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The American Dream in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Happiness is overpriced. During the 1920s, wealth is the only concern that’s relevant or that’s worth achieving. though we seek prosperity and contentment, Americans confuse that utopian thought with what they sincerely desire. Desire is a recurring element that appears in The Great Gatsby, it’s a “need” that never ceases to be wanted. Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom confuse the obtainment of desire with wholeness . When these characters continually attain this aspiration that would make them happier, they are left with mistaken fulfilment. Through the depictions of Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom, Fitzgerald shows us that sometimes we corrupt the American Dream with a distorted vision of pure happiness. In the novel, Tom’s overbearing masculinity is coated by his will to constantly control. In Daisy’s quote, “That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a---” (12), she’s describing that even in his physical nature, he has the appearance of a typical, domineering man who controls their women in the 1920s. Wealth has never been a problem for Tom, he was born with money and he lived luxuriously in East Egg for as long as he could remember, and yet, still with all the additional fame and riches from his Polo career, he longed for more, even if it meant to attain it carelessly. When he married Daisy (a very graceful woman from Louisville, who was desired by many soldiers), she had a voice that dripped with opulence and gold in

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