Corruption In The Great Gatsby

The American Dream is what we all aspire to achieve. The idea of starting off with nothing and to become something has caused millions of people from all corners of the world to immigrate to this country for over 300 years. However, what exactly is the American Dream? F Scott Fitzgerald answers this question within his novel The Great Gatsby. Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald analyses the high class of the 1920s and reveals that the American Dream has been distorted from a pure ideal of security into a convoluted scheme of materialistic power. Fitzgerald incorporates the aspects of both the Òold dreamÓ & the Ònew dreamÓ in his tragic story to depicts how the inflexible dream has been corrupted and lost forever.

If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” Gatsby has given up, he has wasted his life trying to finish his creation, and realizes it isn’t what he wants. Gatsby’s dream only truly would have succeeded if it were something different. It isn’t a question of how ambitious the dream is. It is the dream itself that can or cannot be. The American Dream isn’t and never will be an attainable dream.

As a society, America has created certain ideas and stereotypes of each class including the citizens within them. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald focuses around the superficial communities of West and East Egg, and their misconceptions of one another. The citizens of East Egg, such as Daisy and Tom Buchanan, frown upon the up-and-coming men of West Egg. This includes Gatsby, who dreams of the riches they take for granted. Gatsby, who obtains his money through dishonest means appears villainous, unsuccessfully attempting to join the wealthy and elite society of East egg. However, there may be more to Gatsby's story. As Nick, the narrator, says he is “worth the whole damn bunch put together”(154). Through his descriptions and comparison of Tom’s house and Gatsby’s house, Fitzgerald reveals the true nature of the two men. While Gatsby appears to be morally corrupt, in the end he actually has pure intentions, instead it is Tom who emits negativity and is ungrateful for his life.

New York City, overwhelmed with success, money and image in the 1920s was drowning in corruption. F Scott Fitzgerald composed a riveting novel, The Great Gatsby, which follows the journey of several characters dealing with love, greed, confusion and lust during the 1920s. Fitzgerald illustrates the corruption of the American dream by allowing us to follow the downfall of Jay Gatsby, revealing the reality of the American dream.

The green light at the end of daisy's dock is the symbol of gatsby's hopes and dreams. It represents everything that haunts and beckons Gatsby: the physical and emotional distance between him and Daisy, the gap between the past and the present, the promises of the future, and the powerful lure of that other green stuff he craves money. The light is something that is a key part of gatsby's character, even the very first time the books protagonist nick sees gatsby he is down at his dock staring at the light. “He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.” and even nick comes to realize this lights significance , “ And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes —a fresh, green breast of the new world.... And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out Daisy's light at the end of his dock. He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on

Greed takes its toll on Daisy as one of the main characteristics she looks for in a man is in fact his wealth, and that man’s personality takes a backseat when Daisy is “falling in love” with someone. This is clearly exhibited when she visits Gatsby’s house. Throughout the visit she is clearly in awe with Gatsby’s house and his belongings. She is close to breaking down and exclaims that Gatsby has “such beautiful shirts...it makes [her] sad because [she’s] never seen such beautiful shirts before” (Fitzgerald 92). Daisy is clearly thinking about what she and Gatsby could have been as a couple, now that she realizes that Gatsby is not poor anymore, but instead filthy rich. It is not that she misses Gatsby’s personality, but rather his wealth. The desire for wealth that Daisy has leads her to taking advantage of Gatsby’s love for her. She lets Gatsby take the blame for killing Myrtle in the car accident, showing that she did not care about Gatsby, but that she knew deep down that their relationship was

Success, formerly signifying the accomplishment of an aim or purpose, however, it has become poisoned by the narcissism of humankind which redefines it as the state of being financially superior to others. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the outlook on the American Dream during the 1920s was crafted through a myriad of events and characters depicting this civil dilemma. By definition, the American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of race, class, gender, or nationality, can be successful in America (wealthy), if they exert the required effort on their arduous journey. Having said that, the American Dream thus presents an illusion of an American society that neglects issues such as: systemic racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and income inequality. Furthermore, it also postulates a myth of class equality, yet the reality could not be further from this. In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates how fantasies driven by materialistic ideologies can lead to inevitable corruption and demoralization in society. Notably, this is exhibited through the daily struggles of George and Myrtle Wilson, the conspicuous bigotry of Tom and Daisy Buchanan as well as the ambition and passion of Jay Gatsby.

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, characters are depicted as corrupt human beings influenced by their own personal agendas. With an indistinguishable line between right and wrong, they remain unaware of the consequences that follow their actions. Daisy Buchanan is portrayed as the “golden girl” of her time. She is the woman every man wants to call their own, although they only focus on her superficial features rather than personal qualities. Throughout the novel, her true self begins to unfold, displaying how she misleads others to protect her social stature and reputation. Daisy’s submissive nature continuously hurts the people she cares about by allowing her to engage in dishonest activities.

The wealthy in the late 20’s was corrupt and selfish. In the Great Gatsby the upper class is shown as corruptive. The people in the upper class such as Tom and Daisy don’t really care about their actions because they feel invincible due to their amount of money and the power they have. Fitzgerald illustrates the corruption in the way upper class is care-less about their behavior.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is about a writer named Nick Carraway. He leaves the Midwest and comes to New York City in the spring of 1922 . Nick chases his American Dream and ends up living next door to a mysterious, party-loving millionaire, Jay Gatsby, who is  across the water from his cousin, Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald reveals that the upper class society is corrupt from money. This is best proven through Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom.

Gatsby's dream is tied together with the hope of reaching Daisy someday by a mysterious green light emitting from a lighthouse on her dock across the bay. Fitzgerald heavily intertwines his own life with that of Gatsby's, for example,“Gatsby would reinvent himself for love, just as Fitzgerald would, twice.”(BBC) The eternal green light represents a dream that Gatsby is chasing after, it outweighs his dream for money and in fact the only purpose of his need to have money is to win over Daisy. Daisy is the equivalent to Fitzgerald's Zelda, the woman who is the author's driving force, and influences many of the significant points throughout the book. For instance, Daisy is attracted mainly to money and makes decisions baned upon her well being just as Zelda has. The green light symbolises all of Gatsby's hopes for repeating the past and his obsessive struggle to win back his love,

The Great Gatsby is about how corrupted the American Dream was and how it affected many individual’s lives. The characters in the novel have a huge role in portraying the corruption and lifestyles of those living the dream during the 1920’s. Due to the idea of a success promise that the East had to offer, many westerners packed their lives up and headed that way in hope of a better life. Nick Caraway, one of the main characters, is one of the westerners that took the gamble of moving east during this time period. Nick who was originally from Minneapolis- St. Paul, wanted to experience what New York had to offer. “Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the rigid edge of the universe- so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I suppose it could support one more single man” (Fitzgerald 20). In the summer of 1922, he decided to rent a house in what is known as West Egg, Long Island. The only connections Nick had in the East were his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan, whom he had met at college years ago. Daisy and Tom, along with their young daughter lived in the East Egg. The mansion next to Nick’s house belonged to Jay Gatsby. In the beginning of the novel, Nick makes it known to readers that he hasn’t seen Gatsby even though he was throwing large, loud, and outrageous parties almost every night. However, when Nick and Gatsby do meet they become rather close and by the end of

For centuries in this country people have believed that through hard work, talent and ambition anyone can acquire great wealth and success regardless of their social class and background, a concept later named “The American Dream” in 1931. However, people have been questioning whether this idea of rags to riches really is attainable to all who work for it, or if it is merely a fantasy and a myth. In his novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses symbolism to illustrate the death of the American Dream.

The green light is first mentioned in chapter one of the Great Gatsby. Nick, the narrator of the novel, sees Gatsby standing at the end of the peir stretching his arms out to the water. Nick went to see what Gatsby was looking at and all he could see was "...nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock." At this point in the novel the symbol of the green light is showed to the reader. The reader does not know that the light is on Daisy's dock. So you don’t know that Gatsby and Daisy are affiliated. The reader does know that Nick admires Gatsby and dream which is some way linked with the green light. The color green represents life, hope, and youth.

Founding father Benjamin Franklin described the American dream as the “pursuit of a better existence… a higher quality of life through hard work, determination, and devotion” (Benjamin Franklin). The American dream is an idea that if you work hard, you can rise from “rags to riches” and live a wealthy and prosperous life with moral values of respect and integrity. Ironically, Franklin’s version of the dream was decaying during the roaring 1920s when society became corrupt and obsessed with greed. In his classic book, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald shows how the American dream of “hard work, determination, and devotion” was deteriorating because society had become greedy and materialistic. In addition, moral values were in decline and that