Examples Of Nick's Journey In The Great Gatsby

Avery Jones Dr. Paskali Honors English 3 11 April 2024 Nick’s Journey in The Great Gatsby In the 1920s, flashy displays of wealth and excessive glamor seemed to form an ideal society in the United States. However, the much harsher reality of widespread social immobility and bad conditions shows how America’s theoretical freedom ideals contradict the reality of its poverty and inequality. The pinnacle of American ideas of equality and social mobility is the American Dream, defined by Merriam-Webster as, “a happy way of living that is thought of by many Americans as something that can be achieved by anyone in the U.S. especially by working hard and becoming successful.” In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway’s boredom and lack

Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house — the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares” (176). This dream depicts a woman who was likely at a party, shown by her “drunken” state and her “white evening dress,” and whose “jewels” indicate that she is probably a member of the upper class. She therefore represents the idealized image of the vast wealth and exorbitant lifestyle that people in the East enjoy, so her death in the dream symbolizes the final death of that idealistic idea in Nick’s mind. Her situation also parallels Gatsby’s, because regardless of her wealth and status, no one truly cares about her after her death. Nick’s recurring dreams about the East as well as the fact that he spends the time writing The Great Gatsby about his experience in the East two years after the fact are proof that he has never been able to fully move on and that in some sense we know his life likely still lacks the dreams and ambitions that caused him to get so attached to Gatsby in the first