F Scott Fitzgerald's Use Of Satire In The Great Gatsby

Throughout his career, F. Scott Fitzgerald was deemed one of the great chroniclers and satirist of the culture of wealth, extravagance and ambition that emerged during the affluent 1920s, which came to be known as the Jazz Age. One of the famous lines of the time came from Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald which stated “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, it was an age of satire” (Pakenham, 1998). It was during this time that he wrote his greatest novel titled “The Great Gatsby,” which is told from the point of view of the character Nick Carraway and follows his strange friendship with the mysterious Jay Gatsby. Throughout the story, Fitzgerald uses satire to depict American ideals during the time of the Jazz

Fitzgerald uses this within the story to characterize Gatsby in a way that damages the dream. For instance, in the years after Gatsby loses touch with Daisy, and the fact that she marries Tom, Gatsby begins to dedicate his life to making his fortune. The fact that Gatsby was able to take the life that he had, which was basically living in poverty, and change it for the better to rival that of Tom’s was an embodiment of the American Dream within the story. The way that he damages it is because in the end Gatsby realizes that everything he has done to achieve this dream is not enough. To quote Tom Buchanan, Gatsby is “…Mr. Nobody from Nowhere…” (Fitzgerald,

He is in pursuit of it because throughout his lifetime, he is one of the only few honest people he has known. In a book by author Donald Noble he states “Nick thought he was chasing the American Dream, the central mythological structure at the heart of life in the New World the Puritans established. His objective proved not only elusive, but destructive a depraved goal certain to yield an outwardly successful appearance concealing an empty core of superficial values” (Nagel, pg.113). F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his own mindset, credits the destruction of the American Dream to wealth, privilege and the lack of humanity that those aspects