My Antonia and The Great Gatsby are both stories of self actualization through the pursuit of each character's American dream. Nonetheless, the examples of achieving the American dream contradict each other. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that the American dream is unachievable, that it is an ideal that Americans strive for but are never able to fully achieve. In Contrast, My Antonia argues that achieving the American dream is relative and not linear to just one dream and that if one is happy then they have achieved it. Gatsby is the example we’re given to the Great Gatsby of someone trying to achieve the American dream, after he dies, Nick reflects on who Gatsby was and what he stood for in regards to this dream stating that “Gatsby [had] believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, …show more content…
Fitzgeralds repetition of the “green light” metaphor throughout the book cements the elusiveness of the dream for Gatsby, always reaching for the light but never grasping it however hard he tried. The “green light” represents the achievable dream that Gatsby chases and Nick continues to say in the line that “It eluded us then, but that’s no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … And one fine morning-” finishing the line before he is able to complete his sentence, an allusion to the American dream itself and how, for everyone, it flees before completion. In My Antonia, the path to the American dream is less straightforward, Antonia has none of what Fitzgerald would regard as factors that complete his linear idea of an American dream. She is happy