The Great Gatsby American Dream Quotes

The Gatsby Dream The American Dream is represented by the ability for everyone to gain success through hard work, but when others set the standard to material things that do not mean as much, our dreams can become unattainable. The American Dream has been something that humans have strived for for ages and try to reach this to live a successful life. This is very important in The Great Gatsby and is represented in many ways even with different characters such as Gatsby, and then the difference between Myrtle and George Wilson. Gatsby has loved Daisy for a long time but did not meet her “money requirements'' and she later married Tom. Now that they’ve been married he wants to gain this love back from Daisy and is doing different things to

George owns an auto shop and he has been wanting to buy Tom’s car from him, which could possibly help his financial situation. When Tom and Nick pull up a “damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes”(Fitzgerald 25). This quote states that when seeing this car pull up there was a burst of excitement which shows that there is a reason that George wants this car. The “damp gleam” that George gave off, shows that he is excited to do business with Tom and this is something he looks forward to. The way that George is trying to make money with his auto shop, is similar to the way that people throughout time have tried to achieve that idea of the American Dream. He knows that to gain wealth he has to work for it and that it should be that way for everyone. Myrtle on the other hand, has different ideas and is clearly not even happy with her married life. She has been married to George for awhile but then Myrtle tells Catherine, “‘I married him because I thought he was a gentleman’... ‘I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in’” (Fitzgerald 34/35). This shows that every since George and Myrtle have been married, he has not met Myrtle’s requirements for a man figure in her life. The first time we see it, was when George used somebody elses suit for their wedding, this frustrated Myrtle because it shows that he is not full of wealth. The way Myrtle says “gentleman,” it means not only a nice man in our society but also someone that holds a higher social status and has his life together. This ties to the American Dream because with Mrytle’s personality, she is the type of person that if things are not going to meet her wants, she is not going to stick around. Later in the story we learn that Tom and Myrtle have an affair, this clearly shows that the money that Tom has, caught Myrtle’s eye. She no longer believes