The Great Gatsby Failure

Each and every child is raised to have aspirations, whether it be of fame or fortune. They are instructed to reach for the stars and to hope for every heart’s desire. From an early age, children are taught that, through hard work and perseverance, any dream can be realized. As adults, they are told that honest work will engender socio-economic mobility and accomplish any dream. However, through the history of mankind, authors and philosophers alike have explored the nature and viability of this “American Dream”, questioning its achievability and the factors that facilitate or impede its pursuit. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses Gatsby’s failed pursuit of wealth and love to represent how Gatsby becomes a symbol of Americans’ inability

Lord Acton sees America as differing from aristocracy and class-defined old world. In the ideal of the American Dream, a child is not confined to “the station of its parents” due to “distinction of class”. Furthermore, everyone is born “with a claim to all the prizes”, suggesting an entitlement to the possibility of wealth, status, and ultimately socioeconomic mobility. However, in the American ideal this “indefinite claim” can only be actualized through personal thought and labor. Central to the ideal of the American dream is the self-made man, having the opportunity to attain “all the prizes” of wealth and status through his own merit and industry. That is, both Fitzgerald and Shipler characterize the American Dream as the ability to fulfill one's aspirations and hopes and accomplish socioeconomic mobility through effort and

If theirs was the beginning of the classic journey from penury to prosperity, it was hard to see...They could not gaze out to an expansive distance of possibility” (Shipler 107). In his description of the reality that many Americans living in poverty face, Shipler critiques the American Dream, saying that those experiencing poverty cannot see their “journey from penury to prosperity”. Shipler characterizes “these folks” similarly to how Fitzgerald does Gatsby as “striving [for] incremental gain”. Moreover, impoverished people are “models of elemental striving” in their pursuit of wealth and the American Dream, similar to Gatsby’s approach of persistence and dedication. However, any progress towards the American Dream is both incremental and “hard to see,” similar to the “minute and far away” dream that Fitzgerald describes. For those living in poverty, wealth seems to be a distant reality, which is difficult or impossible to achieve. Further still, this dream remains unachievable even for those who are “the salt of the earth” and work diligently and doggedly for the slightest headway towards wealth and socioeconomic