The Great Gatsby

Research Paper
In the book The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates how people who seem to have wonderful lives because they are wealthy, can be selfish and poor in character. Those people lead to the decline of the American Dream for Gatsby. The 1920's was the age of prosperity on Long Island and that is why most people assumed that if you were rich and wealthy you had a good life. They also assumed that they had positive personalities. Fitzgerald proved them wrong. " One of the novel's dominant themes involves the decay of traditional American values in a suddenly prosperous society" (Howes). In fact, most of the characters in the novel were major factors to the fall of the American Dream. He exposes the greedy, conceited, and low people who live in it.
Gatsby's goal was to achieve the American Dream but unfortunately for him he was surround by all these factors to tarnished his chances of ever reaching it. All of his "friends" were the greedy and shallow people who destroyed Long Island's value. "On the flip side of the American Dream, then, is a naiveté and a susceptibility to evil and poor-intentioned people." (Telgen). Gatsby had one goal throughout the novel and it was to be with his one and only love, Daisy. She was his weakness.. After years of waiting for her, she was the reason his dream was not achieved. "I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties one night." went on Jordan, "but she never did. Then he began to casually ask people if they knew her, and I was the first one he found" (Fitzgerald 79). He waited so long because he loved her and would do anything for her. He took the blame for Myrtle Wilsons Death when Daisy ran her over accidentally. Due to that, he was murdered by Georg...

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...e the people living there because they think they are superior to them, when really they will end up just like the them if they continue to destroy the moral values of society. They are becoming more greedy and violent towards each other and it was only making things worse. There is an important sign by T.J. Eckleberg that stood out to Nick in The Valley of ashes. "But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground" (Fitzgerald 24). He described the painting's eyes as being dimmed and sad because nobody really paid attention to it for so long. Similar to how to nobody pays attention to the people who live in The Valley of Ashes. "This is a blind world because there is no source of moral vision. This is a wasteland world of exhausted hopes because the only vision to be had - Gatsby - an ersatz one."