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The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

Decent Essays

The 1920’s, also known as the Jazz Age, was an era full of crime, defiance, and lavish life styles. The Great Gatsby, a book written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is about the tale of Jimmy Gatz and the obscurity of the American Dream. This novel contains seven main characters, three of which are living a tainted version of the American Dream. The American Dream has been feigning the lives of Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Jay Gatsby by causing them pain when they could have been content with more modest ambitions.
Daisy Buchanan, the naïve and pure woman of the novel, has always been in love with Jay Gatsby since she first laid eyes on him in Kentucky. Gatsby eventually joined the war, leaving Daisy, but leaving her orders to wait for him. Daisy …show more content…

Myrtle Wilson has been living a hopeless and mediocre life, until she met Tom Buchanan, the definition of an Alpha male. Tom lives the American dream, he has the looks, the intelligence, and the wealth. Myrtle and Tom begin to have affairs in New York City, where she experiences the opulent lifestyle. Tom was actually a burden on Myrtle; George Wilson gained suspicion about Myrtle causing them to want to move out west. Ironically, Daisy murdered Myrtle in Gatsby’s posh, yellow automobile. This event shows how wealth/status, Gatsby’s vehicle represented Tom, ended Myrtle’s life. “The ‘death car,’ as the newspapers called it didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment and then disappeared around the next bend” (144). According to shmoop.com, this quote exemplifies how “Myrtle, in Fitzgerald’s portrait, is a ridiculous fool”, she ran in front of the vehicle, thinking it would stop, but karma came her way and she was struck by the yellow death …show more content…

Jay Gatsby is the man with an extravagant amount of money and a colossal mansion, yet he is living despondent life; in fact, he is breathing in a loveless world filled with dreadful rumors. Although, Gatsby is a self-made man, he receives his profits from illegal bootlegging, which was a frowned upon, yet the popular profession in the 1920’s. Gatsby’s American Dream caused him pain because he was spending all his earned money trying to find love, which was unrealistic. Jordan Baker says, “Gatsby bought a house so that Daisy would be just across the Bay” (Fitzgerald 62). Jay Gatsby has been trying to settle permanent love with Daisy, but Daisy would never give up herself from Tom’s money. Basically, if Mr. Gatsby would move on from Daisy and find a new woman to love, then Mr. Gatsby would truly be living the American Dream, but instead he is trying to relive the

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