The American Dream in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

As the west came to a close, many awoke and believed that the American dream was over. But some believed that closing the door to the west opened the door to the east, the modern frontier. Fredrick Jackson Turner argued that there are key characteristics of the American culture, which can be contributed to the frontier, such as: the tendency for mobility, materialism and wastefulness, and optimism. Turner made his opinions clear in the thesis to his paper, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Many of these attributes of the American culture can be seen in some of the characters of the historic novel, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald used, The Great Gatsby, to show how the closing of the frontier did not bring the destruction of the American dream. In fact the closing of the frontier, not only caused the American dream to migrate east but it also taught the American people that the American dream could never die. This is because the American dream is a state of mind, were everyone has a chance or an opportunity to reach their goals. So as one man’s frontier closes another man’s opens.

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, the tendency for mobility is very obvious. This tendency derives from Fredrick Jackson Turner’s famous paper entitled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Many settlers of the frontier moved very often for many different reasons. This tendency can also be seen in some of the characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel. One person who displays this characteristic is Nick Carraway. Nick’s tendency for mobility can be seen very early in the novel. Nick grew restless of his boring little town and wanted to work in bonds. Nick left his middle-western town and moved east looking for excitement and opportunity. Nick resided in West Egg, a small town just out side of New York. However, Nick was unhappy and didn’t like the selfish, low moral lifestyle of the east. “After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.”(185) Nick, only living in West Egg for little under a year, packed his bags and moved back west.

Turner also believed and argued that the frontier added materialism and wastefulness into American culture.