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Theme of the great Gatsby and how the author shows it in the book
The American Dream in the Great Gatsby Essay
Theme in the great gatsby
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The Great Gatsby Paper
Fitzgerald's view of Jay Gatsby’s specific vision of the 1920s American Dream. Fitzgerald seems to be criticizing not the American Dream itself but the corruption of the American Dream.
The ideal of the American Dream is based on the fantasy that an American can achieve success regardless of race, or religion simply by working hard in life. The term “success” is used with the fortune that the independent man can win. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald examines and evaluates Jay Gatsby’s particular vision of the 1920s American Dream. As a self-proclaimed “tale of the West,” the novel goes through questions about America and the diverse choices of the American Dream. In this manner, As a novel that has much to say about
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faith, belief, and illusion, it merits being considered alongside works that It is possible to regard Gatsby as a typical figure, the example of idealism and innocence who strives for order, purpose and meaning in a chaotic world. Fitzgerald introduces the theme of underlying chaos early in the novel when the violent Tom Buchanan declares, “‘Civilization’s going to pieces’” (12; ch. 1). Although Fitzgerald is sketchy about the details of Gatsby’s huge rise, the reader does know that he was a poor boy from the west coast(California) and not inheriting wealth or family connections who succeeded in obtaining his house in West Egg from where he puts on a act of lavish catered parties for people he doesn’t know.
With wealth comes the opportunity to reinvent his identity, this was inspired primarily by a “single green light, minute and far away” (21; ch. 1): this is the house of Daisy Fay Buchanan, the very wealthy, former Louisville belle whom Gatsby had loved before the war but who marries the immensely wealthy Tom Buchanan of …show more content…
Chicago. All that matters for Gatsby is the future: achieving his goal of reclaiming Daisy. That is part of the power of the American Dream—the irrelevance of the past. A fabricated history is just as useful as a truthful history. So Gatsby constructs grandiose lies that he doesn’t even bother to cloak in a shred of reality. For instance, when he decides to convince Nick Carraway, the novel’s narrator, that he isn’t a “nobody,” Gatsby casually mentions that he’s the “‘son of some wealthy people in the Middle West … but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years’” (65; ch. 4). When Nick, who is indeed from the Middle West, inquires “‘What part?’” Gatsby is reduced to the geographically hysterical lie: “‘San Francisco.’” Later in the novel, the reader learns that far from being educated at Oxford as part of a family tradition, Gatsby’s brief stint there was part of a program for American soldiers following World War I. As Nick observes, Gatsby gives new meaning to the phrase “the self-made man”: “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” (98; ch. 6). The idealism evident in Gatsby’s constant aspirations helps define what Fitzgerald saw as the basis for the American Character. Certainly Gatsby is a firm believer in the American Dream of self-made success: he has not only self-promoted an entire new persona for himself, but he has also succeeded both financially and , at least ostensibly, socially. Yet the Dream which offers Gatsby the chance to “suck on the pap of life” (110; ch. 6) forces him to climb to a solitary place, isolated and alienated from the rest of society. In the midst of the drunken revelers at his party, Gatsby is “standing alone on the marble steps and looking from one group to another with approving eyes” (50; ch. 3) At the end of the novel, Gatsby will also be practically alone at his own funeral. Gatsby’s primary ideological shortcoming is that he makes Daisy Buchanan the sole focus of his belief in the orgastic future. His previously varied aspirations (evidenced by the book Gatsby’s father shows Nick detailing his son’s resolutions to improved himself) are sacrificed to Gatsby’s single-minded obsession with Daisy. Even Gatsby realized when he first kissed Daisy that once he “forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God” (110; ch. 6). Finally five years later, Gatsby reunites with Daisy, takes her on a tour of his ostentatious mansion, and pathetically displays his collection of British-made shirts. Significantly, that much longed-for afternoon produces not bliss but disappointment. As Nick observes: As I went over to say good-by I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. (95; ch. 5) As the novel unfolds, Gatsby seems to realize that—as he did with his own persona—he has created an ideal for Daisy to live up to. He remains firmly committed to her, even after her careless driving has caused Myrtle Wilson’s death. Only his own needless death at the hands of the distraught Mr. Wilson (led by Tom Buchanan to believe that Gatsby has killed Myrtle) ends Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy. What Fitzgerald seems to be criticizing in The Great Gatsby is not the American Dream itself but the corruption of the American Dream.
What was once for leaders like Thomas Jefferson a belief in self-reliance and hard work has become what Nick Carraway calls “the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty” (98; ch. 6). The energy that might have gone into the pursuit of noble goals has been channeled into the pursuit of power and pleasure, and a very showy, but ultimately empty, form of success.
Gatsby’s dream can be identified with America herself with its emphasis on the inherent goodness within people, youth, vitality, and a magnanimous openness to life itself. With the destruction of Gatsby, we witness a possible destiny of America herself. Critic Matthew J. Bruccoli, writing in Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, quotes a letter written by Fitzgerald while composing Gatsby: “That’s the whole burden of this novel—the loss of those illusions that give such color to the world so that you don’t care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory.”
Work
Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner Paperback Edition, 2004.
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.
