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What Is The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

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“The road to success is not easy to navigate, but with hard work, drive and passion, it’s possible to achieve the American Dream.” - Tommy Hilfiger. In the book “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the major theme of the book is the downfall of the American Dream. People believe America is the country with the best chance to succeed. That is no longer the case, people believe what they desire most is success; however, people desire more, love. In the beginning of “The Great Gatsby”, the main character feels the need for success rather than to have love. Today it is common among young people to want money more than anything, but this concept is not original “Daisy married Tom, and when Gatsby returned to the states, he decided to devote his life to becoming rich” (Heather 2). Gatsby gets back to America to find out his love interest got married. He is not accepting of this; however, continues on with his life and makes it his mission to get as rich as possible. Gatsby sees his future as being successful. Fitzgerald develops this idea with “the green light” which represents his hopes for the future. …show more content…

He lives a crazy independent lifestyle, but desires more “Gatsby is a rich mega-rich, and throws crazy parties every weekend… Gatsby holds a dark secret about his past and how he became so great, a deep lust that will eventually lead to his demise” (The Pink Elephant 2). After Gatsby Achieved success, he needed more. He had achieved the American Dream, but in the end died. The theme of the story is shifting from success to love. Gatsby is beginning to have regret, and be sentimental “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” (Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby is trying his best to focus on love to truly get the happiness he

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631 Words | 3 Pages

He is disillusioned by the hustle and bustle of the city and hopes to find what he’s missing in life. The reason he becomes so invested in Gatsby’s quest for love is that he’s looking for the same thing as him, only in a different way. He later realizes the superficiality of his new lifestyle and feels alienated from his wealthier counterparts. This can be seen when he says, "Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn." (Fitzgerald

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805 Words | 4 Pages

The temptation of wealth and love drives him to chase unrealistic and misguided dreams: “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night” (Fitzgerald 180). The more Gatsby tries to recapture his past, the further he is taken away from what is real. Throughout The Great Gatsby he moves further into this dreamland he has created of his perfect life with Daisy, trying to escape the social class he was born to that once separated them. There is also irony in that Gatsby continuously tries to distance himself from his past and the lower class lifestyle, yet he spends the entirety of his life trying to rewrite his past with Daisy until he sees that she isn’t someone truly worth his love.

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923 Words | 4 Pages

The Great Gatsby shows Fitzgerald’s view and portrayal of the effect of money on people’s lives. Fitzgerald implies that being wealthy can lead to many great things but that money is everything but happiness and even with Gatsby’s wealth and imaginative mind, he still can not satisfy the image of Daisy since she nor any other women could ever be the girl who he desires. (Durkin). Gatsby wishes that his wealth would bring him the happiness and satisfaction he desires but instead brings him to his deathbed.

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670 Words | 3 Pages

The Great Gatsby and The American Dream “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.” -Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby. This quote from the book, The Great Gatsby relates to the American Dream in a powerful way.

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In the beginning of the novel Fitzgerald suggests that Gatsby is very well mannered and that his life is “put together well.” As the novel progresses the reader can see that he begins to contradict his life story. Fitzgerald begins to imply the feeling that Gatsby is unsuccessfully trying to run from his past. The life he was trying achieve for himself was his “American Dream.”, which was to be wealthy and worthy of being with the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. He was also trying to achieve the approval of the upper class of society.

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999 Words | 4 Pages

Gatsby is rich, powerful, and influential, but that was never enough for him. He has everything that everything that people covet and wish for but to him it is only the things that exist to enable him to get what he wants. It is because of his fantasies about the American Dream with Daisy that everything he tried to build for years has been destroyed by those bad things that he did. Gatsby’s desire for money and social status led him to exhibit his negative qualities such as involvement in crime, dishonesty, and delusions about his life with a married woman.

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592 Words | 3 Pages

Gatsby becomes obsessed with money and social status, believing that if he had enough she would love him the way he desired. In this scene, Jordan explains Daisy and Gatsby’s backstory to Nick in which she says, “‘Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.’ Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor.” (Fitzgerald 78).

