What Makes Great Gatsby a Classic Essay

The American Dream, a long standing ideal embodies the hope that one can achieve financial success, political power, and everlasting love through dedication and hard work. During the Roaring 20s, people in America put up facades to mask who they truly were. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald conveys that the American Dream is simply an illusion, that is idealist and unreal. In the novel, Gatsby, a wealthy socialite pursues his dream, Daisy. In the process of pursuing Daisy, Gatsby betrays his morals and destroys himself. Through the eyes of the narrator, Nick,

The American Dream was the vision that brought many people to America to start a new life in a strange and foreign land. This vision or dream is a common discussion topic by modern writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on Long Island in the summer of 1922. On the surface, it seems that the novel is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman, but the masterpiece major theme is about the American dream. The author writes about a man who takes the dream too far and becomes unable to distinguish his false life of riches from reality.

The American dream can mean many different things and can be interpreted in different ways. To some people, the American dream is the belief that if a person works hard enough, he or she can be successful in America no matter what race, gender, or nationality. In the 1920’s, the concept of the American dream was very much the same, that an individual can achieve success in life regardless of family history or social status if he or she works hard enough. By having money, a car, a big house, expensive clothes, and a loving family symbolizes the American dream. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the 1920’s is a time period in which the American dream becomes corrupt and dangerous. For Jay Gatsby, a main character in the novel, his American dream is about gaining wealth and material possessions in order to find happiness. Through his decision to symbolize wealth, superficiality, irresponsibility, and foreshadowing, Fitzgerald conveys the the theme that the American dream is a perfect concept and is something that can never be accomplished, but can always be reached for.

Fitzgerald regards himself as a failure, and it was only after his death in 1940 that the greatness of his novel was recognized. The novel was published in 1925. After World War II, the novel became popular. It was taught in American high schools. Many stage and film versions of the novel also appeared. The Great Gatsby even became a front runner for the title of ‘The Great American novel’.

Ahhh The American Dream, the one entity that most people are reaching out trying to grasp. The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald displays the life of America in the 1920s, “The Roaring Twenties”. The twenties were a time of prosperity for America. The Great Gatsby lived in a time of new cars, expensive parties and as some in the roaring twenties might say it was “spiffy!” The American Dream seems unattainable to some but to others, it is right around the corner. Jay Gatsby had the rags-to-riches story that hits all of us so dear. The Great Gatsby had The American Dream by working hard to get where he was. Everyone has the inner desire to do something great and achieve The American Dream. There are many routes people take in order to get there such as; inheritance, deceit, or working hard for it. It is the ideal that everyone should have the opportunity by working hard to achieve success.

In The Great Gatsby, the American Dream, is, in fact, unattainable. For Gatsby, his dream is to erase the past five years of his life and to love Daisy again and to have her love him. But, this is impossible for one cannot simply go back in time and change what might have been. Gatsby finds himself working to reach his goal by indulging in ludicrous material goods and contriving a way to make Daisy fall for him. In Tom Buchanan’s case, his dream is to control. He wants for both Daisy and his mistress, Myrtle, to love him and to be fine with an affair. This dream is also unattainable because everyone loses in this situation. In the end, Myrtle is killed, and so is Tom’s destination. For Nick Carraway, he wants to start over. He wants to find himself, run away from rumors and from his family and commence a new life. He gets caught up in the childish antics of Gatsby and Daisy and Tom and loses who he is instead of discovering his true meaning. When all is said and done, Nick packs up and moves back West. It’s clear that F. Scott Fitzgerald is cynical towards the idea of the American Dream and uses The Great Gatsby as his way of expressing his views.

From the outside, one may think The Great Gatsby is a tragic love story. However, its overall theme is more about The American Dream and how people are unable to obtain it. The Great Gatsby took place in the 1920s, a time in which America’s economy was booming. At the same time

The main theme of the novel “The Great Gatsby” focuses on the American Dream and it is portrayed through the life of Jay Gatsby. Through Gatsby’s life we see the withering of the American Dream, a tragedy that struck Jay’s near finished dream. The American Dream is what many have hoped of achieving, it has existed in the past and is in the present. The American Dream gives people a goal that they can work towards, it also gives them a purpose in life. The American Dream represents luxury and wealth it believes the goodness of the quality of life. For Jay Gatsby, he was so close to achieving the American Dream. He had the wealth and the class, all he needed was his long lost love, Daisy. Gatsby truly believed that he

He wants closure about what happened between them. Daisy confronts Gatsby about an affair she had with Tom, and he doesn’t even care at this point because what they had was ‘real’. She claims to love them both but she decides she wants to go back with Gatsby and not her husband. On her way back, she accidently kills a woman on the side of the road speeds off with Gatsby’s car. Gatsby gets blamed for the death and the husband of the woman shoots him. No one attends Gatsby’s funeral but Nick. This goes to show Gatsby really had no body in his life, and his own true love whom he did everything for, didn’t love him equally. Throughout the whole book, Fitzgerald points out that Gatsby was living his American dream, but because his dream was Daisy, he was living his dream out of fantasy not reality.

In the past the American Dream was an inspiration to many, young and old. To live out the American Dream was what once was on the minds of many Americans. In The Great Gatsby, the American Dream was presented as a corrupted version of what used to be a pure and honest ideal way to live. The idea that the American Dream was about the wealth and the possessions one had been ingrained, somehow, into the minds of Americans during the 1920’s. As a result of the distortion of the American Dream, the characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby along with many others, lived life fully believing in the American Dream, becoming completely immersed in it and in the end suffered great tragedies.

While The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is widely renowned for being a brand new take on the classic 1920s esque story, The Great Gatsby is very similar to the wonderful ancient works of old. Each character falls into a certain category in the age old temple of literature complete with their own goals and motives. The Great Gatsby is definitely unique in certain aspects and how it plays on the 1920s style of living, but the characters in the novel fit into the archetypes and match up with ancient stories that have been around for centuries.

The Great Gatsby is a novel that illustrates the society in the 1920's and the associated beliefs, values and dreams of the American population at that time. These beliefs, values and dreams can be summed up be what is termed the "American Dream", a dream of money, wealth, prosperity and the happiness that supposedly came with the booming economy and get-rich-quick schemes that formed the essential underworld of American upper-class society. This underworld infiltrated the upper echelons and created such a moral decay within general society that paved the way for the ruining of dreams and dashing of hopes as they were placed confidently in the chance for opportunities that could be seized by one and all. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the

When reading a book you should be transported into a world that you can both relate to but also learn from. In the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald you are effectively transported into the early twentieth century. You see many things that people living in 1922 would have to go through as well as things that are still relatable to today. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald shows you many images to effectively convey and highlight his themes of the innocence and lose of innocence, differences in social classes, and the american dream.

The American dream in The Great Gatsby written by Scott Fitzgerald, About fighting for what we want. American Dream makes us strong and brave to do things we would not do. American dream can be clothes, money, luxury, and love. In the novel the American Dream is what we picture but if we dig deep inside there are crushed dreams and conquered but failed. American dream is not what we all pictured in the Great Gatsby but they make us believe how great is life is. The Great Gatsby is about high class society where does not mean that all American Dreams come true but there are always a bad ending to their American Dreams.

The Roaring 20's was an era of decadence and endless possibility. The American Dream was something that everyone coveted. Essentially, The American Dream meant that anyone who had the talent and worked hard enough, could achieve it. Money, a loving spouse, and status all showed that a person had been successful in their life and were vital points to the American Dreams of the Characters in the Great Gatsby. Many of them strived in their own way to achieve “the dream”, however, twisted ideals of love, wealth, and class led to the eventual fall of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby.