ipl-logo

Compare And Contrast The Great Gatsby

724 Words3 Pages

The USA is a spot where you can make your dreams happen. These aspirations are when you start from the bottom and work your way to the top through hard work and self determination. The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or financial situation you are brought into, can obtain their interpretation of wealth and success in Society. F Scott Fitzgerald’ novel The Great Gatsby is about a group of wealthy people who are dazzled by money, power and other things. The characters in this story that try to pursue their version of the American Dream are Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway who are good friends, but both who strived for this goal never achieve their form of luxury. Jay Gatsby who is the main character …show more content…

This was because of Daisy Buchanan who Jay loved and was his motivation for getting rich, despite that he was never able to get the love of his wife and was never able to recreate the past between each other in Louisville back in 1917. Gatsby is loses his hopes when: “with every word she was drawing further into herself, so he gave that, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.”(Fitzgerald 103). Chapter 7 is Nick's description of Daisy when Tom exposes Jay for his shady businesses such as bootlegging and possibly other illegal activities. Daisy hears these revelations and begins to shut down and stops listening to him because she doesn’t want to be a part of Gatsby's criminal lifestyle. This killed his dream of reuniting with …show more content…

Nick never achieves the American Dream because he is in a dilemma with his ideals with his Long Island life compared to his midwestern life which felt more grounded compared to New York's Grotesque, materialistic and careless way of life, which he was disgusted by. Nick begins to realize that anything can happen in Long Island when, “Anything can happen now we’ve slid over the bridge. I thought anything at all…. even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.”(Fitzgerald 54) Carraway describes the scene when he and Gatsby are driving over the Valley of Ashes when going to New York City. Gatsby having association with people in the city made Nick think that you’re happy. He begins to see that the American Dream is becoming corrupt and wonders if Gatsby is doing something sinister that he won’t reveal to Nick. Nick begins to reflects on the American Dream and how people try to reach it at the end of the book when he says, “so we beat on,boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”(Fitzgerald 138). Nick is saying that our past is going to impact our future. This reflection shows no matter how much wealth or success we achieve, we will always want more and chase it again and again. Nick is disturbed from the wealthy lifestyle of Long Island because of how privileged, careless, and ignorant the people of the eggs

Show More
Related

Compare And Contrast The Great Gatsby

622 Words | 3 Pages

Who doesn’t love the Jazz Age with the use of heartfelt struggle? The Great Gatsby is an incredible novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the story was also made into numerous graphic novels and a movie alternative. Each version has its own method of storytelling depending on how they want to portray the story and compare it to one another. Fitzgerald explores the theme of fighting for nothing to help present, basing a character on his own life. Along with that, there are apparent dissimilarities between a visual and regular novel and the film with the novel.

Read More

The Great Gatsby Quote Analysis

1169 Words | 5 Pages

It was one of the most sought after things in America for the longest time; it included wealth, family, and happiness. It is more commonly known as the American Dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald tackles this subject in The Great Gatsby while telling the story of Jay Gatsby’s last summer. This novel represents the struggles he faced while chasing his American Dream. Jay’s fictional story reaches a deeper level and shows how little Fitzgerald believes in the American Dream.

Read More

Significance Of The Green Lantern In The Great Gatsby

1422 Words | 6 Pages

The American Dream is something which almost every American is familiar with, but it also is unattainable for the vast majority of Americans, something which F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates with his acclaimed novel, The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby covers the story of Nick, an all around average man who is thrust into the lives of both the ultra wealthy and the aspiring-to-be wealthy when he moves to New York. He meets his nextdoor neighbor, Gatsby, who owns an extravagant mansion which Nick finds out to be purchased with money of questionable background, and owned by an ever increasingly strange and dubious man. Over the course of the novel, different characters all chase their own goals - some want love, some want power, almost everyone

Read More

The Great Gatsby Cynic Attitude Towards The American Dream

269 Words | 2 Pages

Fitzgerald 's focus on this passage this passage relates to how he presents the rest of the novel shows his cynic approach toward the American Dream. This cynicism is highlighted throughout Gatsby, the first time being when Tom crushes his American Dream, and the last when Gatsby dies. The American Dream is viewed as more of this unattainable concept rather than a completely achievable possibility. After this point in the novel, the concept of lost hopes and desires remains present. Without this passage, Nick would not have a moment of realization where he sees the American Dream as unattainable, which influences his decision to want to go back home and leave New York and the possibilities he could potentially have.

Read More

Examples Of Disillusionment In The Great Gatsby

1192 Words | 5 Pages

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby highlights how Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick had unrealistic dreams and expectations, originating from pressures of society and individual desires, that ultimately led to failure and disillusionment in the pursuit of The American Dream. Jay Gatsby’s American Dream is to win back his long lost love, Daisy Buchanan, and to achieve social and financial success in order to attain the status and acceptance of the wealthy elite of the 1920s. In this chapter, as Gatsby and Nick are talking about the past, Gatsby reminds Nick of his American Dream and how he wants to change the past. As he tells Nick, “Can’t repeat the past? He cried incredulously.