In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives the reader a glimpse into the life of the high class during the 1920’s through the eyes of a man named Nick Carraway. Through the narrator's dealings with high society, Fitzgerald demonstrates how modern values have transformed the American dream's ideas into a scheme for materialistic power and he reveals how the world of high society lacks any sense of morals or consequence. In order to support his message, Fitzgerald presents the original aspects of the American dream along with its modern face to show that the wanted dream is now lost forever to the American people. Jay Gatsby had a dream and did everything he could to achieve it, however in the end he failed to. This reveals that the American dream is not always a reality that can be obtained.
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
...on materialism and social class. While novel is widely considered a zeitgeist of the time period, it is also a warning for the American Dream. Although the Dream is not Marxist materialism, it is certainly not traditional individualism and freedom. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby poses a question: what is the American Dream?
Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has remained a spot-on representation of a time in American history in which the people believed anything was possible. Gatsby is the definition of this idea. The underlying cause of everything in this novel is his--and in essence everyone’s idea. This idea is the ubiquitous notion of the American Dream. And Fitzgerald does not only write about the American Dream, but about its corruption as well. This following quote truly epitomizes what the American Dream had become in the eyes of Fitzgerald:
Through the use of symbolism and critique, F. Scott Fitzgerald is able to elucidate the lifestyles and dreams of variously natured people of the 1920s in his novel, The Great Gatsby. He uses specific characters to signify diverse groups of people, each with their own version of the “American Dream.” Mostly all of the poor dream of transforming from “rags to riches”, while some members of the upper class use other people as their motivators. In any case, no matter how obsessed someone may be about their “American Dream”, Fitzgerald reasons that they are all implausible to attain.
Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, is used to contrast a real American dreamer against what had become of American society during the 1920's. By magnifying the tragic fate of dreamers, conveying that twenties America lacked the substance to fulfill dreams and exposing the shallowness of Jazz-Age Americans, Fitzgerald foreshadows the destruction of his own generation.
The Great Gatsby is a story of the American Dream. The Great Gatsby is a view into the society of the 1920's masterfully created by Fitzgerald. In this society, the one and only Gatsby falls right into the middle. Gatsby is an exemplary example of one trying to live out the American Dream.
The thesis of Kimberley Hearne’s essay “Fitzgerald’s Rendering of a Dream” is at the end of the first paragraph and reads “It is through the language itself, and the recurrent romantic imagery, that Fitzgerald offers up his critique and presents the dream for what it truly is: a mirage that entices us to keep moving forward even as we are ceaselessly borne back into the past (Fitzgerald 189).” Hearne’s essay provides information on the misconception of The American Dream that Fitzgerald conveys through “The Great Gatsby”. She provides countless evidence that expresses Fitzgerald’s view of The American Dream, and explains that Fitzgerald’s writing of the novel is to express to Americans what The American Dream truly is.
The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, perfectly symbolizes many emerging trends of the 1920’s. More importantly, the character of Jay Gatsby is depicted as a man amongst his American dreams and the trials he faces in the pursuit of its complete achievement. His drive to acquire the girl of his dreams, Daisy Buchanan, through gaining status and wealth shows many aspects of the author's view on the American dream. Through this, one can hope to disassemble the complex picture that is Fitzgerald’s view of this through the novel. Fitzgerald believes, through his experiences during the 1920’s, that only fractions of the American Dream are attainable, and he demonstrates this through three distinct images in The Great Gastby.
By eulogizing the tragic fate of dreamers, Fitzgerald thereby denounces 1920s America as an age of blindness and greed an age hostile to the work of dreaming. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald heralds the ruin of his own generation.
The American Dream, a long standing ideal embodies the hope that one can achieve financial success, political power, and everlasting love through dedication and hard work. During the Roaring 20s, people in America put up facades to mask who they truly were. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald conveys that the American Dream is simply an illusion, that is idealist and unreal. In the novel, Gatsby, a wealthy socialite pursues his dream, Daisy. In the process of pursuing Daisy, Gatsby betrays his morals and destroys himself. Through the eyes of the narrator, Nick, one sees the extent of the corruption Gatsby is willing to undertake in order to achieve his dream. Although Fitzgerald applauds the American Dream he warns against the dangers of living in a world full of illusions and deceit; a trait common during the Roaring 20s. The language and plot devices Fitzgerald uses convey that lies and facades, which were common during the Guided Age, destroys one’s own character and morals. Through Fitzgerald use of symbolism, expectations, and relationships, he explores the American dream, and how it is an illusion that corrupts and destroys lives.
In the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald attempts to criticize American ideals through the use of the American dream, wealth, and corruption.
Up until now, the term American Dream is still a popular concept on how Americans or people who come to America should live their lives and in a way it becomes a kind of life goal. However, the definitions of the term itself is somehow absurd and everyone has their own definition of it. The historian James Tuslow defines American Dream as written in his book titled “The Epic of America” in 1931 as “...dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” The root of the term American Dream is actually can be traced from the Declaration of Independence in 1776 which stated “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
The author of “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald, presents a wide range of themes and symbols that can be interpreted by the reader throughout his book. One of these themes that recurs throughout is the death of what we know as the “American dream”. The American dream is an ideology that every US citizen has an equal opportunity to succeed in America. In his book we are presented with four settings. The East Egg, where the elite and old rich live.