Essay On The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

In the novel, Gatsby spends his whole chasing after the American Dream and Daisy Buchanan, a combination that ultimately leads to his destruction. The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald that takes place during the 1920s—a time when the American Dream is declining—and focuses in on the effects of wealth and social class on the American Dream. The novel accurately shows the condition of the American Dream in the 1920s by effectively exploring the idea of America and exploiting the corruption of wealth. The American Dream should be the honest pursuit of happiness, success, and a higher social class, but in his novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald shows the readers the twisted reality of the American Dream during the 1920s, a time of jazz music and parties where a person’s ancestry determines their future. Gatsby, fueled by his lust for money and Daisy, is an excellent example of

While the dishonesty behind Gatsby’s rise to fame and fortune shows itself subtly in various places of the novel, it’s clearly revealed in the scene at the plaza when Tom says to Daisy, “He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drug stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him and I wasn’t far wrong,” (141). Gatsby doesn’t care if he gains his wealth through honesty anymore, which is a true testament to the state of the American Dream during the 1920s, and this mindset allows him to sell alcohol over the counter during the Prohibition. Now, the American Dream is no longer about the honest pursuit of happiness, success, and a higher social class; instead, it’s about the corrupt obtaining of wealth where social class and ancestry are all that matter,