Self-Made Man In The Great Gatsby

The self-made man is a paragon of virtue and is often paralleled with the idea of a meritocracy. In his novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald challenges the reality of the American dream through Nick Carraway, a fairly well off young man with no tangible end goal in life. Since Nick does not have a real dream, he compares the many dreamers in his life to the ideal self-made man. The American dream can be defined as a ‘rags-to-riches’ story, where a self-made man virtuously amasses unlimited success and wealth. Fitzgerald believes that upward class mobility is impossible without help and fraud, and describes three factions of people to disprove the American myth of the self-made man. First, Tom and Daisy Buchanan were born into massive amounts

While on the surface, Gatsby does have a ‘rags-to-riches’ story, it is not a virtuous one; he amasses his wealth through illegal channels by working with Meyer Wolfsheim, and never fulfills his dream, Daisy. Also, He changes his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby when he first encounters Dan Cody. Because Gatsby has to take on an entirely different persona to achieve success, disguising his poor upbringing and suggesting that James Gatz could never achieve the American dream. Gatsby first attempts to earn his financial success by performing menial labor for Cody, but when Cody’s ex-wife swindles Gatsby out of his inheritance, he turns to illegal means of getting rich. Not only does Gatsby illegally gain his wealth my selling grain liquor over the counter, but he also does so under the direction of Meyer Wolfsheim, breaking two essential qualities of the self-made man, virtue, and independence. Wolfsheim tells Nick that he “ raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter ” (182). The reference to a gutter reaffirms Gatsby’s humble beginnings and early failures as success. More importantly, the word “raised” depicts Gatsby as being plucked for success by Wolfsheim, like out of a lottery, rather than independently obtaining his wealth. Gatsby’s motive for amassing this fortune becomes a specific tangible dream when he meets Daisy in

But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there—it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at his camp was to him” (158). The phrase “breathless intensity” characterizes Gatsby’s reaction to seeing such wealth, and the word “air” expresses a sort of intangibility of her wealth. The juxtaposition between Gatsby and Daisy’s perspectives, “breathless” versus “casual,” allude to an insurmountable gap between the idea of the self-made man and the difficulty of actually achieving upward class mobility in America. Here, Fitzgerald suggests that true wealth and class also require a comfortability and casualness toward luxury as evidenced by his comparison of Daisy’s house to Gatsby’s tent. Even when Daisy is ready to leave Tom and Gatsby has the extravagant lifestyle, he is not satisfied. Gatsby wants “nothing less of Daisy” than to tell Tom that she never loved him in order to “obliterate three years” (118) of marriage and return to the past. Gatsby’s goal is unrealistic at best; he wants to act as though Daisy was never married nor had a child. Fitzgerald’s phrase “nothing less” demonstrates his stubborn expectation for unlimited success. The word “obliterate” suggests not only a return to the past but also that Daisy somehow committed an incredible sin by not waiting for him. When