The Great Gatsby: Reality of the American Dream The simple definition of the American dream is a state of happiness a person hopes to achieve by obtaining materialistic prosperity through hard work. This however has not always been the dream. In early America the dream of many was to venture west, find land, and start a family, but as time progressed the dream has transformed into a need for materialistic possessions such as a car or a large house. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald reveals the how corrupt the American Dream has become and how truly irrelevant money and worldly possessions are to becoming genuinely satisfied. He does this through his portrayal of Gatsby’s confused love for Daisy or the idea of Daisy, Daisy and Tom Buchanan’s marriage, and the death of Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses Gatsby’s dream as a perfect example of the new mislead dream of many Americans in the 1920’s. Gatsby’s dream is centered on materials and their correlation with his happiness. Daisy, Gatsby’s old love becomes his obsession as she becomes and remains the center of Gatsby’s life even after she gets married. Gatsby’s dream was to acquire enough money and possessions so that he can woo Daisy into loving him and leaving Tom Buchanan. In hope of accomplishing his goal of being truly satisfied with his life, Gatsby purchases many expensive things that he doesn’t care for, or use. He also throws many enormous parties for many people although he rarely attends them and has very few actual friends, but as Fitzgerald portrays as the book progresses “morality and ethics have nothing to do with the qualities of ones parties” (Mellard857). Gatsby became infatuated with Daisy’s voice and described it as “full of money”; this revea... ... middle of paper ... ... it didn’t mean anything. Gatsby was “destined to appear a failure for his visions can be embodied only in the mutable materials of the world” (Mellard858). Fitzgerald uses the life and death of Gatsby to illustrate that the new American dream is unobtainable and that no matter how far a person gets in life the dream of satisfaction through materialism is impossible. Daisy and Tom’s marriage was used to demonstrate that even those who are thought to have reached the American dream really still have no true happiness as they each had to search for it in others. These concepts brought forth by Fitzgerald are not to totally bash the human craving for happiness, but to inform them that the new ideas presented by society that they think will bring them happiness are lies. Thus those who go in search of happiness through materialism will always come up empty handed.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby, the pursuit of the American dream in a corrupt period is a central theme. This theme exemplifies itself in the downfall of Gatsby. In a time of disillusionment the ideals of the American dream are lost. The classic American dream is one of materialism and when Gatsby incorporates Daisy, a human being, into the dream he is doomed to fail.
The character of Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s commentary on the logical fallacies of the American Dream are closely intertwined, which is why Fitzgerald goes to such great lengths to separate the two. By distinguishing Gatsby from the flaws he possesses allows the reader to care for Gatsby, and the impact of his death all the more powerful when it finally occurs. By making Gatsby a victim of the American Dream rather than just the embodiment of it, Fitzgerald is able to convince his audience of the iniquity of the American Dream by making them mourn the life of the poor son-of-a-bitch
Now that Gatsby’s entire life’s work is purposeless, his death is easily foreshadowed. Fitzgerald uses this dismal realization to reiterate that the American dream is impossible and the closer one comes to achieving it, the closer they bring themselves to death.
Indeed, not only does it represent the shortcomings of his American Dream, but it is also used as a commentary on the motivations behind his dreams, motivations shared by many characters in the book. In the 1920s, the American Dream was perceived as being the achievement of success from anyone despite their social status or family history.*4 Through his popularity and financial success, Gatsby embodies the American Dream. His growth from underprivileged to being financially stable is even more highlighted by the creation of a persona and a nickname for himself. However, all the material possessions and prestige he acquires over time are actually factors which play a role in his downfall. Indeed, Gatsby really believes throughout the story that the more possessions he has, the better are his chances of getting Daisy to love him back. Having eyes only for her, he quickly becomes disillusioned. Ultimately, him and the wealthiest characters demonstrates an erroneous perception that money creates happiness, partly caused by the omnipresence of materialist and consumerist ideologies of the 1920s. This perception and Gatsby’s pursuit of happiness through illegal activities indirectly cause not only is death, but the end of his American Dream at the same
quote was essential because it allows us to experience early in the novel how Gatsby had a
The second character Fitzgerald analyzes is Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is married to Tom Buchanan. Daisy is the definition of a dream girl, she is smart, gorgeous, and just an ideal woman to be around, and the relationship between her and Tom is quite odd (Baker). Daisy and Tom move to the fashionable East Egg from Chigaco (11). Daisy has everything a woman could wish for, a wealthy husband and an immaculate house. Daisy does not know that Tom is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson. Nick Carraway plays a major role in Daisy’s love life in The Great Gatsby. Nick is Daisy’s second cousin and he knew Tom from college (11). Daisy invites Nick over for dinner one evening and that is how she relearns about Jay Gatsby (11-17). Daisy met Gatsby at a dance in Louisville. They used to be madly in love with one another when he was in the army (). They had plans of always being together and being married in Louisville at Daisy’s home (118). Later in the story, Daisy was invited to go have tea at Nick’s house, but what she did not know is that it was all Gatsby’s idea to get them to rekindle their rel...
The central theme is a comparison of the corrupting influence of wealth to the purity of a dream. Tom and Daisy Buchanan both lead purposeless lives that are filled with love. through corruption and wealth, while Gatsby lives his life striving towards his dreams. They all either have no purpose in life to begin with or lose all purpose and values due. the actions of another.
