The American Dream In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The definition of the American dream is the ideal that every citizen of the United States should have the opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. Since he was young, Jay Gatsby longed for fabulous wealth. Furthermore, he spent most of his childhood poor until he began his life of organized crime as a bootlegger. He felt that he had to do whatever he could to win Daisy´s affection, even if it meant becoming a criminal or having one hundred drunk strangers in his house meddling in his business. Jay Gatsby lived the entirety of his adult life working for the green light that he thought would award him the affection of Daisy Buchanan, using his luxurious mansion and abundance of money. From

In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby’s father mentions, “Jimmy always liked it better in the East. He rose up to his position in the East” (168), and “He had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man, but he had a lot of brain power here” (168). F Scott Fitzgerald’s goal was to emphasize Jay Gatsby’s dedicated, hardworking, and smart personality. Gatsby refused to settle in the working class, and everything Jay Gatsby had came from his own hard work and initiative. On the other hand, Fitzgerald writes, “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong” (133). Even though Jay Gatsby worked hard for his success, he did so illegally, and doing so ultimately left him with nothing truly valuable and caused everyone around him to never fully know

In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatby´s mansion is symbolized as the white-picket-fence dream that everyone wants. Fitzgerald goes in length describing the mansion´s lavish and grandeur by saying, “The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard-it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming-pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's Mansion” (Fitzgerald 5). Fitzgerald further explains his view of the American Dream by introducing the dozens of people who supposedly call themselves friends of Gatsby. Fitzgerald writes, "Once they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission¨ (Fitzgerald 41). Essentially, Fitzgerald illustrates how the American Dream falsifies happiness by presenting you with a meaningless mansion and friends who are only attracted to you for your money. Therefore, Gatsby’s efforts to achieve the