The Great Gatsby The American Dream

Although to the casual reader The Great Gatsby may only appear as a poetic muse on the seemingly endless rollercoaster that is love, if one plunges deeper into this novel it is easily discovered that not only is this the quintessential grail quest but it is quite plainly a search for the American dream. Gatsby plays a duel role in this piece of American history; he is both the Holy Crusader, seeking his own personal Cup of Christ, and the Cinderella story of Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. If this novel could be boiled down to its very core little would be left but this very sentence "the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that 's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther..... And one fine morning-". This is the core; this is the beautiful epiphany at the end of one man 's hell, this is the light at the end of the long tunnel of greed and hatred. Even if one only scratches the very surface of this piece, he or she would see that Gatsby 's rise to power, his personal torment and inevitable downfall, and Nick 's final realization about what life is truly about all lead to the conclusion that a dream corrupted is still a dream worth having.

“Dreams don’t work unless you do.” In The Great Gatsby we see this quote, by John C. Maxwell, uphold itself. “He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.” (20-21). The reader can identify that it is obtainable to want a dream, but harder to achieve it. Gatsby one day goes after his American dream and was crushed like every American conveys to be. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald the reader can see how unobtainable one little dream can be to attain for Gatsby, Daisy, and

“Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily close out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men” (Fitzgerald, 6-7). American Dreams change from person to person, but if you want real things to happen you need to have the courage to purse them. Push yourself towards things you think are impossible, and dreams will begin coming true. As you read through the words of Fitzgerald’s American Dream, you’ll realize Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, Daisy Buchanan, and Nick Carraway play a enormous role in defining what the dream truly means. In Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby, wealth and luxury are the open-minded keys to the real American Dream, but without steady love dreams just become disappointments..

The American dream is something common to all people, but it is something that everyone views in different ways. The American dream is different for everyone, but they share some of the same aspects of it. The dream is dependent mainly on the setting of where one lives and one‘s social status. For example, The Declaration of Independence was by Thomas Jefferson, who was an upper class white male. He wanted freedom, but freedom for people like himself that were white landowning males. Martin Luther King, in his I Have a Dream speech, also called for freedom, but mostly for African Americans like himself. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his book The Great Gatsby, that he would have liked to eliminate the idle rich, which he was a part of. Every American dream is somewhat different, but they all relate to the times that one lives in.

The Great Gatsby is a very famous novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald that goes back to the 1920’s. The book is narrated by a man who actually witnessed the events and took part in these events, and his name is Nick Carraway. Through his narration, we learn about a man whose real man is James Gatz, but he goes by the name Jay Gatsby. He continuously calls people “old sport.” (Fitzgerald, 161) He lives in a mansion on West Egg near where Nick lives. He was raised on a farm with a poor family in North Dakota. This makes us wonder how he rose to having such fortune. Well he did do it illegally, as in this time period; it was one way people made money if they could not do it any other way. As his life progressed, he became interested in other women; we find out later that he really loved Daisy Buchanan for a while. Daisy is a sweet beautiful young lady that Tom married when Jay was looking to get an education. He would throw parties all the time to achieve one ultimate goal and that was to get Daisy to fall in love with him, and achieving his version of the American Dream with Daisy is a goal that Jay wanted to achieve but there were a couple of obstacles in the way.

Having money, a big house, and a happy family is the epitome of what the American Dream is really about. In the book The Great Gatsby, the upper class people like Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby, live their younger years abusing their wealth without thinking about the affect they have on themselves, as well as others and what the American Dream is truly about. The meaning of the American Dream can be looked at from different perspectives. So many people work hard everyday and devote their lives to live the American Dream. In The novel The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald conveys the main protagonist, Jay Gatsby, as he attempts to live the American Dream. Sometimes people are unable or

Nestled within the pockets of light illuminated sparsely by the towering rods of light, New York City seems to be the limelight of humanity. Eventually, spirits burn with fervor as they reach for the heights of the sky scrapers hoping to ride along with the times. To a certain extent, Nick Caraway might be a passenger on what we might consider the ride of a lifetime. Witnessing the meteoric rise and downfall of a once great man would turn Nick into a skeptic, uttering the very lines, “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart”. In human nature, it’s only natural to dream of something and imagine its rise. Growing up to become stars in the eyes of everyone to eventually realize those stars are

