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Great Gatsby American Doom Essay

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The American Doom
In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald critiques the idea that America is a meritocracy and that anyone can achieve the American Dream and become rich and successful if they just work hard enough. Moreover, Fitzgerald represents the American Dream with a pessimistic perspective such as it being a doomed journey to wealth, prosperity, and a high social status as opposed to the conventional: it being an act of settling down, having a family, and providing for them. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald uses the socioeconomic status of his characters, their actions, and the settings in which they live in to justify the illusory nature of the American Dream.
The novel’s protagonist, Jay Gatsby, is the perfect representation of Fitzgerald’s viewpoint of the American Dream because he is this young man who goes from rags-to-riches. However, Gatsby attains his wealth through crime, whereas the traditional way was to do honest, hard work. Furthermore his shady methods and his actions prove the faultiness of Fitzgerald’s version of the American Dream by …show more content…

For example, when we first see Gatsby, we see him stretching his hand out towards the green light at the end of the Buchanan's dock, which is a symbol for Gatsby’s hopes and desires of reuniting with Daisy, who is the paragon of money and materialism. In fact, Daisy is Gatsby’s American Dream but in reality she is just a fantasy because she is only human and cannot possibly embody the expectations that Gatsby projects onto her - such as running away from Tom and coming to live with him in his mansion. Likewise, the American Dream is just a fantasy and a concept much too superficial to hold any actual matter. Ultimately, Gatsby’s pursuit of money, status, and Daisy lead him to ruin, which is synonymous of Fitzgerald’s representation of the American

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