Disillusion Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

1920s America saw the last effects and disillusionment brought about by the First World War. For the rich, it was decadent and filled with debauchery but for the poor, life was just the same, with the war still weighing on them and adding to their struggles. Those many, had the American dream, the hope that everyone would achieve success and prosperity, to strive for. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel was a combination of the rich lifestyle and the pitfalls of the American dream. A man known as Jay Gatsby experiences a rags-to-riches story and tries to win back a married woman he was once with, Daisy Buchanan, in 1920s New York. In the end, he is killed as an indirect consequence of the pursuit of the American dream. Happening concurrently with

Langston Hughes's 1926 poem I, Too looks forward to the future and says that tomorrow he won’t be sent to eat in the kitchen and “They’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed—” (Hughes). The author looks towards the future and knows that things will change and improve for himself and others like him. Gatsby, prior to his death was seemingly the sole beneficiary of the American dream and had a similar outlook on his future as well. After Gatsby dies, Nick says Gatsby “believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” the future is said to “[elude] us then, but that’s no matter” (Fitzgerald 180). Both in the Harlem Renaissance and The Great Gatsby, people have something to strive for and fixate on that goal as Gatsby does. Though Hughes isn’t exactly fixating, the poem still focuses on the improvement that will come, which is essentially what the American dream is about. At the end of Gatsby’s meeting with Daisy, Nick narrates that “... 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” (Fitzgerald 95). This particular statement focus on the could be of the American dream, and its consequences, as in the

Zora Neal Hurston states in her 1928 work, How it Feels to Colored Me that she had “no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My country, right or wrong. Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?” (Hurston). She writes assertively about herself as an American citizen and an integral part of the nation. Rather than accepting discrimination and racism, she looks past it and continues to stand up for herself. She knows that her American dream will work for her in the end and isn’t concerned with any consequences, which reveals her optimistic attitude. Though Gatsby is optimistic, his murder at the end and Nick’s feelings indicate a failed dream. The East, which represents success in the novel is said to be “haunted” distorted beyond [his] eyes’ power of correction” for Nick and “distorted beyond [his] eyes’ power of correction” (Fitzgerald 176). He ends up disillusioned with those around him, implying that the American dream was bound to end in failure and had never really been achieved by Gatsby. An additional optimistic outlook is that of Alain Locke, who in his 1925