Negative Effects Of The Great Gatsby

“The American Dream” is a double sided coin of both hope and faith that looks to the fulfillment of human wishes and desires. This idea started ages before with the existence of the puritans in Massachusetts "city upon a hill" in 1630, but it were never expressed as THE AMERICAN DREAM. Later on, this idea has been strengthened by Thomas Jefferson with the declaration of independence. In 1876 the writer Horatio Alger introduced for the first time (The American Dream) in his book titled Ragged Dick, It was a tale of a poor orphan boy in New York City who saved his pennies and worked hard so eventually became rich. It became as a model that through honesty, hard working and strong determination that anyone can make realize his dream in America. The American Dream can be viewed from two different sides, positive and negative, in various domains _Economy, Society, Education, Literature_. Most of the critics viewed it as positive as motivational to America, and only some of them examined its bad consequences such as Robert Ringer.

Therefore, many novels were written to point out the negative effects of the American dream. Parisa Ghangizi and Parvin Ghasemi took Great Gatsby as an example in their article, Degeneration of American Dream in F. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to explain how the degenerated vision of the American Dream was strongly presented in Great Gatsby’s theme, and the deterioration of the concept of American Dream changed from the pursuit of happiness to the pursuit of money. In this novel the main character great Gatsby represents the category of people who became more and more obsessed with money and materials gains. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock symbolizes what Gatsby longs for the American Dream; this green light signifies the green color of the dollar bills. Daisy cannot bring happiness to Gatsby which means Money itself cannot buy