Disillusionment Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

Zoheb Akhtar
Ms. Ringiewicz
English 11
1/7/22
The American Dream in the Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby embodies classic American culture in the 1920s. It exposes the corruption of American society in the 1920s through the narrative of Jay Gatsby and the upper social class while commenting on the decline of the American dream. The American dream is the idea that there is an equality of opportunity between every American and that anyone can pursue their dreams. Fitzgerald uses various symbols to represent the American dream. But Fitzgerald mainly focuses on how the American dream is elusive and hard to reach.
Fitzgerald comments on how the American dream is not always fulfilled — which is the central message Fitzgerald is trying to represent.

The Valley of Ashes is mentioned in Chapter 2. It is a bleak place where lower and working-class people live. The Valley of Ashes shows a more dismal point of view than what we have seen in the rest of the novel. The Valley of Ashes is a symbol of the disillusionment of the American dream because it provides contrasting views to what we had previously seen. Primarily we had only seen the extravagancy and wealth that resided in West Egg, but the Valley of Ashes provides a glimpse into corruption and immorality. These people also could have been people who failed to achieve the American dream, which builds on the theme of the American dream being hard to attain. Within the Valley of Ashes also resided a billboard of T.J Ecklburg’s Eyes. Nick describes the billboard very thoroughly as if it held greater importance. Nick describes the eyes of Ecklburg as “blue and gigantic — their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose” (20). While the eyes “dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground” (20). The eyes could be interpreted as a failure of the American dream because it is looking over the people in the Valley of Ashes with a blank