Who Is Jay Gatsby False Prophet Of The American Dream

The American Dream: Society’s False Hope

The façade or belief of being able to achieve “The American Dream” has been repeatedly written about through centuries of American literature. Those words can describe a multitude of different feelings and meanings. In the article, “Gatsby: False Prophet of the American Dream”, Roger L. Pearson stated, “The American Dream, or myth, is an ever-recurring theme in American literature. … It is the belief that every man, whatever his origins, may pursue and attain his chosen goals, be they political, monetary, or social” (Pearson 1970). Pearson demands that the idea that every man is somehow able to achieve this so-called American dream no matter what social class they were born into or what obstacles

they must face is a myth. Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, captivates and entices readers with a tragic love story that displays the downfalls of those that try to reach such delusional goals. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald used a variety of symbols to depict his feelings of the American dream which include different social statuses, material object, and locations.
While it is customary and noble to achieve the American dream through honest hard work, the main charter, Jay Gatsby, is a social elite who gained his wealth through illegal activities.

He tried to obtain wealth through hard work but when that failed, he pursued a life of underground crime. Jay only had one goal in life, and he was not going to let anything or anyone get in his way. He was born into a dirt-poor, farming family. As a young boy, Jay, also known as James Gatz, was well disciplined and worked hard to become a better person. As a young man, Jay signed up to fight in World War I. During training he met a rich girl named Daisy who was going to change his life forever. He quickly fell in love with her, but he knew that he was not wealthy enough to marry into such an upscale family. Instead of attempting to make a great and successful life for himself, he worked diligently trying to become a person he thought could be worthy enough to make Daisy happy. Daisy was a girl who was born into money and never worked for anything she had. Gatsby said, “Her voice is full of money.” She spoke as if she was royalty. For some reason, Gatsby thought if he worked hard enough and became rich, he could win her love. Jay Gatsby is the ultimate rags to riches story. He was not content with the person he was because who he really was could not get him the love he desired. He started talking and acting like an old rich friend he once worked for. Jay’s American dream was to

be able to erase the past five years and win back Daisy’s love. Ultimately, Jay Gatsby’s dream cost him his life.
Fitzgerald included other characters in The Great Gatsby that were poor and fought to achieve the American dream. George Wilson owns his own shop and is continually being rundown by the demands of a hard life. Myrtle, George’s wife, is dissatisfied with her meaningless marriage and is having an affair with a rich man named Tom. George and Myrtle represent the average American couple who do not have the money or opportunity to obtain a better more fulling life. George overlooks the evidence of his wife’s affair and wants to bring her West, but his job, stress, and lack of funds are holding him back. George begs Tom to sell him a car in hopes that the car can make him enough money to move. Things go horribly wrong for George and Myrtle when they both end up dead. This goes to show that things do not always work out for honest hard-working citizens, it is best to live within your means, and the desire to keep up with other people are not worth the fight.
Sometimes people do not need to strive for more in life because they are born into what some would consider the American dream. Tom and Daisy Buchanan come from wealthy families and never had to work for anything they had. Tom and Daisy live a marvelous lifestyle and have everything most people dream of having. Even with all the riches in the world, they are both miserable with their boring marriage. Both Tom and Daisy are having an affair with different people. In the end, Tom and Daisy’s careless and reckless actions cause harm to others. Because they never had to experience misfortunes in their lives, Tom and Daisy have no concerns or consideration for anyone besides themselves. Fitzgerald is implying that money, fame, and power cannot ultimately make a person happy and content.
Besides charters, Fitzgerald uses objects in the book to express ideas of the American dream. He includes expensive cars, enormous mansions, and extravagant parties that only the extremely wealthy could afford. There is one object Fitzgerald uses to symbolize the dream that Gatsby continuously strived to obtain, but it was always out of his reach; the green light. The green light is just a light on the end of Daisy’s dock that Gatsby can see across the bay from his mansion. For Gatsby, this green light represents all his hopes and dreams. He imagines his life with Daisy as if the past five years without her never existed. Fitzgerald writes, “He stretched out his arm toward the dark water in a curious way, as far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light…” (Fitzgerald 11). Throughout the book, Gatsby was constantly reaching for any means necessary to win the love of Daisy. At one point, Gatsby thought he had Daisy forever and “…it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever” (Fitzgerald 48). When Gatsby thought he had Daisy’s love, that green light he reached for in the darkness became just a light at the end of a dock. But in the end, Gatsby did not obtain his ultimate dream. Gatsby fought till his last breath to achieve this delusional, unreachable goal.
Within the pages of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald describes many different places where the charters travel and live.

