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Too Hard To Achieve The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

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The American Dream started back in the early 1900’s when James Truslow was referring to “That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” The American Dream has always been associated with social mobility, the dream that anybody no matter how poor could become millionaire or the President of the U.S. Back then, it was not easy to achieve the American Dream, people struggled hard to achieve it and some might have even failed at it. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Myrtle lived the American Dream but not everybody has a good start. For example, in the beginning Gatsby explains how he got his money by saying that he inherited
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Fitzgerald used Gatsby as an example on how people from the lower class lose moral values trying to achieve the american dream. In order to achieve this wealth Gatsby was part of an illigal activities. The extent that Gatsby had to go throw shows how people are pushed to do crazy things. Through the investigations Tom does on Gatsby we see that he made most of his money as a “bootlegger”. Gatsby's intentions were in the right place.

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Stock markets minted millionaires by the thousands because of the booming economy. Young Americans in the 1920’s living in the cities rejected traditional social norms by embracing a modern urban culture of freedom. People in the 1920’s drank illegally against prohibition and attended huge parties hosted by the richest of society. The novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, takes place in West Egg, Long Island, New York in the 1920’s. The narrator, Nick Carraway, moves east from the Mid-West to the exciting New York City to be involved in stocks.

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The unattainable American dream American dream is a concept whose roots can be traced in the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 which states that “ all men ... are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights … life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Initially the American Dream featured three main basic rights to its citizens; right to life, liberty and happiness. However over time when this notion reached a much larger audience, people also approached it from different dimension. In 1931 James Truslow Adams defined American Dream in his book The Epic of America as “ that dream of a land where life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” regardless of social class or

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1032 Words | 5 Pages

The American dream is just a dream which can’t be implemented in the real world. While writing The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald described the actions of the human society by critiquing the high class and low class ultimately providing his view towards the American dream in 1920s. Throughout the book; “The Great Gatsby”, American dream is shown to be a corrupted dream that leads to destruction. Myrtle, Gatsby and Daisy are 3 main characters who have significantly shown to be corrupted and destroyed by this dream. The desire for high status and luxurious life is what draws Myrtle into establishing a relationship with Tom.

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448 Words | 2 Pages

The American dream is something that every American hopes and dreams of. The Great Gatsby, a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald, shows the different aspects of the American dream. Jay Gatsby, the book’s main character, falls deep into his own personal Dream. This Dream happens to be his love for Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby is so blinded by his love for Daisy he doesn’t even see the problems that he is causing.

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335 Words | 2 Pages

It is a well known fact that many people desire to live the American Dream. The Great Gatsby written by F.Scott Fitzgerald shows how wealth is more than a common curtosity. Gatsby didn’t grow up around a lot of money. In the book he talks about his childhood and how he wanted more in life. There are many factors related to the american dream in the book.

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295 Words | 2 Pages

Gatsby Essay The American dream is getting rich and rising through the ranks of society, but most importantly it is living a happy life. This is almost what Jay Gatsby does in the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925), where he becomes an eccentric millionaire to get with Daisy Buchanan, the girl of his dreams. He meets Daisy which he knows from his early adulthood and has an affair with her, since she is married to Tom Buchanan. He wants her to divorce and get with him but Gatsby gets murdered by a man who believes he ran over his wife.

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The Great Gatsby was written by F Scott Fitzgerald in the roaring twenties. The philosophy of the American Dream has changed dramatically over the past 100 years. This early saying started as nothing more than individuals being able rise to the top of the social classes and not being able to be stuck in one particular class. Currently the American Dream can be viewed as one person’s self desire and hunger to want to be the most successful in life. The sense of hope and worthiness inside the human mind is what keeps the American Dream alive in today's world.

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Gatsby is an interesting character. He represents the American dream in its entirety. At the beginning of the book he is established as a dreamer who is gracious and a little mysterious. As the book unfolds the reader will start to realize that everything Gatsby does is to fulfill a very unrealistic dream. That dream of his is to recapture the past.

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950 Words | 4 Pages

The American dream. A once vanilla concept of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has become a debatable subject of conversation. Through generations (since the term was coined by James Truslow Adams in 1931), the American dream has been constantly evolving through the present day. The white picket fence ideology has been expanded on and altered by the newer generations. According to a study by Northwestern Mutual, one third of American adults claimed that their idea of the American dream has changed in the last five years.

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The American Dream, the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. This is the literal definition of The American Dream. The first American dream. This is the one that our ancestors of the past followed to carve the land, to build, and to prosper. For the original American Dream, this was a definition of hope, a dream that could be achieved.

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The American Dream is something that many little kids, men and women dream of. In this novel “The Great Gatsby,” by F.Scott Fitzgerald shows us how everyone in the story misinterprets the American Dreamit. The message in this story is to show people that the American Dream is whimsical, therefore I believe that the American dream is to be very financially wealthy, when people get ahold of money they believe that their life is better than everyone else's and that there isn't anything that they can't do,but soon they will realize that wealth isn't everything and that love is worth more than just money. In this novel the author uses a lot of imagery he uses different places and locations of where the different social classes live and where they all stand in the community for example the people that live on east egg of the island in new york is for old money people such as tom and daisy they grew up with money they have always had money in their life and know how to obtain it,and for Gatsby he lives in west egg where new money people live they just got money and they flaunt it they are more flashy with their money and like to show people because they never grew up with having so much money in their life,and for the valley of the ashes, this

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1368 Words | 6 Pages

Gatsby American Dream The 1920s seemed to have set a center stage for the pursuit of happiness and equality in the United States. Post World War One was characterized by the need for economic freedom and the ability to move from one social and economic status to another. The pursuit of happiness was gradually becoming an integral part of the American culture. People’s beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, and values were also changing.

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594 Words | 3 Pages

The American Dream. Now the American dream can be defined in so many different ways, but the general idea is freedom that allows everyone the same opportunity to success and high social status. The American dream is both being wealthy and happy, but is the American Dream really a reality? The Great Gatsby has many characters who are rich and high on the social status. Everyone seems like they have it all, but do they really?

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270 Words | 2 Pages

Gatsby is a representation of all-desirable and all-wanted but unachievable American Dream because of inequality of opportunities. He is a man of undefined ethnicity, who “sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” (Fitzgerald 98). His background is not a noble one: “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people”(Fitzgerald 98). Despite his bad socio-economic background, Gatsby is able to acquire wealth and fame, which might seem like an achieved goal. However, he was never able to fit into the upper-class society because of his undefined ethnic background, which contradicted the nativist attitude of that time to defend the purity of the American people.

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