Great Gatsby And The Unachievable Truth Of The American Dream

17 July 2023

The Great Gatsby and the Unachievable Truth of the American Dream Imagine, every day someone works hard to try to achieve wealth and status for themselves but they never reach this goal. This is the truth of the unattainable American Dream, which defines itself as the fact that anyone can obtain wealth and status through hard work. The Great Gatsby displays this throughout the novel, through Gatsby’s version of the American Dream, people’s view of George, people’s view of Gatsby, and the imagery of the Valley of Ashes. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s ultimate opinion on the American Dream is that, although the American Dream advertises that hard work will create wealth, status, and success for anyone,

The imagery Fitzgerald uses to describe the Valley of Ashes conveys the hopelessness and harmfulness of the American Dream, which Nick describes as The ashes and people in the Valley symbolise the hopelessness that the American Dream inherently has, since ashes can not be brought back into anything usable, showing the flaws and unrealistic nature of the American Dream. Additionally, the societal pressure of people in lower classes to follow the American Dream also exists. When Nick walks through the Valley, he comments on (Fitzgerald, Ch. 2). The stare of Doctor Eckleburg symbolises the societal pressure to follow the American Dream, which like the stare, society also judges those with less money, status, and success into believing that honest, hard work will allow them to achieve this goal, even though society does not allow those without privileges already to reach it, which leads to harm against those who try to reach the American Dream because they do not know that it is not possible for them, leading them to overwork and being miserable. Furthermore, the Valley of Ashes also demonstrates that along with trying to reach the unattainable goal of the American Dream, the people trying to do so are miserable trying to reach that impossible objective. While visiting the Valley of Ashes, Nick comments that (Fitzgerald, Ch. 2). The bad living conditions that Nick sees that the working class lives in adds to their misery and confirms that without the privilege that is necessary to be able to reach the American Dream, which most people who try typically do not have, they are not able to. This is because while not only harming the working class’ physical and mental health, it also places them at a disadvantage when trying to work