The American Nightmare Essay

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The American Nightmare: A true depiction of America in the Great Gatsby
Lies, corruption, and carelessness of the wealthy summarized America during the 1920’s. The entire concept of the class system, socio-economic tiers, and the route towards success were all unethical during the Roaring Twenties. Contrary to most previous writers, F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts the “American Dream” in The Great Gatsby in light of its true and twisted self. The flawed side of this heavily acclaimed notion of the “American Dream” is seen; it turns out to be a mere misconception and only benefits the wealthy, while the vast majority struggle for decent conditions in their everyday lives. Fitzgerald satirizes the “American Dream” through Gatsby’s character and shows how unorthodox methods were used to obtain such remarkable goals. Fitzgerald portrays the class system in the 1920’s and its unbalanced nature, the corruption within the socio-economic system, and the biased route towards success; which was heavily influenced upon by corruption. Finally, Fitzgerald is not praising the “American Dream,” but is essentially asserting that it is not as feasible as it seems.
Success in the 1920’s was all dependent upon connections. Right from the beginning of the novel Fitzgerald criticizes the ability to become successful upon advantages that one is given. Fitzgerald. states, “Just remember that all people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.” Fitzgerald hints at the development of the 1% throughout connections and how basically if you were not part of this tightly knit circle of elite folk, you had little chance of becoming successful. Inequality has fully emerged by this time and the divisions between classes kept growing exponentially. F...

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...sm of how women relied on men during the 20’s socio-economically. She also is attacked by Fitzgerald by her materialistic ways. She married a so called George Wilson hoping his “well-bred” qualities will lead him to be successful and wealthy. Wilson did not succumb to wealth and corruption and ended up living an honest and moderate life. He was hard-working, respectable and unfortunately had a rather poor life. Myrtle, on the other hand, could not put up with this. Although she is married to George, she cheats on him with Tom Buchanan to climb up the social ladder and attain more materialistic goods. Her amoral actions and the dishonest wealthy people led George to finally blow up. A once decent mad ended up killing Jay Gatsby. Although Myrtle and George are small characters within the novel, Fitzgerald portrays very strong messages through their presence.

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