Read More

Examples Of Greed In The Great Gatsby

1357 Words | 6 Pages

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald embodies the American Dream in a sense where it shows the way that the concept had been twisted by greed, self-satisfaction and near or full obsession. No one in The Great Gatsby ever truly obtains the “American Dream” as it is a fantasy- never having been a dream but more of a name for the failure of so many that try to better their lives but wind up making it worse. Dreams are unattainable and, though for a moment, it might seem one has grasped the dream, no one truly holds onto it. Jay Gatsby takes the American Dream as it is, a warped sense of self-improvement in one's life, and twists it further in a way that better exposes that the “American Dream” is just that – a dream. Greed is a seed of destruction

Read More

Examples Of Diction In The Great Gatsby

716 Words | 3 Pages

While not facing a tragedy as severe as his, Nick is left unable to overcome the past, haunted and demoralized by the tragedies the American Dream bestowed

Read More

Nick Carraway's Deception In The Great Gatsby

1201 Words | 5 Pages

Nick had attempted to escape from this lifestyle but because he was unable to make a complete decision in the beginning, he kept living it through the Buchanans; they were Nick’s window to the past. He witnesses Tom’s affair being “insisted upon wherever he was known” (21) without shame, and Daisy “[turn] out the light” (117) in her relationship with Gatsby, as it it never happened. A quiet bystander, never interfering, he experiences their life of ignorance, one with no repercussions, the one he had. Unwilling to remove himself from them, he instead complies to their wants, their decisions that create a sense of accomplishment. Doing nothing to change and move on from his past, Nick makes his choice to move to the east pointless.

Read More

Colossal Differences In The Great Gatsby

1141 Words | 5 Pages

Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward” (Fitzgerald 6). Although Nick came from a well to do family, they were not at all flamboyant and ostentatious. One thing his father taught Nick was that “reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope" (Fitzgerald 7), and essentially not to judge others. Upon arriving in the East and visiting Daisy, he is introduced to a world of wealth. It was a society that was constantly looking for more money.

Read More

Inequality In The Great Gatsby Essay

984 Words | 4 Pages

Nick Carraway migrated from the midwest to the West Egg, a wealthy preserve of Long Island. He moves there to increase his opportunity to learn about business and seize for better education. Having a higher education level, Nick will be capable of capturing a stronger hold of the American Dream. In the same sense, Jay Gatsby is portrayed as a self-made man who has achieved the American Dream through hard work and determination. He is a symbol of the wealthy and glamorous lifestyle of the 1920s and his success is a result of his ability to capitalize the booming stock market.

Read More

Effects Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

783 Words | 4 Pages

As a result of an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overall cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The character Jay Gatsby is the best character to show the American Dream and its awful outcome. Gatsby’s American Dream is the life he strived to have and obtained for himself. When growing up he wasn’t born rich like most of the upper class.

Read More

Comparative Essay On The Great Gatsby

844 Words | 4 Pages

The book introduces a similarity of wealth for the two settings; however, this reveals an ironic situation. The American Dream indicates that hard work earns you wealth (big house), but this is not the case for Nick or Daisy. They both portray the opposite of the American Dream showing its decline. A grand comparison is made to the amount of effort put in by both characters and the size of their house. Nick is a small town man who has come from a wealthy family like Daisy.

Read More

The American Dream In The Great Gatsby Essay

1133 Words | 5 Pages

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is a reflection of the American Dream. Written in 1925, the book tells the story of a man named Jay Gatsby, whose main driving force in life is the pursuit of a woman called Daisy Buchanan. The narrator is Gatsby’s observant next-door neighbor, Nick Carraway, who offers a fresh, outsider’s perspective on the events; the action takes place in New York during the so-called Roaring Twenties. By 1922, when The Great Gatsby takes place, the American Dream had little to do with Providence divine and a great deal to do with feelings organized around style and personal changed – and above all, with the unexamined self .

Read More

The Great Gatsby Passage Analysis

951 Words | 4 Pages

The American Dream is known to most as the pursuit of wealth and success through hard work. In the first paragraph of the passage, Fitzgerald describes his own idea of the American Dream. Sitting on the beach Nick thinks of the land “that flowered once for Dutch sailor’s eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world”(180)

Read More

Literary Analysis Of The Great Gatsby

1218 Words | 5 Pages

The Great Gatsby Literary Analysis “They were careless people…” says Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby. In a story depicting the 1920s during a time of prosperity, growth, and the emergence of the America as a major global power, this statement may seem to be contrary. But in reality, Nick Carraway’s description of his friends and the people he knew, was not only true, but is an indication of those who were striving for the American dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that the American Dream is foolish, the people who pursue it are immoral and reckless, and this pursuit is futile. First, F. Scott Fitzgerald proposes that the American dream is foolish.

Read More

More about Compare And Contrast The Great Gatsby

Related Topics

Open Document