Gatsby's American Dream

1733 Words4 Pages

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald describes essential traits of human life: romantic love, genuine friendship, the importance of money, the significance of trustworthiness, and the worth of social classes through Nick Carraway’s views. As he portrays them, each main character’s goals are illustrated, and they each carry out different amounts of significance and a symbolism throughout the novel. This novel is mainly about Gatsby's attempt at an unattainable goal, winning Daisy's love back through power and money. In contrast to every main character, Gatsby has clear and well thought out dreams. Gatsby’s American dream, his desire to be wealthy and win Daisy back, is desperately ruined by Daisy. Gatsby’s goal that he tries to obtain by committing crimes not only deserves not to be achieved but also is worse than having no dream. Nick meets Gatsby in East Egg, a place where the rich that earned their money in a short period time but do not have enough of fancy social lives live. Their first encounter as neighbors was a bit awkward, and Gatsby remained mysterious for a while. However, since Nick admires Gatsby’s desire to reach his goal while not letting anything get in the way, and Gatsby knows that Nick will not judge him or think any less of him, so they become close friends. Nick gets invited in one of Gatsby’s big parties that he throws every Saturday, and amazes himself. Although they have the most faithful friendship with genuine feelings shown in this book, Nick feels like Gatsby is a dishonest and vulgar person. Nick notices early in the novel that there is something wrong with Gatsby. Later in the novel, Nick figures out that Gatsby was manipulating everybody. The readers know that the fact that he studied in Oxford, and wa... ... middle of paper ... ...y to give up her life. She is on a pretty high social class level, and she is only friends with lots of other rich people. Although she is happy with Tom at the moment, whenever Gatsby comes in the picture, and buys her interest, she started sleeping with him. In chapter 7, she reveals that she’s in love with both of them, "I love you now – isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once – but I loved you too." But according to her trait that does not want any trouble, and want everything to be smooth, whenever she finds out that Gatsby’s money’s not clean, and that he is a bootlegger, she abandons him. Besides Nick, Daisy has one of the most stable lives in this novel, even without a dream. It seems like Daisy almost proves living a life like hers is much superior than taking a risk with one’s unattainable dream.

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