The Great Gatsby Outline Essay

I. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the American Dream is depicted as a mirage due to its ultimate lack of fulfillment, outsider’s inability to obtain it, and the corruption it causes.
A. Those who have achieved their idea of the American Dream are ultimately unfulfilled emotionally even though they possess tremendous wealth.
B. The American Dream is a mirage, and thus unattainable as it limits success of an individual by their class and ethnic origin.
C. Not only is the American Dream exclusive and unfulfilling, but it also causes corruption as those who strive for the American Dream corrupt themselves in doing so and the old rich hide behind their wealth in order to conceal their immoralities.
II. As characters such as Daisy, Tom, and Gatsby are not content even after they have seemingly achieved the American Dream as

Tom and Daisy are careless people who “smash up things and creatures and then retreat back into their money” as they have no remorse for the pain and death they have caused in Gatsby and the Wilsons (Fitzgerald 179).
C. Tom’s carelessness is shown through his affairs, not only with Myrtle, but also with the chambermaid a week after he married Daisy. His carelessness is shown through his relationships as well as his careless driving as he crashes his car while with the chambermaid (Fitzgerald 77).
D. In chasing the American Dream it is assumed that Gatsby has become corrupt as it is rumored that he is a bootlegger, “a German spy during the war,… (and that) he killed a man” (Fitzgerald 44).
E. According to Roger Pearson’s literary criticism of The Great Gatsby:
As a prophet of the American Dream, Gatsby fails – miserably – a victim of his own warped idealism and false set of values. The American Dream is not to be a reality, in that it no longer exists, except in the minds of mend like Gatsby, whom it destroys in their espousal and relentless pursuit of it. The American Dream is, in reality, a nightmare (Pearson 645).