In The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald money, power, and the fulfillment of dreams is what the story’s about. On the surface the story is about love but underneath it is about the decay of society’s morals and how the American dream is a fantasy, only money and power matter. Money, power, and dreams relate to each other by way of three of the characters in the book, Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom. Gatsby is the dreamer, Daisy cares about money, and Tom desires and needs power. People who have no money dream of money. People who have money want to be powerful. People who have power have money to back them up. Fitzgerald writes this book with disgust towards the collapse of the American society. Also the purposeless existences that many people lived, when they should have been fulfilling their potential. American people lacked all important factors to make life worthwhile.
In life, we ask ourselves the question what we are? In addition, we also ask ourselves how our perspectives allow us to see this world? These questions are an opening idea’s, which requires the person answering it, to be fully aware of his or her life, and then have the ability to judge it without any personal bias. This is why, in the book that was and is in a sense is still talked about in class, The Great Gatsby, which is a book that follows a plethora of charters all being narrated by, Nick Caraway, a character of the book The Great Gatsby. Nick Caraway is the character in the book which judges and describes his and other character’s actions and virtues. Now we speak of a character whose name is Jay Gatsby or other whys known as James Gatz, which is one of the characters that Mr. Caraway, seems to be infatuated with from the start of the book. This character Jay Gatsby develops a perspective, which in his view seems to justify his actions by the way that he saw the world that he was living in. In this essay, I will explain why the ambitions of a person, can lead them to do things that are beyond there normal character.
Starting at a young age Gatsby strives to become someone of wealth and power, leading him to create a façade of success built by lies in order to reach his unrealistic dream. The way Gatsby’s perceives himself is made clear as Nick explains: “The truth was Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God… he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty” (Fitzgerald 98). From the beginning Gatsby puts himself beside God, believing he is capable of achieving the impossible and being what he sees as great. Gatsby blinds himself of reality by idolizing this valueless way of life, ultimately guiding him to a corrupt lifestyle. While driving, Nick observes Gatsby curiously: “He hurried the phrase ‘educated at Oxford,’ or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces…” (Fitzgerald 65). To fulfill his aspirations Gatsby desires to be seen an admirable and affluent man in society wh...
... The Great Gatsby beautifully documents the death of the pure American Dream in the 1920s, when wealth and the materialistic attitudes began replacing the pure ideals of success and genuine content. Through Gatsby's dissatisfaction with the unfulfilling life that money provided him and through the immoral recklessness of Tom and Daisy caused by their selfishness, Fitzgerald accused the rich of killing the old American Dream and of creating a materialistic society that was rarely satisfied with what they had. Fitzgerald credited the destruction of the old American Dream to money and to those that obsessively worshipped that money, exposing the nation's open willingness to give money the power to control and corrupt American lives.
In Chapter V, Gatsby and Daisy are finally reunited, which Fitzgerald takes as an opportunity to illustrate how the American dream is flawed because as the delusion continues, it confounds all logic and blinds you; furthermore, dreams can never amount to reality, as dreams are perfect visions of an imperfect world. While Gatsby’s dream started with Daisy “it had gone beyond her” (95), and it stretched into every part of life. Gatsby not only wanted the golden girl, he wanted the money, the biggest house, the material possessions he thought could bring him acceptance. His dream had grown so wild that no reasoning could touch him, as “no...fire or freshness could challenge what a man will store in his ghostly heart” (96). The reality of Daisy
Scott Fitzgerald uses Nick’s narration to show the material corruption of the American Dream. Nick declares “…I disapproved of him (Gatsby) from beginning to end” (Fitzgerald 162). Gatsby earned his living in bootlegging and other illegal actives to reach his goals. The American Dream is now commonly associated with becoming wealthy. The illegal path Gatsby took to achieve his dream represents the corruption of the American dream by material pursuits. Valuing materialism is a measure of our dissatisfaction. Nick notes, “ I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game” (Fitzgerald 10). Tom was not satisfied with his wealth, beautiful house, and family so he searched for some satisfaction and thrills through his affair with the lively Myrtle. Tom is truly a symbol of the evils of the world. While Nick asserts his distaste for Tom, he is tempted by the fast and indulgent life Tom carries on in New York City. The American dream of early settlers’ was to leave their past, move west and start a new life. This dream has since been warped by the materialistic desires of mansions, beautiful clothes, and an easy, entertaining lifestyle. We are dissatisfied with the lost hope promised in America, so we appease our desires with the search for worldly pleasures. Gatsby idealizes Daisy into his object of desire. Daisy is simply a wealthy, idol, and trivial woman. But for Gatsby, she
The American dream is an “idea that believes all people have the possibility of prosperity and success.” This idea inspired people to fight for something or someone. This idea can be determined by love, wealth, power, success, etc. During the 1920’s, the idea of the American dream became corrupted and replaced with the idea of wealth and power. The main theme in this novel by Fitzgerald is the American dream. “The Great Gatsby is a corrupted version of what used to be a pure and honest ideal way to live”. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby is destroyed by his view of the American dream, corrupted and perilous, of being with Daisy and having it all.
In this article, Fahimeh Keshmiri from Farhanigian University cites the theme of the withering of the American Dream in the Great Gatsby. Kashmir suggests that Fitzgerald represents himself both in Gatsby, pretentious and desperate for wealth to win his dream girl, and in Nick, who understands the realities of the American Dream. Fitzgerald uses The Great Gatsby to reflect his life and the people in it. By using the people in his life as inspiration, Fitzgerald exposes the ending of the American Dream along with the immoral values of society. Along with the people in his life, Fitzgerald also mirrored his personal life in his novel. Fitzgerald comments on the discrimination of people from New Money, as Fitzgerald gained his wealth later in