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Gatsby is the perfect embodiment of the American Dream, having worked his way up from a poor farmer background in North Dakota to becoming wealthy and successful and living in the East. However, his obsession with the past, particularly his love for Daisy, indicates that his success and wealth have not made him happy, and he feels that something is missing. He tries to buy his way into the society of the East Eggers or the socialites, but he does not succeed. He tries and tries but his “idea of the American Dream is doomed because he tries to buy his way into a society that will never accept him” (Taylor 23). This shows that he still feels that there is something missing in his life, so he wants to be with Daisy and the socialites of the Long Island society in the 1920’s.

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1071 Words | 5 Pages

“Gatsby’s dream of reviving the love he once shared with Daisy Fay, (Eble 88) The only way he thought he could achieve this dream was through money. If he was respected and high up in society Daisy would think the same as everyone else. While Gatsby spent his whole life

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813 Words | 4 Pages

As Gatsby came back to New York and achieved what he believed was his dream through bootlegging and gangs, he rose above the other people in society. His rise became an obsession in his life and took over his mind, actions, and beliefs. His obsession with wealth was aimed only to win Daisy’s affection (“The Great Gatsby”). This contributes to Gatsby’s fall, after losing Daisy to Tom. Gatsby spent the rest of his short life wanting to live up to Daisy’s wealth and status when he ultimately could not.

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He compares to Lawrence R. Samuel’s idea of the American Dream when Lawrence states, “The usual answers-financial stability or, more specifically, making enough money to be able to retire(still often one million dollars, despite inflation), the ‘good life’ (usually a nice house in the suburbs with all the consumer trappings), to work for oneself, to have (at least) fifteen minutes of fame, the ‘pursuit of happiness.” Gatsby's identity goes through extreme change while he transforms through the story trying to fit into the wealthy upper class. He initially found success in his pursuit of wealth, however this wealth didn’t always come from the most legal means. He became popular socially with his exclusive parties that drew a crowd from all over the world. But his main goal was to get Daisy Buchanan back who he loved.

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815 Words | 4 Pages

His quest for riches and prestige eventually reveals the underlying deceit of life’s profound promises, resulting in anger and despair. Gatsby’s passion exposes the novel’s assessment of societal conditions as ineffective. His obsessive need for worldly stuff just drives him away from genuine, meaningful connections. The work portrays Gatsby as a sad man who is trapped in the illusion of riches and position and discovers it hallowed in the face of hardship, making Gatsby’s narrative a tale against the concept of financial success whose fulfillment is the

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913 Words | 4 Pages

Gatsby has this flawed view of his life where he has to keep getting more power to be content with himself: “My life, old sport, my life... my life has got to be like this. It's got to keep going up” (125). He wants to acquire more wealth and more power to achieve a higher social status, almost as if he wants to prove a point to himself and everyone else. However, he fell in love along the way and this stumped his plan. When Gatsby fell in love with Daisy, he changed his whole perspective in life and guided it to work around Daisy: “ I knew it was a great mistake for a man like me to fall in love” (141).

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498 Words | 2 Pages

In reality, Gatsby started out like many others doing any job he could to survive like salmon fisher and clam digger. He came from very humble beginnings as his dad had to keep reminding him, “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had” (Great Gatsby, #2). However, Gatsby grew to become one of the few richer men after his work with millionaire Dan Cody. This life of the rich also isn’t everything the American dream is hyped up to be as even the wealthiest weren’t happy. “You see, I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me” (Great Gastby, # 51).

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1641 Words | 7 Pages

The desire for love and companionship has the ability to help shape one’s sense of self, but Gatsby’s drive to fulfill that longing in Daisy became his sole focus in life and distracted him from reality. Instead of enhancing his true character, he completely lost his identity in an attempt to pursue Daisy, changing his entire life when he left “James Gatz” behind and put on the persona of Jay Gatsby. Refusing to accept his past, he lost his identity, and his sense of self was reduced to a “career” trying to be someone else (Fitzgerald 98). He spent his whole life trying to acquire money simply to fulfill the desire for Daisy’s love, since he knew “he had no real right to touch her hand” as a “penniless young man without a past” (Fitzgerald 149). Gatsby’s aspiration for love took over everything he did, as the text notes he “took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously” to try to become wealthy and satisfy his desire for love (Fitzgerald 149).

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