In his book, The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald shines a blinding light on the lifestyle of Americans living on the East Coast during the Jazz Age. He uses the story and the characters to show the ways in which the “American Dream” have been perverted. Specifically he uses the character of Jay Gatsby to illustrate the greed for material things that permeated the era. Jay Gatsby thinks he can buy happiness. He is tragically wrong. All anybody cares about is material things and having them no matter what. They have no morals. Their search for something more is always going to be futile because they think more material things will make them happy. In the end, it is tragic.
The first example of Gatsby's belief that money can buy his happiness
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They had a romance years before and Gatsby fell in love with Daisy. Then Gatsby had to go off to WWI and Daisy promised to wait for him. This was probably never going to happen because Daisy herself came from money and she would not have married a poor man. Gatsby wasn’t rich when they first met. While Gatsby is away at war, Daisy meets and falls in love with Tom Buchannan who like her, comes from “old money”. It is significant that the house that Daisy’s house is directly across the water but it is in East Egg. So close and yet very far apart. Her house is only visible at night by a green light that is at the end of the dock. The green light seems to symbolize Gatsby’s desire to get Daisy …show more content…
Then it all blows up and the fantasy bubble gets burst. This happens when Tom finds out about his wife’s affair with Gatsby. Gatsby is sure that Daisy loves him and will leave her husband for him. Tom confronts Gatsby and Daisy. Tom also lets Daisy know just how Gatsby got so rich. It turns out that Gatsby is a bootlegger. Tom illustrates his belief that Gatsby is just a low class theif and thug. Daisy won’t risk her status to be with Gatsby. He is crushed when he realizes that just when he thought he had bought happiness it is snatched from him. Gatsby realizes that this ideal he had of Daisy was never real and neither was his pursuit of happiness. It was all for nothing. None of his aspirations really meant