F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby

Since American literature’s emergence, the American dream has become a conceptual ideal for many people throughout history. Although the dream has its own distinct aspects throughout different time periods, it predominantly focuses on the foundations of wealth, success and a desire for something greater. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction novel, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, the protagonist, is primarily known for the numerous lavish parties he throws each weekend at his ostentatious mansion in West Egg in an attempt to reunite with Daisy Buchanan, a woman he falls in love with prior to entering the war before the Roaring Twenties. However, he is seized with an impotent realization on the fact that his wealth cannot afford him the same privileges as others that are born into the upper echelon. Gatsby is completely blinded from his opulent possessions until he becomes oblivious of the fact that money cannot buy love or happiness. Throughout the story, the predilection for materialistic features causes many characters to lose sight of their aspirations, demonstrating how a dream can become easily corrupt by one’s focus on acquiring wealth and power.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the tragic story of two star-crossed lovers. Fitzgerald uses the Roaring Twenties as the setting of this novel. The twenties were a time of promiscuity, new money, and a significant amount of illegal alcohol. Fitzgerald was a master of his craft and there was often more to the story than just the basic plot. He could intertwine political messages and a gripping story flawlessly. In the case of The Great Gatsby, he not only chronicles a love story, but also uses the opportunity to express his opinion on topics such as moral decay, crass materialism, individual ethics, and the American dream.

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, colors are one of the most important details in the book. Throughout the story Fitzgerald cleverly uses colors in order to focus on specific themes and characters. He wrote this book in a way where one can read it for pleasure, and where one could analyze it and truly appreciate the work that he has put into this book. Every color has a specific meaning which correlates with each of the characters. Specifically, gold represents wealth, high class, selfishness, and relationships; while white represents honesty, purity, innocence, and a symbol for surrendering.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, has become one of the most read, praised pieces of fiction in American literature. Without a doubt, The Great Gatsby appropriately represents a period of American history where everything was possible, or at least thought possible. In the novel, Fitzgerald doesn’t just depict the social, historical, and economical conditions, he provides the reader with insight into the lives and motives, which the characters use to validate their actions. An underlying reason as to why everything happens the way they do in the novel is the overarching idea of the American Dream. Towards the end of the novel, one must wonder whether or not the American Dream in The Great Gatsby still holds its meaning, or is it the remnants of a once great idea.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in the midst of the roaring twenties, which was an age full of wealth, parties, and romance. Young people living in the 1920s were centered around wanting to find love so Fitzgerald, along with many other authors during this time period, focused his writing in The Great Gatsby on relationships and affection. Jay Gatsby, one of the main characters in the novel, is a very mysterious man, but there is one thing that readers know about him for sure: he is utterly in love with Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby shows his love for Daisy in many differents ways, including him waiting for her, becoming rich for her, buying a mansion across a bay from her house, throwing parties in hope that she will come, and taking the blame for the Myrtle accident. Gatsby truly is a hopeless romantic who will do anything to impress the woman he is so in love with.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays characterization corresponding with characters’ birthplaces, desires, and determination in order to devise their statuses. The narrator, Nick Carraway, is disparate from others due to the place he grew up which is exemplified when he moves to New York from the Midwest. Tom Buchanan satisfies his desire for love by having women in his life as well as his wife Daisy. Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan have been fond of each other since they met many years ago and their love for one another made Gatsby determined to create a new rich and extravagant lifestyle in order to completely win over Daisy. Nick Carraway’s personality is unique in New York compared to many of the dwellers, especially those at Gatsby’s massive parties.

From a young age, everyone is told to follow the example set by adults around them. Children are constantly berated for their behavior and told to act more mature. But issues in this world are not caused by children. The blame lies in the hands of the very adults that adolescents are taught to model after. Adults are able to get away with unacceptable behavior, claiming that being older means that they must know better. In the heart of the 1920s, an era of wild parties and reckless abandon, F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the complex society of Long Island Sound’s elite, the fictional East Egg and its less fashionable counterpart, West Egg, in his novel The Great Gatsby. Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s already strained marriage is further shaken up by the reappearance of a flame from Daisy’s past, Jay Gatsby, who manages to make himself into an incredibly wealthy man. Readers watch through the eyes of Nick Carraway, Daisy’s cousin and Gatsby’s neighbor, as irrational actions force their lives to intertwine into a complicated mess. The selfish decisions and careless actions of Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby prove that the behavior of adults is not always acceptable.

A life of luxury requires an arduous journey of dedication to achieve it. To embody the American Dream, one must strive to succeed. However, some may go too far in the process, and make irreversible decisions. This dream of copious amounts of wealth causes multiple characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s well-known novel The Great Gatsby to perish from selfishness. Based in the roaring twenties, also known as the jazz age, Fitzgerald sheds light on a major problem in society. Since a poor farm boy in North Dakota, to a rich gangster in New York, Jay Gatsby has been in pursuit of the American Dream. This dream lead Gatsby to believe that money and wealthy can buy anything, even happiness and love; ultimately leading to his downfall. Daisy Buchanan, who also believed in the American Dream, wished to marry Gatsby, however she could not due to the immense differences between economic and social class. By becoming a gangster, Gatsby achieved an equal wealth status; however this banished him to a life with a tainted past. The green light on Daisy’s dock was Gatsby’s only way to hang onto his goal. To clear his past and attain the ideal American Dream social status, Gatsby tried to woe Daisy into marrying him, believing his money alone would be enough to win her love. F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates how the American Dream causes destruction and corruption in society.

