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Examples Of Greed In The Great Gatsby

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The American Dream is the long held belief that everybody can succeed in life by merit of hard work and perseverance. A man’s origins were not to be an inhibitor of his success. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's work The Great Gatsby the American Dream is portrayed as being misunderstood by the people of the 1920s. The American Dream became corrupted by people searching not for happiness, success, and honorable ambitions in life, but instead for wealth, power, and excess. The core beliefs of the 1920s were very different than the decades before. In the 1920s people believed that they should just do whatever made them happy at the moment, as is shown in Myrtle’s quote “You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever” (Fitzgerald 36). This attitude was also shown in the people's’ ethics. They did not want to work hard to make their money, instead they searched for a way to get rich fast. This is a direct contradiction to the American Dream. The American Dream is about gaining success through hard work, not by cheating or illegal streams of income. …show more content…

The Buchanans and Gatsby live in great big houses, and have many servants. They own a lot of cars, which were seen to be an item of luxury during that time. Gatsby throws an enormous party every weekend, where people eat and drink excessively. The characters do not know moderation and have everything in excess. The excess of their lifestyles is shown in Gatsby’s library. “Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real” (Fitzgerald 45). To own an entire library of real books was practically unheard of. There was no way that Gatsby could read all those books so it was only a show of wealth, nothing more. The American Dream is not about greed. These people should have used their money to benefit society and the people who struggle to make it by around

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