Futility of the American Dream Exposed in The Great Gatsby Essay

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.

The novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is about the American Dream, an idealistic and illusionary goal to achieve wealth and status. The ruthless pursuit of wealth leads to the corruption of human nature and moral values. Fitzgerald uses characters in the novel to show the corruptions and the illusionary nature of the American Dream. The superficial achievement of the American Dreams give no fulfillment, no real joy and peace; but instead, creates lots of problems for the characters in the novel. What happens to Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, and Daisy Buchanan represent the failure of the American Dream. Each character has a different dream. For Jay Gatsby, his dream is to attain happiness, represented by Daisy's love, through

The absolute understanding of the “American dream” is lost by the characters in The Great Gatsby, and by this Fitzgerald illustrates that there is no need for a dream like this. It is a dream with the same name, but with a stark contrast. True happiness is not guaranteed by having a

The American Dream has always been based on the idea that each person, no matter who he or she is, can become successful in life by his or her own hard work. The dream, to desolate immigrants escaping an oppressive Europe, also embodied the idea of a self-sufficient man, an entrepreneur garnering success through his own hard work and ambition, not

The American Dream is dead. This is the main theme in F. Scott Fitzgerald 's novel The Great Gatsby. In the novel Fitzgerald gives us a glimpse into the life of the high class during the roaring twenties through the eyes of a moralistic young man named Nick Carraway. It is through the narrator 's dealings with high society that readers are shown how modern values have transformed the American Dream 's pure ideals into a scheme for materialistic power and further, how the world of high society lacks any sense of morals or consequence. In order to support this message, Fitzgerald presents the original aspects of the American Dream along with its modern face to show that the once impervious dream is now lost forever to the American people.

The American Dream was the vision that brought many people to America to start a new life in a strange and foreign land. This vision or dream is a common discussion topic by modern writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on Long Island in the summer of 1922. On the surface, it seems that the novel is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman, but the masterpiece major theme is about the American dream. The author writes about a man who takes the dream too far and becomes unable to distinguish his false life of riches from reality.

When someone comes off too eager for something they desire, sometimes the satisfaction won’t meet the expectations they primarily had. The thrill to chase that dream has vanished and has now turned into a bland, dull thought. Gatsby’s memory of Daisy had changed and then builds her up to more than she actually is. He then proceeds to market Daisy as something completely different. The tendency for Gatsby trying to lie to himself about his memory of Daisy has faded and is now trying hopelessly to revive his past feelings about Daisy. “He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity”(Fitzgerald 92). The cumbersome attitude of Gatsby towards

While studying F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, I began to understand the various interpretations of the American Dream based on Fitzgerald’s portrayal of the Dream through his

It is evident that Fitzgerald admires the pursuit of the ‘American Dream’, for he uses beautiful imagery, “a fresh, green breast of the new world”, “trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house”, “a transitory enchanted moment man

In the past the American Dream was an inspiration to many, young and old. To live out the American Dream was what once was on the minds of many Americans. In The Great Gatsby, the American Dream was presented as a corrupted version of what used to be a pure and honest ideal way to live. The idea that the American Dream was about the wealth and the possessions one had been ingrained, somehow, into the minds of Americans during the 1920’s. As a result of the distortion of the American Dream, the characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby along with many others, lived life fully believing in the American Dream, becoming completely immersed in it and in the end suffered great tragedies.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel that has a large focus on the ideas of the American Dream and social class in the 1920s. In the novel, the people of West Egg and East Egg are people of the upper who have earned money either through inheritance or working hard and have had many opportunities to make their American Dream a reality. The people of the Valley of Ashes are people of lower class who have little to no money and have to work all their lives to make ends meet. Even though both social classes strive for the same thing, The American Dream, neither of them will ever truly achieve it. Fitzgerald uses a vast contrast in the settings of East Egg, West Egg, and

     F. Scott Fitzgerald is seen as one of the greatest American writers, admired by his contemparies and by modern audiences of today. Fitzgerald was very much in tune with the early twentieth century American culture. He is credited with capturing the ‘Jazz Age’, which he described as “a generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken”. Fitzgerald observed the culture around him with a critical eye. Despite being able to depict America like few others could, many see Fitzgerald’s writing as an indictment on its values.

Jay Gatsby’s sole purpose in life is to achieve the American Dream: to become a land owner, married to the love of his life, who live in comfort and abundance. However, he never gets everything he wants as his love for Daisy is not as fully reciprocated as he wishes it to be. His dream, and the one Nick pursues as well, are only dreams in the end. The culture of the time only gives empty fulfillment with no real substance. The people, like their dreams, are only illusions of what they want to be.

Although it is the repercussions of their deceptive fantasies that Gatsby and Lester fall victim to, it was their continued search for love that leads them to these. Love is the principal value in The Great Gatsby and is illustrated best by the contrast of Gatsby’s idealized romantic love for Daisy with Daisy’s “love” for wealth and status, a love which is common to the majority of their irresponsible society. F Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes Gatsby’s “romantic readiness” through this contrast as well as Gatsby’s fall from grace that results in him becoming lost in “the colossal vitality of his illusions” (pg. 92). Daisy characterizes the power of a love of money in the Great Gatsby and is used by Fitzgerald in condemning Gatsby’s hedonistic society as well as his own. However it is the absence of love –rather than the presence- that is most prominent in American

Wealth, material possessions, and power are the core principles of The American Dream. Pursuit of a better life led countless numbers of foreign immigrants to America desiring their chance at the vast opportunity. Reaching the American Dream is not always reaching true happiness. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby achieves the American Dream, but his unrealistic faiths in money and life’s possibilities twist his dreams and life into useless life based on lies.