Essay on Jay Gatsby's Dream

The ideal American Dream can be portrayed in many different ways, though generally based upon the idea of opportunity for upward mobility within society. While people move to the top of society, they accumulate the perceived good things in life: the perfect partner, high social status and respect in the workplace to go along with the unlimited wealth and power. This idea is dated all the way back to the beginning of American literature. In the past, Americans started with the basic needs and only the things they needed to get by in life. Now families are transforming into a life view filled with the perfect life, nice car, large house, and the ideal family. In The Great Gatsby the main character Jay Gatsby was born into a family with no

GatsbyÕs dream give him a purpose in life and sets him apart from the rest of the wealthy class on Long Island. He never gives up his pursuit to win over Daisy; from the moment he is seen reaching towards her house in East Egg to the final days of his life, patiently waiting outside DaisyÕs house for hours when she has already decided to abandon her affair with him. Gatsby is the only character that retains the purest traits of the old dream, but loses in the end by attempting to achieve his dream by transposing his original ambition into the dreamÕs modern state.

Because Gatsby is standing alone, searching for the elusive Daisy, he is shown to not be content. He finds no joy in having all these people here if he cannot find his Daisy. He views Daisy as the person that will bring him to an even higher social class, because even though he is rich, he still remembers the social value Daisy encompasses because of her abundance of lovers. Ultimately he wants to swell his ego, to tame the wild beast, because Daisy wasn’t settled down before with any one man. Even though she is now married, he still views her with the same awe of when he first laid eyes on her at camp, even remarking that “‘Her voice is full of money’”(127) in reference to his percieved value of her when they first met. Quintessentially, Gatsby has narcissism flowing through his veins because he is attempting to recreate a past to soothe his remorse from when he initially left Daisy to fight in the war.

“A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.” - Colin Powell. A dream is incredibly dependant on one’s own imagination and their perception of reality. Dreams are also a way for people to experience their unconscious desires. Throughout the texts read in the semester, dreams have had a strong influence on one’s own

Gatsby is then reminded of his low status when Daisy’s mother“…had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she wasn’t on speaking terms with her family for several weeks.” (75) From that moment Gatsby becomes motivated to become one of the wealthy elite in order to win Daisy and her family.

He has gone to great lengths to make himself appear as appealing to a girl who never proves herself to be worthy of sacrifice. Gatsby creates a facade for himself in order to appear as a man who- in his mind- would be worthy of Daisy’s affection.

Differentiating between reality and dreams can be difficult in a world of wealth, lies, and alcoholism. The characters of The Great Gatsby seem to live the lives of Greek gods, believing that they are immortal and immune to the perils of common people. They party all day and all night, dressed in evening wear (as opposed to a work suit) sipping on expensive liquors. They have no sense of the lives led on the other side of town (or down Mt. Olympus). Living in a world of uncertainty, influenced by alcohol, distorted by wealth, distinguishing what could be and what really is can be difficult.

     In the text, The Great Gatsby, the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald leads us to sympathize with the central character of the text, Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald evokes our sympathy using non-linear narrative and extended flashbacks as well as imagery, characterization and theme. Through these mediums, Fitzgerald is able to reveal Gatsby as a character who is in an unrelenting pursuit of an unattainable dream. While narrative and imagery reveal him to be a mysterious character, Gatsby's flaw is his ultimate dream which makes him a tragic figure and one with which we sympathize.

As readers can see, Gatsby has his own set of unique characteristics differing from these of Tom. Gatsby is a passionate and kind person. He lives in West Egg, which contains people who have new money. He came from a poor family, "his parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people" (Fitzgerald 104). He struggled with obtaining enough money to make it through college. He is a loyal and good-hearted man who loves Daisy and strives for her true love. He is willing to do whatever it takes to win her love. Her love becomes one of the prime reasons he desires to be rich. However, Daisy cares solely about net-wealth and therefore, chooses Tom. Throughout the novel, Gatsby shows how he is a romantic dreamer by always dreaming of Daisy truly falling for him. His unrealistic approach to life causes him to be often disappointed. He believes that he actually might be able to win her love when he really has no chance with her.

She was a girl with wealth, connections and means—everything a seventeen-year-old boy could aspire to one day attain. It is this illusion that Gatsby falls in love with, not Daisy, and he dedicates his life to become a man that could parallel Daisy in both social status and wealth. “So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” (98) Though Gatsby appears to be blinded by material possession and unethical in his means to acquire it, Fitzgerald sets him up to be the hero of the novel by contrasting his virtue to the sea of corruptness and material greed that made up the ambitions of most young folks in the 1920s. True, he made his money through illegal means, but his incredible sense of loyalty is striking against the dishonest, scheming American society. In the novel, it is clear that Gatsby is unfailingly loyal to everyone he loves, from his father to Dan Cody to Daisy, who he dedicated “five years of unwavering devotion” (109) to, even if they were not loyal to him in return.

   The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel about one man's disenchantment with the American dream. In the story we get a glimpse into the life of Jay Gatsby, a man who aspired to achieve a position among the American rich to win the heart of his true love, Daisy Fay. Gatsby's downfall was in the fact that he was unable to determine that concealed boundary between reality and illusion in his life.

As the opposite of Daisy, Gatsby “remained faithful to an ideal love for five years” (Seiters). Daisy comes from a good family and is also a very beautiful girl who has a strong desire for love and that may only be the reason she married Tom instead of Gatsby. She was scared that Gatsby did not come back so she did not want to wait any longer. Tom and Gatsby are two very different people, Gatsby wasn't rich all his life he had even changed his name, “Jay Gatz--that was really, or at least legally, his name” (Fitzgerald 98). He sailed with his mentor Dan Cody who had taught him to speak and act like a well educated gentleman. Knowing that it allow him to have a good reputation in high societies. With Gatsby's ability to make friends in the city he became a criminal who used him to sell bootlegged alcohol, basically a drug dealer. Gatsby is what they call new money which means he has to show off and prove to the world that he is rich, for example to his parties he wears extravagant suits with gold ties and drives an eye-catching yellow car “Gatsby's car is an adolescent's dream, the very vehicle for one who formed his ideals as a teenager” (Seiters), all this is done to get Daisy’s

First and foremost Gatsby is nothing more than a man in search of his own dream and he will let nothing stand in his way. Even if he and Daisy are from two very

The transformation between James Gatz and Jay Gatsby is an example of how people can transform themselves according to their ambition for wealth and prosperity. The use of illegal activities to gain Gatsby's wealth is alluded to in the book, this shows the extent of how the American Dream circumvented the moral revulsion and pushed people who were crazy about money into crime - driving the moral standing of wealthier citizens into the ground. To Gatsby, his dream was symbolised by Daisy, Gatsby even says that her voice sounds like money, a direct correlation between Daisy and the wealth and happiness that Gatsby would supposedly enjoy if only he could have married Daisy but could still enjoy if he had married her five years later. His pursuit of happiness with Daisy was the ultimate cause of the degradation of Gatsby's morals and realistic dreams. This is because he held an unrealistic view of life and how he could recreate the past. His dreams had distorted reality to the point where when his rationality realised that the image of life and of Daisy did not coincide with the real life version his mind did not grasp that perhaps the dream had receded to the point of no return, consequently his dreams helped to

Gatsby’s dream is not to have Daisy, but to have her past self. Gatsby wants to pick up