Pros And Cons Of Living In The Great Gatsby

The American Dream in the 1920’s was defined by the ability to advance in society and become materially wealthy with the emergence of a consumer culture. This revolutionary period of technology gave rise to the popularity of the automobile and the creation of the minimum wage alongside the decreasing cost of manufacturing commercial goods, and the ownership of a car became essential to the Dream due to the growing ease of purchasing one. Aside from transportation technology, life in the 20’s was changed with the introduction of electricity into homes; appliances like the refrigerator and the vacuum became a necessity beside the shift from food either made in the home or purchased for a low price to more fresh fruits and vegetables and processed

In the novel “The Great Gatsby,” the Buchanans had never known anything other than living the Dream, and they are described as reckless and inconsiderate to others in their actions, where “they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made,” (Fitzgerald 191). Daisy and Tom demonstrate that the Dream, when it is given by birthright instead of worked for, absolutely corrupts the one living it. Gatsby, however, displays a purer form of the American Dream, where he wants to move up in society and have the finer things because he wants to build a better life for him and Daisy, dislike the tainted life of the Buchanans, who use their wealth in frivolous manners to show that they are superior to others. Where the American Dream was originally described as the “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement," (American) the Dream in the 1920’s was seen as available to only the previously privileged. Even with this negative outlook on the state of the execution of the American Dream, Fitzgerald expressed some hope for the future of it at the end of his