Happiness In The Great Gatsby

I believe that the three texts that I have studied contained moments of optimism and pessimism which in turn have shaped my opinion of the general vision and viewpoint. This alludes to the feelings and emotions portrayed through the omniscient camera in "The King's Speech", the morally inclined narrator Nick Caraway in "The Great Gatsby" and the protagonist in the novel "Foster". I was very intrigued to find out more about these societies and the vision the author/director hoped to convey.

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.

“feeling of pleasure or contentment” is what happy is defined. Throughout the book “The Great Gatsby” it is focused heavily on the characters' happiness and what they want for their life. I focus on Myrtle Wilson, who seems to just be some mistress who is a bad person because a man is cheating on his wife for her. Myrtle is more than just some mistress, she wants happiness, she wants what she can't have with her husband. Myrtle wants money she thinks that will make her happy, and that could be what truly makes her happy or it will give her the false happiness that she wants. This relates to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs because she's not getting what she needs in her eyes; she wants more than what her husband is giving her and she can get that with Tom.

Without using depth of thought, The Great Gatsby is essentially a love story of the impossible forbidden desire between a woman and a man. The primary theme of the novel, however, shows off a much larger, less romantic scope of the novel. Though most of its primary plot takes place over simply a few short months through 1922’s summer, and is set in a small area in relative proximity to Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a a view on the 1920’s in America, and uses a lot of varied symbolism with it, in particular the loss and dismemberment of the American dream in an era literally named after the amount of wealth and industry it produced in material excess. Fitzgerald is able to showcase the 1920s as an era of dying social and moral values, evidenced in its overwhelming pessimism, desire, and unfulfilling pursuit of pleasure. The carelessness of the parties and celebrations that led to wild jazz music, exemplified in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night, eventually was created, in the corruption of the American dream, as the rampant desire for wealth and pleasure surpassed more worthwhile ideals.

In the song “Can’t Buy Me Love” written by the Beatles, they claim that they can buy anything there friend desires but it sure can not buy them love (Genius, 1964). In the story, Fitzgerald shows us many examples of Jay Gatsby’s way of living in having a lot of money and he constantly tries to use that money to win Daisy away from Tom, her husband. Just like in the song Gatsby does not achieve the love of his old friend Daisy with money. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” a wealthy man, Gatsby makes strong efforts to win back the heart of his lover, Daisy Buchanan. F. Scott Fitzgerald also demonstrates through the characters of “The Great Gatsby” that money cannot buy one's happiness.

The Great Gatsby is a book that almost proves the phrase “Money can’t buy happiness”

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald explores the definitions of happiness. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald reveals multitudes of scenarios that describe and define happiness in its purest form. Happiness is revealed as something temporary and difficult to maintain. Furthermore the reader sees the conflicts that arise between Tom and Gatsby and their love and happiness towards life and Daisy. Because of this, Tom and Gatsby play the largest role in describing what happiness is in the novel. Even further, as their characters evolve, the reader is able to understand how happiness evolves as well. Through the tragedy in Tom’s affair, Tom’s craving for drama, and Gatsby’s strong desire for Daisy, it is clear that Fitzgerald wishes to reveal the temporary

What makes people happy in most countries is when they gain more wealth. These values are still true today and as true in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which is held in the 1920’s. Most Americans think that wealth and happiness are synonymous with each other. This belief will continue to fuel an economy and marketplace that persuades consumers into buying products that will provide them “happiness”. Wealth and human happiness have reached an equilibrium in the view of an enormously capitalistic society, contrary to the beliefs of social progressives who believe happiness comes from the heart. Gatsby’s generation of the 20's were the age of a market that was primarily fueled off of the neediness of the average consumer. The same values are present today because our need for flashy products stem from the free market economy in this country. Consumers believe that they need all the things that businesses are attempting to sell to them.

The American Dream: Is is fact or fiction? In the United States’ Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers set forth the idea of an American Dream by providing us with the recognizable phrase “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. The green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock symbolizes Jay Gatsby’s “Pursuit of Happiness” in the novel, The Great Gatsby, set in the 1920s on Long Island, New York. The American Dream can be defined as “the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone. The American Dream is achieved through sacrifice, risk-taking, and hard work, not by chance” (Fontinelle, Amy). At the birth of our country in 1776, our founding fathers introduced the American Dream as a personal desire to pursue happiness; however, the pursuit of happiness was not intended to promote self-indulgence, rather to act as a catalyst to encourage an entrepreneurial spirit. As our country has changed, the idea of the American Dream, in some cases, has evolved into the pursuit of one’s own indulgences such as material gain regardless of the consequences.

In American Literature, the story’s protagonists seek one objective: happiness. However, most quests for happiness are distinct. The way they attempt to achieve this and their end goal vary immensely. From The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, and The Red Badge of Courage, all characters face difficulties in searching for happiness. From The Great Gatsby, “He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths--so that he could come over some afternoon to a stranger’s garden” (4).

Everyone wants something they don’t have for most people that is money, In Gatsby’s situation that’s attention and the need for love and happiness. Gatsby is one man with a house who can fit plenty. Throughout the novel Gatsby finds himself at a loss for he has no real friends has nobody who loves him nor does he have any true happiness. “It was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, [with] a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy” (5).

What is the key to happiness? This maybe the most prioritized question within society. It seems as if everything in our life revolves around this point, because after all, happiness is perhaps the greatest emotion. With that said, life’s journey is a constant path towards achieving what this joy might be. Some people find happiness in material goods such as money, cars or houses, while others find joy in abstract objects such as companionship, love or religion.

The overall mood of these two or three pages is gloomy and rainy, even though it should be happier than that; it describes the first meeting after so long between Daisy and Jay Gatsby. They once loved each other and even wanted to get married; this meeting is supposed to be a happy one, so one chould think that Fitzgerald would have been better to write that it was a sunny day, with birds singing and with warmth that represents the happiness between Jay Gatsby and Daisy.

Paths to Happiness and the American Dream The Great Gatsby and Wolf of Wall Street are two films produced in 2013 that depict various themes of the depraved interpretation of the ‘American Dream’. The two movies show how the protagonists, incidentally both portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, go about achieving material wealth and personal gratification without due regard for consequences. In their pursuit of happiness, the characters in the films feel that money, sex and drugs can help get the satisfaction. The American Dream is interpreted as the ability of a person to reach his/her highest potential given the opportunities within a country.

We, as humans, always associated wealth with happiness because we believe that money can buy anything that we desire. The author explains through irony the misconception