Each place takes on a different meaning of wealth and success. Fitzgerald also used the different locations to divide up the social classes. The community of the West Egg represents “new money”. It is a place where the newly rich inhabit. A society of rich entrepreneurs who have made their money from participating in illegal activity after World War I. The West Egg society is portrayed in the book as being gaudy and showoffs; a community with no class or dignity. Fitzgerald includes Gatsby’s pink suit, Rolls Royce, and white mansion to depict Gatsby as being flashy and trying to copy the people from the East Egg. The East Egg is right across the bay from the West Egg, where the people who were born rich reside. The West Egg represents “old money”. The West Egg social elites are thought to have style, dignity, and class. As for Tom and Daisy, who live in West Egg, have none of those traits. They are both having affairs, Daisy killed a woman, and Tom is a racist abuser. This is an example that having the American dream will not make life easy or make a person any happier. Fitzgerald includes a place where the poor and hard-working citizens of New York live. The place where working yourself to the bone will get you nowhere in life and anyone who is wealthy enough ends up moving far away. It is a community of dirt poor people whose labor in the factories

is driving the construction boom that supplies the residents of the West Egg with wealth. The valley of ashes is a rundown, industrial town between West Egg and Manhattan. This vile place is where the corrupt and moral decayed society of New York travel to participate in unethical and illegal activities. The valley of ashes represents the society that failed to achieve the American dream. In a world filled with haves and have-nots; this is a community of the have-nots. Fitzgerald describes the air in the valley of ashes as being thick and grey with ash heaps growing like gardens. Fitzgerald also made it a point to include Mr. Wilson as being one of the have-nots by writing, “A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity--except his wife, who moved close to Tom” (Fitzgerald 13). Fitzgerald is connecting George Wilson’s ashen dust-covered body to Wilson being sad, desperate, and hopeless. It also states that his wife was not covered in ash. Myrtle is not seen as sad and hopeless because she represents herself as though she is moving up in social class by having an affair with a rich man. These three different locations distinctly separate New York’s social inequalities that Fitzgerald was aware of in the early 1920s.
The feelings of the American dream that Fitzgerald portrays in The Great Gatsby reflect his own. He writes about how the rich are careless, the poor are overlooked, and how money corrupts peoples’ judgments. In an article by Sarah Churchwell, “The Great Gatsby and the American Dream”, she writes about an interview with Fitzgerald. In 1947 he was quoted saying, "The idea that we're the greatest people in the world because we have the most money in the world is ridiculous. Wait until this wave of prosperity is over! Wait ten or fifteen years! Wait until the next war on the Pacific, or against some European combination! … The next fifteen years will show how much resistance there is in the American race" (Churchwell 2012). In his quote and in his book, he distinctively expresses his thoughts and feeling on how money and greatness do not go hand in hand. Money does not make a man great and it is not proof that a person achieved the persona of the American dream by becoming wealthy. Churchwell also adds, “The phrase the American dream was first invented, in other words, to describe a failure, not a promise: or rather, a broken promise, a dream that was continually faltering beneath the rampant monopoly capitalism that set each struggling against all…” (Churchwell 2012) The idea of the American dream could be considered a myth, a lie, or false hope for the low-income society of this world.