The American Dream has been a staple of the identity of the US for hundreds of years. It is the idea that somebody can come from nothing and work their way to the top. It is associated with obtaining wealth, satisfaction, and the luxury of material objects. From the outside, the American Dream looks like a flawless path to happiness. However, the validity of how attainable the American Dream is has been long debated. It is arguable that the American Dream has become misguided, leading those who seek it down a path that ultimately ends in failure of genuine success. This idea has even made it’s way into multiple works of literature. Authors create protagonists that endure the journey of the American Dream. Conversely, some authors use their characters to express negative feelings towards the concept of the American Dream. One example of an author who does this is F. Scott Fitzgerald. In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Nick witnessing how Gatsby flounders under the riggers of the American Dream leaves him disillusioned, and ultimately pushes him away from pursuing the American Dream.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is an author known for his best-selling book, The Great Gatsby. The story is about a man, Jay Gatsby, who was in love with Daisy Buchanan. Daisy was married to Tom, but Tom was cheating on her with Myrtle Wilson. There were two islands the story took place in: East Egg and West Egg. East Egg was the “old money,” or money passed down from ancestors, while West Egg represented the “new money,” or self- made money. Fitzgerald used multiple types of symbolism in his book, and his symbolism helped the reader understand the plot. The novel is read throughout schools to teach symbolism. The book can be described as “[…] satisfying as entertainment, thought provoking as a study, and increasingly rewarding the more closely it is examined.” (Koster). A frequently used type of symbolism in The Great Gatsby was color. The colors symbolized in the book were white, green, yellow, blue, gold, and gray.

Nick Carraway is who narrates this story He is a very opened minded, nice, quite guy from Minnesota. Nick travels to New York and rents a house in the West Egg side of Long Island. West Egg is where all the people who have just made their fortune live. Although Nick lived in the West Egg side he had many connections with the people on the East Egg side. Nick had a wealthy and attractive neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lives in a mansion and has extravagant parties every Saturday. Gatsby’s real name is James Gatz and he was born at a farm in North Dakota. He went to St. Olaf’s University but dropped out two weeks later do to the humiliation of being a janitor. One day he was fishing at Lake Superior and he saw a yacht owned by Dan Cody. He

"The Great Gatsby" by Francis Scott Fitzgerald is about an aspiring young businessman named Nick Carraway who moved New York to experience the American Dream. Nick settled in a house located in the West Egg District of Long Island where he met the wealthy yet peculiar Jay Gatsby. Throughout the book, Nick and Gatsby become great friends as Gatsby teaches Nick about life as Nick helps Gatsby with the love of his life. Within the story, Nick and Gatsby experience the heartaches and the immoral struggles of life. The book exposes the American Dream to the reader through the eyes of Nick and Gatsby and how not every dream can result in a happy ending.

“This is a valley of ashes- a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and raising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air” (Fitzgerald 26). In the novel, “The Great Gatsby,” the author F. Scott Fitzgerald, mainly depicted lives of the rich and their luxuries but also showed the lives of the poor people in the valley of ashes in a small portion of the book. The valley of ashes played an essential part in shaping the lives of the characters in the book as it shows the difference between social classes and the struggle of the poor.

Identity is cultivated through several diverse mediums within F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby ‘The word identity is defined as the set of personal and behavioral characteristics which define an individual as a member of a certain group. Based on race, ethnicity, religion, language and culture people distinguish themselves from other groups and form their understanding and pride in who they are’ . For the novels’ central characters, Gatsby and the others , status is autocratic, and an ambition. In their minds, adopting an aspirational identity would afford them the confidence, integrity and purpose they perceive as lacking. Each focal character approaches and reacts to identity differently; however there are also numerous parallels. Jay Gatsby begin his life identifying as oppressed destitutes – then strive separately to embody an identity which they do not fit. Gatsby, being an ambassador for the American Dream, has aspirations upon which he intends to capitalise, and superficially, he does. In the book the central characters may try to escape their prescribed identities in life, and to varying degrees they do, but fail to emulate the social group into which they want to acclimate. The meaning and justification of Identity transforms throughout the texts, and this is what I hope to investigate.

In The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald describes the characters in the book as “careless” people. His use of the word is subject to the reader’s interpretation, of course, but I interpreted it as being selfish and not caring that any action a person takes can cause a ripple effect that may have extreme consequences. Maybe consequences for yourself or maybe for others as well. All in order to obtain the American Dream.