The Great Gatsby : The Corruption Of The American Dream

How does Fitzgerald relate Gatsby’s dream to the American Dream? What seems to be his message about the American Dream as expressed in the last two paragraphs of the novel?

“... it is a story about failure and death, an idealistic quest for unworthy goals, and the almost total collapse of the aspirations of nearly all of the principal characters” (Nagel 113). The Great Gatsby is a story that represents people’s unachieved aspirations that lead to a sad existence and ultimately death. They are all trying to attain one thing, the American Dream. The American Dream is almost impossible to attain and that is why a lot of people failed when it came to living out the American Dream. In Fitzgerald’s, “The Great Gatsby”, Gatsby tries to attain the American Dream through Daisy throughout the whole novel but fails and is left heartbroken.

There are many aspects that contribute to the american dream. The most recognizable are wealth and love, but ultimately, the american dream is having everything you could want and more. A lot of the time the american dream is associated with an underdog type of perspective, or a ‘rags-to-riches’ type story. This is to show that the dream can be achieved by anyone, even those starting out with little to nothing to their name. The idea of the american dream is explored in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In this story, Jay Gatsby is one of the few who are close to achieving the american dream, but falls just short of actually doing so. What stops Gatsby from achieving the american dream is his inability to see the negative aspects to

The American Dream and Gatsby’s Dream in the gigantic city of New York during the roaring 20’s have many similarities. Gatsby becomes lost in his journey to his dream through life when getting re-acquainted with a young “golden” girl by the name of Daisy. He falls in love with her at such a young age it seems that this is the only girl for him. His only dream is to get Daisy. It’s sad to say due to Gatsby's tunnel vision and isolation, he struggles to create or maintain close relationships in the present because he is trapped in the past.

Achieving the American Dream is like fighting over the last TV on Black Friday. The American Dream is very limited. A person has to have a certain background to achieve it. The American Dream is an illusion. America wants one to believe that they have the perfect set of materialistic things to make their life better. The American Dream consist of having money, a nice house, a great looking car, and a family. Not everyone can achieve that though because of the barriers that they have in this country. The American Dream is not achievable by all people because individual’s divergent backgrounds.

1. The green light, situated at the end of the Buchanan’s dock, represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates the light with Daisy and in Chapter one, he reaches toward it

The American dream is the belief that all Americans can achieve personal happiness and success through hard work, initiative, and determination. It says that all people should and do have the opportunity to achieve this. It was meant to encourage Americans to strive for their dreams and make an attempt to turn dreams into reality. The Great Gatsby shows how the American dream is represented by the American people. Fitzgerald, however, uses symbolism to show that the American dream is corrupted due to Americans’ view of it and how they strive to achieve it.

“That locality is always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad glare of afternoon, and now I turned my head as though I had been warned of something behind. Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of Doctor T.J Eckleberg kept their vigil, but I perceived, after a moment, that someone’s eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than twenty feet away”(Fitzgerald 124). The eyes of Doctor T.J Eckleberg watches over all the characters while they live in what they consider the “American dream”. The Great Gatsby, a historical fiction novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, speaks to the readers about the illusion of the American dream. Gatsby’s life and death is a product of an illusion because of Gatsby’s determination for wealth in his youth, the unlawful money he receives, and Gatsby’s love for “old money”.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald employs the use of characters, themes, and symbolism to convey the idea of the American Dream and its corruption through the aspects of wealth, family, and status. In regards to wealth and success, Fitzgerald makes clear the growing corruption of the American Dream by using Gatsby himself as a symbol for the corrupted dream throughout the text. In addition, when portraying the family the characters in Great Gatsby are used to expose the corruption growing in the family system present in the novel. Finally, the American longing for status as a citizen is gravely overshot when Gatsby surrounds his life with walls of lies in order to fulfill his desires for an impure dream. F.

'The Great Gatsby is a novel about the corruption of the American Dream.' How far would you agree with this statement?

In the United States' Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers "…held certain truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." This sentiment can be considered the foundation of the American Dream, the dream that everyone has the ability to become what he or she desires to be. While many people work to attain their American dream, others believe that the dream is seemingly impossible to reach, like F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby examines the "Jazz-Age" generation's search for the elusive American Dream of wealth and happiness and scrutinizes the consequences of that

Symbolism is a big part in how people express certain feelings or represent important items. The American Dream is a huge achievement that everyone wants to reach. Whether people want to admit it or not, it is a symbol all it’s self. It can be anything really, a great job, a family, white picket fence, even music or attending concerts of your favorite band. The American Dream is something that makes you so happy and what you can achieve or want achieve in your lifetime. The main AMerican Dream is money, a family, and happiness. In The Great Gatsby the american dream is a green light.There are several different colors for the different symbols in the book which are portrayed throughout the book often, and in the right context. Each character is put with that color and in different scenes for different reasons. Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, and Nick Carraway all portrayed the same color symbol; yellow which stands for death and or/ corruption.

The American dream is an ideology, a vision that’s form varies from individual to individual, based upon one’s own experiences. Although the one thing that remains constant in every single definition is that this ideology, just as the name states, is only a dream. It is meant to merely drive people to unlock their hidden potential and become their best self, for the sole purpose of living one’s out one’s own definition of success. In “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the American Dream is Jay Gatsby’s inspiration and his opportunity, however, as the book progresses it becomes more evident that not all people share the same opportunity.

The American Dream was first evinced in the Declaration of Independence, which expresses the idea that all men are created equal with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, the phrase “The American Dream” was disseminated by James Truslow Adams, in his novel Epic of America. He described the American Dream as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.". However, in the 1920’s the meaning of the American Dream morphed from the opportunity and right to achieve a better life through hard work to the impatient attainment of material possessions. This corruption of the American Dream can be seen in the novel The Great Gatsby. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerld demonstrates the corruption of the American Dream through three social groups within West Egg, East Egg, and The Valley of Ashes.

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