At the beginning of our nation’s history, the American dream was one that stood for independence and hard work. As American writer James Truslow Adams defined it, “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement”, regardless of any social class or circumstances of birth (CITATION). However, during the Gatsby era, the concept transformed into an idea increasingly about materialism and the selfish pursuit of pleasure. With this reinvented vision of the American dream, social perception, conforming to standards, and the family you were born into are highly prioritized. This can be seen throughout the novels from the obvious distinction between levels of wealth determined by …show more content…
Furthermore, both Nick and Jay Gatsby reside in the West Egg to indicate that they have not transformed into members of the social elite, and no amount of hard work can change the families that they came from. It is clear that both men recognize this, as they unconsciously denounce their backgrounds in the novel as Gatsby changed his name because “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people-his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby...sprang from a Platonic conception of himself...So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen- year- old boy would like to invent” and Nick creates the illusion that his family comes from a line of nobility as he says “The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch , but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day” (Fitzgerald 98