The Role Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

The glory of wealth and success, seemingly enchanting, masks the darkness hidden within the American Dream—the lack of emotion brought on by the prospects of wealth exposes the true hollowness of a life full of indulgence. Material wealth and success are both components of the American Dream, a dream so many sought to capture during the early 1900’s. Through the story of Dexter Green, “Winter Dreams” is able to draw a parallel between the dream so many in America sought and the dream Green sought for himself. In the short story “Winter Dreams”, F. Scott Fitzgerald seeks to reveal the discrepancy between the appearance of the American Dream and the reality hidden in the prospects of wealth and an extravagant lifestyle by employing the use of

The Roaring Twenties, epitomized material wealth. The era was full of parties, fashionable trends, and grand social gestures. The lifestyle of booze was being ingrained into the culture of the 1920’s and the time consisted of people who weren’t concerned with the past or present, so the management of time in the era was very low. Fitzgerald emerged as the laureate of the Jazz Age, capturing the spirit of the decade in his fiction while embodying its zeal in his personal life with his “Golden Girl”, Zelda. The novel also demonstrates the prominent values that varied between people in the 1920s. This idea of class tensions demonstrates the magnitude of influence a social class had on a person- which is made clear through Judy’s ability to be with Dexter because he was from the same social class. This idea could have been drawn by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s own life and difficulties in his marriage. This idea in the short story could have been influenced by Zelda Sayer not marrying Fitzgerald because he wasn’t successful.

Further, “Winter Dreams” embodies the unrealistic cultural expectations of women in the early 1900’s. “She was not a girl who could be ‘won’ in the kinetic sense—she was proof against cleverness, she was proof against charm; if any of these assailed her too strongly she would immediately resolve the affair to a physical basis, and under the magic of her physical splendor the strong as

When Dexter is on his way to a party, “He drove slowly down-town and, affecting abstraction, traversed the deserted streets of the business section, peopled here and there where a movie was giving out its crowd where consumptive or pugilistic youth lounged in front of pool halls. The clink of glasses and the slap of hands on the bars issued from saloons, cloisters, of glazed glass and dirty yellow light” (7). By contrasting Dexter’s views of all things good being material wealth to the normal life of those in the 1900’s, this quote displays the overall theme of the short story as it epitomizes the extravagant lifestyles that were deemed only for the wealthy and contrasts it with that of normal life. Along with this is it displays the idea that life can both be enchanting due to the prospects of wealth and an extravagant lifestyle, but also that the lifestyle can repel a person as the “good life” might not always be good. Further the “dirty yellow light” Fitzgerald introduces serves as a contrast between the short story “Winter Dreams” and The Great Gatsby. The green light in The Great Gatsby served to represent the possibilities in the world, the possibilities made through money and hardwork. The green light served as a symbol of the American Dream. Yet, contrasting this green light to the yellow light in “Winter Dreams”, the yellow light serves more as a