The Great Gatsby Research Paper

Ethan McKindley Mrs. Melberg English 3H Period 1 23 April 2024 America’s Dying Dream In the modern day, everyone wants to be wealthy and live in a big house surrounded by comfort and luxury, and to most this has become the ideal “American Dream.” However, the American Dream was not always about attaining fame and fortune. Instead, the American Dream used to be the idea that anyone, regardless of status or origins, could succeed in America if they worked hard enough. History places the 1920s or the “Jazz Age” as the time when the American Dream started to shift away from succeeding and more towards profiting. A work that highlights this shift in the American Dream is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925.

Through The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald illustrates how the American Dream became unattainable after it was influenced by newfound ideals during the 1920s. One way that Fitzgerald tries to illuminate the new unattainable American Dream is through the motivations of the title character, Gatsby. At the beginning of the novel, Gatsby is seen reaching for a green light symbolizing his ambition because he is reaching for something in the distance. It is later revealed that this light represents Daisy and his obsession with trying to be with her again because the light emanates off the end of her dock, which is right across the bay from Gatsby’s mansion. Once Gatsby and Daisy are finally reunited after a long time spent apart, Gatsby alludes to the green light and Nick notes, “He [Gatsby] seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever [...] it had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock” (Fitzgerald