The Great Gatsby Ambition Analysis

Ambition is what propels people forward. It is what prevents people from quitting. It is what gives a person the drive and the passion to go after whatever he or she desires. It is what helps an individual to become a superior version of themselves. However, in certain cases, dreams, and aspirations do not always end up beneficial to a person. The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald sheds some light on the negative consequences of a person’s pursuit of ambition. The novel displays the havoc caused when an individual’s morals are left unchecked for the pursuit of their material desires.

The text centers around the character named Jay Gatsby. A young man that came from a poor farming family in North Dakota. Gatsby hated being poor.

Just right after the end of the first world war and with the stock market rising in unprecedented rates, it was a period when every individual believed that they can be what they wish to become. To acquire everything they pleased as long as they are willing to get it by any means. It was also the time when the upper class people can do whatever they desired. The era was mostly associated with immense wealth, aristocracy and flashy living conditions of the rich people. But behind the cover of all the extravagant parties and all the material things money can buy was moral emptiness, blind pursuit of pleasure and the lack of compassion towards one another. The consequence of the people’s visionless chase for wealth was associated with one of the geographical locations in the novel. The valley of ashes, “a dismal, barren wasteland”. The valley represents the devastation that is caused by people’s excessive greed. The aftermath of the people’s immoral pursuit of their own representations of the American dream and with the judgeful eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg always watching over them, it was the grotesque reality that even the grandest of properties surrounding it can not possibly conceal.

The novel seemed like a sobering reality of what damage can ambitions inflict to an individual’s life. The author made it seem like the idea of the American dream was just another representation of people’s unending greed. That Gatsby reaching for the green light in Daisy’s dock was a portrayal of people always reaching for what they can not actually grasp. From the valley of ashes, Myrtle’s accident to Gatsby’s tragic death. It was exhibited how can an individual’s dream can easily be corrupted. Making pursuing their dreams a wild goose