In the roaring years of the 1920’s, America encountered a dramatic, (yet, exciting) social, cultural, and politic change. The restrictions of the country's Victorian past were no longer a part of its society and the rise of a consumer culture, the upsurge of mass entertainment, and the so-called "revolution in morals and manners" became the new description of America. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby reflected on this decade, illustrating the ambition of one man trying to upscale in his life in order to reach the “American Dream” and his despair of losing it.

Red, white , and blue are iconic to the American culture we know of. They can show our passion, desire, and pride for our country, but you will always have you might have to give in, against what your morals tell you.In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald uses the colors red, blue, and white to symbolize the American dream. To accomplish the American dream you need passion and desire but you will face situations where your morals will compromised. Passion is a necessity when trying to accomplish the American dream. Fitzgerald used the color red when he was revealing someone's passion and love.Fitzgerald uses the color blue when describing desire which is another crucial part of achieving the American dream. Lastly, when trying to accomplish the American dream you will be faced with moments where you may have to compromise your morals.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald depicts and eulogizes the American dream in his paperback, The Great Gatsby where he tries to explain the approving ways and disapproving ways of the “good life”. In the 1920’s the American dream is rendered in symbolic ways throughout the novel, but is specifically shown in the roles of the characters. The American dream is not always achievable, sometimes the effects of reaching it can be a lot worse than anyone can imagine, especially through the lives of George, Myrtle, and Gatsby.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in the town of Saint Paul, Minnesota to a small struggling family. By the age of 24 he published his first novel, This Side of Paradise which quickly became a famous novel, selling over 40,000 copies in one year. In 1924 Fitzgerald made the decision to move to France with the hopes of a new land inspiring fresh ideas for his novels. One year after moving, he published his most famous work, The Great Gatsby.

Ever since its publication in April 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” has become one of the most criticized, cited, and analytical pieces of fiction in American literature history. It is a great representation of an era known as the Jazz Age when anything and everything was possible, or at least that is what people thought. Fitzgerald provides the reader with an insight of the internal mindsets of the characters, which justifies their actions and behaviors instead of simply just describing their historical, social, and economic conditions. The overall cause for the majority of this novel is based on one vast idea, an idea that everyone attempted to do during this time period. This idea is the ubiquitous notion of the American Dream. “Critics from several different generations have noted how Fitzgerald used his conflicts to explore the origins and fate of the American dream and the related idea of the nation. The contradictions he experienced and put into fiction heighten the implications of the dream for individual lives: the promise and possibilities, violations and corruptions of those ideals of nationhood and personality “dreamed into being,” as Ralph Ellison phrased it, “out of the chaos and darkness of the feudal past”” (Callahan). One of the main characters, Jay Gatsby, is created to magnify Fitzgerald’s personal feelings and beliefs about

“They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.” (Fitzgerald 17) Since as early as the 1920’s, perhaps even earlier, the United States of America was a beacon of hope - a symbol of prosperity and freedom - that everybody originating from countries that did not offer the same opportunities craved to experience. Innumerous historical events, like the great migration movements to Angel and Ellis Island, proved America’s status as the homeland for success. Yet, as literature pieces from the time demonstrate, like The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the great “American Dream” ideology had been watered down by social hierarchy and

Fitzgerald F. Scott come up with a way to write a novel representing the Jazz age and the American Dream. Jay Gatsby was a wealthy man. The disillusionment of the American Dream. Jay Gatsby, hoping to find the love of his life and to live the American Dream style.

Frances Scott Fitzgerald suggests that the dream of wealth and glamour is treacherous and temporary, with only heartache and disappointment at the end of the road in his novel, The Great Gatsby. The novel was written in the 1920’s, when relative abundance made people dream of being rich. People were focused on making money and living a lavish lifestyle. The characters of The Great Gatsby, show that the American dream of riches are empty and do not last.