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

696 Words3 Pages

In the novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ the American dream is dead in the story because by the end of the book Nick and Gatsby alike do not achieve their versions of the American dream. This also shows how the events leading up convey their dream from rise to downfall. This informs the reader of what clinging to the past can do and how the colors in a story show significance. Such as, when Nick narrates “He knew that when he kissed this girl forever wet his unutterable visions to be her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer for a tuning fork that had been scratched upon a star. Then he kissed her.”(112). This event seals Gatsby …show more content…

Another great example is Nick's idea of settling in the east is shattered while taking a train back to Chicago with his friends and says “We drew in deep breaths as we walked back through the cold vestibules unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted indistinguishably into it again”(177) the example show far similarities Nick has with the west. The end of the novel goes to Nick going back to the west and seeking prosperity there due to the fallout with Daisy and his inability to adapt to the west. The text also compares the easterners being drastically different from the westerners and how Nick is a “True easterner”. Furthermore, in Chapter 2 Nick is with Gatsby and Myrtle at a party and looks out the windows and says “High over the city of yellow windows must be contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering.”(36). The setting where Nick, Tom, and Myrtle are in the Buchanan’s apartment is a place where the middle class is shown while they are a higher class from them which sets Nick apart from both of the groups. Nick is very quick to find himself with the “imaginary watcher” looking through the windows judging the part and more importantly Nick. The American dream is still dead through Nick's unwillingness to adapt to the east, unable to accept being an easterner and to decide where he belongs with the other social classes.

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