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Great Gatsby Essay

972 Words4 Pages

The American dream can be perceived in two ways. Something to compare yourself with, or something that you'll either never be able to achieve or want to achieve. Yes, a person's mindset is the most critical thing when it comes to how to perceive this dream, but if you are constantly facing struggles in your daily life, your mindset will quickly disintegrate. When reading The Great Gatsby written by. It is a story built on the American dream. One of the men in this story is known as Jay Gatsby. A man who came from nothing, and evolved into new money with both status and power. Though Gatsby had money, power, and good status, the only thing he wanted was a girl named Daisy. The narrator of this story is Nick, someone who is living comfortably: not too rich, …show more content…

Nick’s number one goal is to move and start a new life, while Gatsby is to find love. Nick wishes to progress in life and get a little more stable, while Gatsby already has enough money and just wants love. This puts into perspective the materialistic goals that most people strive to achieve. Most people usually ignore the amount of constant work and energy that must go into trying to achieve such an unachievable dream. At the end of the book, Gatsby dies without ever getting his love. An illusion of a greenlight house represents Daisy, and when he dies, Nick describes how he never was able to get to the lighthouse and just got further and further from the greenlight. He is inherently describing how Gatsby wasn't able to get his love and died without relishing his life. Showing a constant reminder that money cannot buy everything and opportunities come out of nowhere. However, when examining both Nick and Gatsby, it is clear that they both had something in common; they were both white. Race is a primary factor associated with poverty. You often see many more people of color living in poverty than you do palm-colored

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Nick’s very first encounter with Gatsby demonstrates the obsessiveness that will be further elaborated during the course of the novel. This obsession is then materialized in the form of the green light,“stretching out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way… Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away” (Fitzgerald 21-22). This quote seems to have no meaning in the beginning. Yet later on when we learn about the past of both Gatsby and Daisy we see how the light represents the idea of Daisy.

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