Social Mobility In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tells the story of Gatsby’s pursuit of his old love, Daisy, from the perspective of the 1st person narrator, Nick Carraway. Fitzgerald paints a pessimistic picture of the state of the American Dream in the 1920s, suggesting that no matter how hard someone worked, they had little chance of becoming rich and fully achieving the American Dream through upward social mobility. At first, Fitzgerald seemingly suggests the idea that the American Dream is attainable through the character of Gatsby, who came from a poor, humble family and managed to become very rich in a short period of time. However, this perfect image is crushed when it is revealed in the novel that Gatsby gained all his money through criminal means rather than hard work in accordance with the original definition of the American

Unlike Gatsby, Wilson strives to eke out a living through honest, hard work, but seems to have no hope of achieving the American Dream. Myrtle, on the other hand hopes to become wealthy and achieve a higher social class through her affair with Tom. Ironically, Myrtle was literally killed while chasing ‘Tom’, hit by Gatsby’s car which was driven by Daisy. The fact that she was killed by a rich, careless woman driving a car that represented enormous wealth highlights the inequality between the poor and the rich. Like Gatsby, both Myrtle and Wilson die at the end of the novel, while Tom and Daisy are sheltered from tragedy and responsibility by their wealth. Nick describes Myrtle’s death as she “knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust” (150). This violent description of her death emphasizes how Myrtle’s efforts to escape and rise above the Valley of Ashes was futile; in the end, her blood is merged with the endless dust that covered everything in that hopeless