F. Scott Fitzgerald 's 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.

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.

Money, commonly associated with happiness and success, is deceiving because it doesn 't necessarily breed enjoyment at all. Lorraine Hansberry 's A Raisin in the Sun and F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby examine the difference between wealth and appreciation of life. Lorraine Hansberry explains this with Walter, a negro father in a poor family who seeks more money than is realistic to bring happiness into the family. Fitzgerald uses the character Jay Gatsby to show that wealth doesn 't imply success or happiness. Both characters occupy strikingly different roles in their stories, yet decently portray money 's impact on life. In The Great Gatsby and Raisin in the Sun, wealth is made to seem as the key to happiness, but, in essence,

The American Dream in simple terms is the essence of Americanism; it is the belief that social mobility, prosperity, and financial success are attainable by hard work regardless of social class and nationality. The American Dream exemplifies what every immigrant imagines as they walk through Ellis Island or cross the border from Mexico. It is the ethos of America, the defining image of the average upper-middle class family man. This idea of prosperity begins as far back as the founders of the United States. Benjamin Franklin, one of the most famous Framers in American history, built himself from the ground up. Franklin’s The Autobiography is both his personal regimen for prosperity, but also the

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.

As World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II were occurring, America was in a time of uncertainty and questioning. Therefore, in following with the feeling of the American people, American writers often followed this theme of confusion in their writing, creating the age of Modernism. During the time period of Modernism, writers often included the themes of uncertainty, disjointedness, and disillusionment in their works. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, these three themes of uncertainty, disjointedness, and disillusionment are portrayed through three main characters Daisy, Tom, and Gatsby, respectively.

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.

The attempt to decipher the complex societal ascension and cultural machine that is “social class” and “social standing” is a motif seen all throughout American literature with no absence from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby. Although at times overshadowed by the blatant themes of love, hope, and loss, Fitzgerald addresses the concept of social mobility, social standing, and social precedent continuously throughout his novel beginning as early as the first chapter. However, what separates The Great Gatsby from other novels addressing the perceptions of social class is the wide variety of social standing presented by Fitzgerald. Unlike pieces similar to Kate Chopin’s The Awakening or Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the

"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.

Why do American’s call social mobility the American Dream? Fitzgerald answers this question in his book The Great Gatsby, set in the 1920s after the events of World War I, with with the character of Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald shows the reader that social mobility, one of the main ideals of the American Dream is not possible, through Gatsby who, despite his money and fame, can never be part the upper class because of his attachment to others.

Often referred to as “the Jazz Age,” the 1920s was a time full of innovation, leisure, and newfound sexual expression. In this age, there was a boom in literary expression as well. F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the many twentieth-century writers to focus on American ideals in their novels. In Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, the character of Jay Gatsby represents the opulence and underlying corruption of the 1920s.

For many celebrated authors, the meaning of their work comes from a collection of opinions and outlooks on life that the writer has accumulated throughout his or her life. In the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald, this statement could not be truer. In fact, much of Fitzgerald’s most famous work feature plots that closely parallel events from his life (Lathbury 10). For example, his novel This Side of Paradise includes a young man who is rejected by the love of his life on the grounds of his social status. Zelda similarly rejected Fitzgerald for his social status at first. In comparison, it is not surprising that Fitzgerald’s story The Great Gatsby takes place in the Jazz Age, which he lived through while writing the novel. Writing a story that takes place during his time was Fitzgerald’s way of telling his story as well as to make commentary on the world around him. This commentary was the product of Fitzgerald’s lifelong aspiration for greatness as well as the baggage he carried from World War I like other members of the lost generation had. Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby depicts his duplicitous mentality of celebrating, but criticizing the Jazz Age, an outlook resulting from his life and experiences in World War I.

How did F. Scott Fitzgerald create the stories we know and love? Who did Fitzgerald use as his muse for his female characters? There are many similarities between Fitzgerald’s life and his novels, but he was predominantly influenced by the pursuit of money and his fragile relationship with his wife, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s novels were influenced by his home life and the world around him as demonstrated primarily through his novel The Great Gatsby, but also through his novels This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned and Tender is the Night .

The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which takes place right before the Great Depression. Personally, this is my favorite book that I have ever read. The book was very well written, and the language used throughout the text corresponds to the time era that the book takes place in. It is considered by some to be a portrait of the golden age of jazz. Fitzgerald’s book, is seen as the paradox of the ‘American Dream’. His writing is magnificently sensational. This book is also very well written. The Great Gatsby is definitely worth the read.