Nick’s cousins. Nick uses this critical tone the whole time as they drive to the Plaza Hotel in the city, to cool off from the hot summer day;
There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control. Instinct made him step on the accelerator with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving Wilson behind, and we sped along toward Astoria at fifty miles an hour, until, among the spidery girders of the elevated, we came in sight of the easy-going blue coupe. (Fitzgerald, 125)
This passage reflects a critical tone, from Nick about Tom. The use of the words “hot whips of panic” represents a superb use of diction. By Nick using the word “hot” it helps the reader to experience more of what Tom is experiencing. The word “hot” may also cause the reader to get warm themself, making the reader experience the book more. The commas in the second sentence helps to depict how critical Nick is of Tom. Nick starts off with criticizing Tom for having both a wife and a mistress and then Fitzgerald uses a comma to make the reader ponder that even more. Next Nick goes on to be even more critical about Tom's life spinning out of control. In the end Nick uses the words “we sped along” as an understatement to make the reader believe they were flying, but then later on in the sentence he says they are only going 50mph. Not fast compared to today, but by the way Nick told the reader it implies they should have been going faster. Nick stays critical of Tom the whole passage and uses great description to tell the reader what he is enduring. Nick illustrates how Tom’s American Dream is falling apart with both his wife and his mistress on shaky terms. Nick does his best to highlight this and push the idea of failure in Tom’s American dream.
This passage uses a critical tone when looking at the billboard of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg eyes, Which aids in illustrating the failure of the American Dream in the valley of ashes. The valley of ashes is a place halfway between the West Egg, where Nick lives, and New York City, where New York’s ashes get dumped. During the passage Tom is driving with Nick through the valley of ashes;
But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic — their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground. (Fitzgerald, 23-24)
This passage reflects a critical tone, as Nick studies Doctor T.J. Eckleburg’s billboard. The use of multiple commas in the first sentence suggests Nick is trying to draw the sentence out and make it last longer then it should, so he can heighten the effect of the billboard, and completely criticize it. The use of the words “their irises are one yard high” highlights how Nick is picking out every detail and giving the reader a description of the billboard that could not be accurate at all, exposing how critical of the billboard Nick is being. In the next sentence, Fitzgerald uses the word “spectacles” instead of glasses, indicating that Nick wants the reader to come up with an detailed image and imagine the doctor similar to how he is imagining him. The phrase “eternal blindness” Fitzgerald uses reveles personification, as the eyes take on a life of their own and they cause “eternal blindness.” Finally, the use of the commas in the last sentence gives off a vibe that Nick could go on forever criticizing Doctor T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes on the billboard. Although it might not look like the passage has anything to do with the American Dream and its decay, it does. In context the passage reveals the failure of the American Dream with the valley of ashes and the billboard. The valley of ashes is not a job which goes with the American Dream at all, for the men who work there their American Dream failed. The valley of ashes workers at some point wanted to reach their idea of the American Dream. To do that they need money bringing them to the valley of ashes, which leads to the decline of their hopes to achieve the American Dream.
The Great Gatsby captures the 1920’s post war economic boom, but it also captures a corrupt time.

A time where everyone is striving for the American Dream but no one can achieve it because it became corrupted by materialism. Leading everyone down a dark path to failure. Although, Fitzgerald had no way of seeing the future The Great Gatsby illustrates the world heading for failure, which is what exactly what happened from the stock market crash of 1929. With the use of a critical tone by Nick, the novel was effective in depicting the illusion of the American

Dream.