Meaning Of Happiness In The Great Gatsby

"No— Gatsby turned out all right in the end. It is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."

In life everyone strives to get rich, but is having an abundance of money always good? Sometimes people use money for personal benefits, sometimes it's for the benefit of others, but at times people with money use it to create their social status. In The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the idea of wealth is seen throughout. Jay Gatsby, who lives next door to Nick Carraway; the Narrator of the story, wants to be with his dream girl Daisy. Gatsby is wealthy and throws parties to impress Daisy. Daisy however, is married to another man Tom Buchanan. Throughout the story the people with money use it to create their social status. In The Great Gatsby F.Scott Fitzgerald uses symbolism to convey, wealth causes people to assert

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.

People in America love to have a great deal of money. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby always wants to have money, and he finally gets it. Gatsby has parties to try to get Daisy to come to his house. Gatsby tell Nick to tell Daisy to come to Nick’s house without her husband. Gatsby finallys shows his big house off to Daisy and thinks he will win her love back again just because he has money. Gatsby’s plan do not work out. Fitzgerald uses symbols in The Great Gatsby to show how things are going wrong in America.

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.

Throughout history many societies have had upper, middle, and lower classes. The classes formed separate communities of diverse living and never crossed social barriers. In the book, The Great Gatsby, instead of streets and communities separating each class there was a sound. On West Egg, the rich received their money not from inheritance but from what they accomplished by themselves. They worked hard for their money and received no financial support from their families. These people gained in one of two ways; either they worked for it or relied on illegal means for survival. On the other hand, or island, East Egg natives represent the class of society that receive money from their

Throughout our lives we have to deal with the past events we have done. In many novels this appears to be a big factor in what they will eventually grow into. In the novel The Great Gatsby, the character with the biggest impact in this topic.

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.

Aristotle once said that “Happiness is a state of activity”. In other words, pursuing happiness is an activity. The protagonist in the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby emphasis this quotation. Initially Gatsby acquired wealth in order to win daisy over, However Gatsby is still stuck in the past which becomes an obstacle on winning Daisy, in the end he is murdered based on false accusations. In the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The author is suggesting that we often try to alter our life, In order to pursue the materialistic happiness.

Throughout the timeline in American Literature the pursuit of happiness itself has evolved but the idea of it has always stayed the same. The pursuit of happiness is the journey to achieve utter happiness individually. Throughout American Literature each story has an individual setting on the pursuit of happiness. Some can eventually become happy but some have taught the world that the pursuit of happiness can be a complete tragedy. Individually the pursuit of happiness can be different in many ways.

“The Great Gatsby” greatly represents the commonly used phrase “Money cannot buy happiness.” “The Great Gatsby” follows the life of Nick Carraway in New York. He’s originally from Minnesota. He lives a rich neighborhood where the people have recently acquired their money and don’t have a huge social status.

The Roaring 20s, The Jazz age, the 1920s were a time of great prosperity in the United States. The 1920s were an era of change, both politically and socially. Americans began to move into cities, rather than living on farms, and the nation's wealth more than doubled. Buying the same goods, listening to the same music, dancing the same dances, and overall having the same values, people felt united. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, these values are reflected in the characters’ lifestyles. A recurring theme in the novel is that money cannot buy a person’s true happiness, and this theme is exhibited in the various characters actions, choices, and what they value most in their lives.

Happiness symbolises a form of content, a form of satisfaction that can lead to several types of actions. In the Great Gatsby, happiness is portrayed in unusual forms with different characters, however every single character had some form of a Dream in mind. Fitzgerald juxtaposes his influence of T.S Elliot’s use of Valley of the Ashes showing poverty, decay and lost spiritualism with the rich life style of West Egg as he shows the wealth, parties and liveliness in this Egg. The Egg represents the symbol of birth and life, as well as the fragility of society and mainly the fragility of Dreams.