John Barnes Mr. Noreen English (H) 4 8 April 2024 The Great Gatsby America was founded on the ideal “that all men are created equal”. This same principle guarantees the rights of “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Along with the founding of America came a vision of opportunity- a dream of meritocracy. When corrupted, this dream is a mission to accumulate money and power by any means necessary. To this end, the American Dream compromises the principles of America's founding document. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays Jay Gatsby as the embodiment of the American Dream, and through the troublesome social ascent and death of Gatsby, Fitzgerald displays the price of chasing the distorted American Dream. Fitzgerald also …show more content…
This descent further accentuates the immorality practiced by Gatsby to achieve his wealth. After the Death of Gatsby, Luhrmann uses dark colors and low-key lighting as the camera moves around the once lively mansion of Gatsby. The contrast between the overflowing excess of the mansion at the beginning of the movie and the chilling isolation of the mansion at the end depicts the duality between reality and an unrealistic dream. Expensive parties may mask how little Gatsby truly has, but they cannot fill the void of his life. Gatsby is then pictured lying lifelessly in his casket, surrounded by gray flowers. The colors throughout these scenes emphasize the devastation and empty sacrifice Gatsby made for a corrupt dream. Throughout the Great Gatsby film adaptation, Baz Luhrmann's cinematic choices depict an American Dream focused on the accumulation of extreme wealth, the moral sacrifices necessary to achieve this dream, and the consequences and emptiness one is left with by chasing this