Examples Of Myrtle In The Great Gatsby

In this quote, Myrtle speaks snobbishly while imagining that she sounds fancy. In this quote, Myrtles’ yearning to become a part of the upper class can be seen very easily. In order to create a false impression of being wealthy, she becomes a complete braggart. In fact, Myrtle talks about how she shouldn’t have married into a lower class, and that she only married Wilson because she thought he was a gentleman. In reality, Myrtle is not part of the upper class at all and lives in a tiny garage in a dusty, forgotten place known as the valley of ashes. This sharp contrast shows that Myrtle is a representative of the failed American Dream, since Myrtle constantly wants to rise upward, but the only way she can do so is by cheating on her husband on another married, rich man. As a result, Myrtle proves in this quote that she is nothing more than a cheap, cheating vagrant.

In his own eyes, that elevates his family’s status, because that means that his family actually succeeded in carrying out the American Dream, where a downtrodden family manages to climb up the social ladder to the upper class. Still, Nick isn’t nearly as prosperous as he pretends to be. In fact, later on in the book, when Gatsby suspiciously offers Nick some money because Gatsby suspects Nick doesn’t get much money, Nick admits that he doesn’t get much to the audience while refusing the job that Gatsby gives him. This means that Nick’s family did fulfill the American Dream, but he isn’t prosperous, which makes his success not nearly as spectacular as Nick pretends it