Why Is The American Dream Important In The Great Gatsby

The achievement of a wealthy American Dream is a sugary treat pursued by many but achieved by few. The desire for the taste of money through success can corrupt even the most strong willed who choose to follow the path and soon the pursuer will find the spoiled core of identity rotting influence. With the desire for sweet money comes the desire for the bitter fake status inside. In The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, this is described and the upper-class core is exposed as a disgusting old inedible influence. Jay Gatsby, formerly known as James Gatz, falls victim to this hunger and fails like all who pursues this treat. Jay is so consumed by his pursuit for fake status and tasteless importance he loses reality in his drive for indulgence. Fitzgerald writes Gatsby to describe the collapse of someone who has been rotted out from inside by money and the pursuit of status. Piece by Piece Gatsby loses his sense of self, his value in money, and his pursuit in life because of his addiction to the taste of drempt status.

Fitzgerald describes James Gatz’s creation of the false wealthy Jay Gatsby persona as something a “boy would be likely to invent”(105) due to the unreal and fanciful nature twisting James’s real self into an imagined rich mold. The identity is adopted to replicate Jay’s idea of Dan Cody, a successful rich upper-class gentleman in Gatsby’s eyes but in reality a decaying up old man who is being consumed by his wife and manipulated for the sugared wealth he gained in his achievement of the American