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The Role Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

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F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream The Great Gatsby what you could call an extended critique of what the American dream is perceived to be. This critique is much more effective by being personified by the people that pursue the American dream. A dream is simply nothing but well, a dream. No one actually reaches a point of fulfillment, no matter how hard they try. The characters’ lives are shallow and somewhat meaningless. In the book, Gatsby’s fortune is built on nothing but crime, and while he appears to be happy with his popularity, hardly anyone shows up to his funeral. His whole life was, like the American dream itself, simply just a mirage. A mirage that holds out everything you think you want, only to just destroy you in the process. The pursuit of …show more content…

Her relationship with Gatsby is shallow. She thinks she is in love with him, while she is swept away by his wealth and charm. But, Daisy has no real depth to her feelings for Gatsby. She has more emotion for his shirts than she actually does for him. But, the East Eggers weren’t the only ones sucked into the delusion that is the American dream. The people who live in this valley of ashes also go for a ride. Myrtle is using her affair with Tom to try to better her own life. She feels tired of being married to someone she thinks of as a loser. She wants to be fancy, and go to high-class parties with fancy clothes and feel more like an upper class instead of a lower class. Both the East and West Eggers are more concerned with how they look instead of their personal well-being. Fitzgerald suggests the American dream of becoming wealthy is futile because those who chase the dream end up unhappy. This is shown through Gatsby’s dream to be rich and successful and reuniting with Daisy. He was willing to do whatever it took to try to attain this dream. Which ironically at the same time helps to destroy his dream of being with

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It is always so close but still so far out of reach. Gatsby’s past with Daisy was keeping him from achieving true happiness because she would never love him the way he loved her. The fact that Gatsby managed to amass such wealth was impressive itself, but even though he managed to do that, he did not achieve his goal. This is proof of how unattainable the American Dream was in Fitzgerald’s opinion.

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Similarly, F. Scott Fitzgerald reflects upon this same corruption of a dream, more specifically, the American Dream, in his novel The Great Gatsby. He critiques and demonstrates that the American Dream has

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The Pursuit of

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“Gatsby goes to spectacular lengths to try to achieve what Nick Carraway calls “his incorruptible dream” (Sutton1). Gatsby’s moral decline through his life shows his failed attempt at the American dream. “The collapse of Gatsby’s attempt to win Daisy proves that dreams, money, and blind faith in life’s possibilities, are not enough for a man to reach his goals”

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Many of them never accomplished their goal and alongside them was Gatsby due to his tragic death in the prime of his life. An article written by Carla L. Verderame, titled “Social Class in The Great Gatsby”, further reinforces this thought when she says, “Gatsby’s determination to achieve great wealth and to shift from lower to upper class is all done in an attempt to reclaim Daisy,” (Verderame “Social Class”). Gatsby single-handedly took himself from lower to upper class only to impress the one girl that he cared about in his life. It did not matter how he reached that or what stood in his way, he just knew he needed to make it happen. At the very end of the book, the author proves this again by writing, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year

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Reaching a higher class and wealth are aspects of success that many aspire to achieve. Although that may be true, in reality, as a person begins to expand their goals toward the American dream, they tend to spiral downward and crash in the end. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, pertains to an ambitious character; falling short of the American dream, resulting in a tragedy. Specifically, the book follows a young man named Gatsby and his dream to finally meet the love of his life, Daisy, who he hasn't seen in five years. Gatsby goes to great lengths in order to grab Daisy’s attention, by throwing lavish parties, which he had to achieve by becoming a bootlegger.

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Gatsby is a perfect example of what Fitzgerald shows as the American dream. He is rich and popular, however he is not happy. He wants to go back to a time when he believed he was truly happy. “His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.”

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Gatsby does not love Daisy, he is in love with the idea of Daisy. He notes about Daisy, “Her voice is full of money,” (120). To Gatsby, Daisy represents what it is to live rich: a life of pleasure, money, and fame. Gatsby does not want it, he needs it, and in order to do that, he needs to win Daisy’s love. He achieves this goal by becoming rich and spending it on unnecessary luxuries.

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Scott Fitzgerald uses The Great Gatsby to depict the American Dream as materialistic, fallible, and otherwise unlikely to work out for the average man. He writes that, while one can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work their way up to the upper echelon like Gatsby did, true happiness and success will always be out of reach because the American Dream is the constant drive to have and be better, proven in his writing when he says, “It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther” (180). Gatsby’s character in and of itself proves the corruption of the dream. He sets out with pure intentions but is warped by the 1920’s era obsession with materialism and as such misinterprets the American Dream as an accumulation of wealth and status. No cost seemed too high for Gatsby if it meant getting what he wanted, whether it be in money or morals.

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Jacob Aki Mr, Hubbard English 11/ P. 2 5, April 2024 The American Dream The Great Gatsby is a novel that represents what it was like to live the American Dream in the “Roaring 20’s”. In the story, F. Scott Fitzgerald really shows us many characters living a wealthy and luxurious life where they have no worries. We can take the American dream one step further than wealth though and see how they live and their emotions throughout the story.

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The American Dream is the hope and dream of reaching your desires and goals. This can come in the form of wealth and possibly love. This is shown in the novel, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald shows the dangers and the impossibility of the American Dream in his novel and he shows the dangers of achieving wealth, through Daisy and he shows how dangerous and impossible love is through Gatsby. To begin with, Fitzgerald shows the corruption and dangers of wealth in the novel.

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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald exemplifies the truly unattainable nature of the American Dream. The overall concept of the American Dream is demonstrated through the high value the characters place on material and superfluous possessions, wealth, appearance, and reputation, which is reflected through how they choose to represent themselves in society, as well as the choices they make. The American Dream in The Great Gatsby can be compared to how it is portrayed in John Steinbeck’s “Paradox and Dream,” which details the generalities of the dream of the American people, and how success is not equivalent to happiness and satisfaction. Among the ways, F. Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes the inaccessible qualities of the American Dream in the twenties is through the value of materialistic objects, rather than the value of the genuine self.

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The American dream is an important time in our lives that describes freedom of rights and equality. Gatsby’s embodiment of the American dream reveals the beginning of being born poor until he rose to success when his social status and wealth went up. Fitzgerald illustrates why the materialism of the American dream doesn’t guarantee happiness. The American Dream is an ideal that any person in America can be happy regardless of hard work and determination. The disadvantages rely on George and Gatsby at the end of their destruction of the American dream.

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The Great Gatsby is not simply a story of Jay Gatsby’s undying and misguided love for a Daisy Buchanan. The novel, The Great Gatsby, encompasses a number of themes, the most significant one is the disillusionment and corruption of the American dream. The ability to obtain prosperity such as happiness, or a car is what comprises of the American dream. It is a belief that anyone who is self-sufficient, or who is a hard worker can obtain this dream regardless of their social standing. In the book, the facade of a dream appears to be at the tips of Gatsby and Myrtle’s fingers but this “pursuit of happiness” sentiment is in actuality impossible.

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