What Is The American Dream Real In The Great Gatsby

The American Dream, the hope that every single citizen of the United States has the equal right and opportunity to gain prosperity and success through hard work, integrity, and honest means. In the narrative The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he symbolizes the dying American Dream at the turn of the Century through the characters and plot of his novel. The book takes place in the 1920’s which was an era full of young, and innovative people taking every advantage of the American Dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald shows this through setting, plot, and in particular one major character, Jay Gatsby.

     Throughout the novel, Jay Gatsby explains the type of character he is, through his lies. Gatsby acts out to be a man who has it all. The only item missing from Gatsby’s life is love. Love is the only true key to happiness with out it you are lost. Gatsby goes all out to be loved even if it means lying.

Jay Gatsby, the title character of the novel is an incredibly wealthy young man, living in a medieval mansion in West Egg on an imaginary area of Long Island. Gatsby has many laudable traits. For example, he is filled with optimism and the ability to transform his dreams into reality. Jay is also extremely faithful to his true love, Daisy Buchanan, even to the point of death. When we first meet Gatsby, he is the aloof host of the fantastically opulent parties thrown every weekend at his mansion. It appears he is surrounded by wondrous luxury and is courted by beautiful women and the rich and powerful men of the time. Jay is also a very admirable character due to his status of wealth and being a hero of War World I, “In the Argonne Forest I took two machine gun detachments so far forward that there was half a mile gap on either side… I was promoted to be a major, and every Allied government gave me a decoration- even Montenegro”. However, Nick who narrates the book views Gatsby as a flawed man who is dishonest, deceitful, a liar, and a dreamer whom is searching for answers in the past, “he talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself, perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy… if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was…”

Jay Gatsby, one of the main characters in the novel, fails to realize that when one tells a lie, it comes back to bite you. For example, he initially tells his neighbor, and potential friend Nick, that he had inherited his redundant sums of money from his family. One night, the night Gatsby reunites with Daisy, he and Nick are admiring his substantial house. During the

Many works of literature contain a character who intentionally deceives others. In Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, the character Jay Gatsby deceives the entire world with his riches and his extravagant house on West Egg, as well as his bootleg industries. Although it was deliberate and a little selfish, he does it all to find and woo what he believes to be his true love, Daisy Buchanan.

While miscommunication is often lauded as a lazy way of driving the story onwards, in this case it fits perfectly. Jay Gatsby’s life was a lie, and it was fitting that it would end over one as well. Gatsby constructed a rich and prosperous image of himself to appeal to

The idea of American Dream as presented by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Great Gatsby novel involves rising from poverty or rags to richness and wealthy. The American Dream exemplifies that elements such as race, gender, and ethnicity are valueless as they do not influence the ability of an individual to rise to power and richness. This American Dream makes the assumption that concepts such as xenophobia are non-existent in America a concept that is not true and shows vagueness of the American Dream. In his novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the Great Gatsby to demonstrate the overall idea of living the American dream. Gatsby leaves his small village of farmers and manages to work his way up the ladder although some of the money he uses to climb the ladder is associated with crime “He was a son of God and he must be about His Father's Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty” (Fitzgerald 6.7). This phrase shows that Gatsby wasn’t meant for a life similar to that of his father but rather destined for greatness. However, his dream his short-lived and he doesn’t make it to the top as Daisy who is a symbol of his wealthy rejects her and a series of events transpire that result in his death before he could live his American Dream alongside everyone else who was working up the ladder to live the American Dream.

Finally, Jay Gatsby’s delusions draws more pity for him. Daisy comes from a rich family and chances of her ending up with Gatsby, a poor soldier, is totally unrealistic. Furthermore Gatsby wants Daisy to “ go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you’” (105) but Daisy asserts that “ [she] can’t say [she] never loved Tom…It wouldn’t be true.”(126) Jay cannot grasp the present reality that Daisy could not leave Tom permanently, especially when the fruit of their love is already three years of age.

Jay Gatsby, the title character of The Great Gatsby, is really not all that the title might suggest. First of all, his real name is James Gatz. He changed it in an effort to leave behind his old life as a poor boy and create an entirely new identity. He is also a liar and a criminal, having accumulated his wealth and position by dishonest means. But he is still called ‘great,’ and in a sense he is. Gatsby is made great by his unfaltering hope, and his determination to live in a perfect world with Daisy and their perfect love. Gatsby has many visible flaws—his obvious lies, his mysterious way of avoiding straight answers. But they are shadowed over by his gentle smile and his visible hunger for an ideal future. The coarse and playful Jay

One of the most influential writers of the early 20th century was a man named F. Scott Fitzgerald. The biggest topic that he wrote about was the American Dream. Fitzgerald uses many different aspects of writing to get his opinion across, such as the outcome of stories like The Great Gatsby and “Winter Dreams”. He also uses the setting and to explain his beliefs. Based of his work, Fitzgerald believes the American dream is not only unrealistic, but also unattainable.

First off, Jay Gatsby comes off as a nice man who throws huge, florid parties and lets everyone come over even if he doesn’t know who they are. He seems mysterious, reticent, and rather elegant but know one knows who he once was. Gatsby was in the war as everyone knew, but no one knew his secret love. He didn’t get rich in a correct way but more so a corrupt way. He sold fake bonds and was a bootlegger and did it all for one girl. The light at the end of her dock was glowing green brightly and he would stare at it from his, reaching for

Jay Gatsby is the biggest culprit regarding the portrayal of dishonest behaviour. The protagonist of the novel puts together an enticing and intriguing biography of himself that leaves everyone speculating rumours about the origin of his wealth and supposed occupation. The intelligent man fails to that his lies eventually cumulate, creating an even larger fib to uphold. Gatsby has no limitations on when he stops his lies, for example, he lies to his future friend Nick about the fact that he inherited his large sums of money from his family. During his long awaited meeting with Daisy, he lets slip that “it took me just three years to earn the money that bought [Gatsby’s house]”. When Nick questions him about his apparent inheritance, Gatsby

In The Great Gatsby, Nick states that we will always run faster, try to reach more things, and always be thrown back. This relates to the American Dream, as we always try to achieve more in it, so it is never complete. Gatsby shows that we are always thrown back, and always try to reach more. As do Daisy and Tom as they were rich, young, beautiful, lived in a nice place, and had a kid, but it still was not enough. They had everything that is typically wanted, but they were not happy.

Gatsby lived more in his mind, dreaming, than seeing things for what they really were. Will it ever be enough or is there no limit living the American Dream? In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that the American Dream is a fantasy, the people who pursue it are Gatsby, Tom, Daisy and this pursuit is ultimately just an illusion in the imagination of hope.

In this passage Jay admits to Nick that he intentionally lied to Daisy as he never expected to lose his heart. This led Jay to forever be on path of chasing his dreams to be with her, and even going to the extent of bootlegging, putting himself at risk in attempt to pose as an alternate person for daisy resulting and losing himself along the way. It can be seen that he loses himself when the book says, “no telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o'clock – until long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” (Fitzgerald 111). Jay had everything, wealth, mansion, and cars, but it seemed he had nothing as love was the only concept that materialistic objects could not buy. Jay lived in a dream in which he was altered himself to please others rather than himself and eventually paying with it for his life.