The American Dream In The Great Gatsby
The American Dream
After World War I, America seemed to guarantee unlimited financial and social opportunities for anyone willing to work hard – the American Dream. For some, however, striving for and realizing that dream corrupted them, as they acquired wealth only to seek pleasure. Even though the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby appear to adore the freedom of the 1920s, their lives reveal the decline of happiness that results when wealth and pleasure swallow them. Specifically, through the wealth-greedy lives of three characters, Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, and Daisy Buchanan, Fitzgerald portrays that a materialistic lifestyle does not lead to happiness and causes a decline of the American Dream.
A character who holds …show more content…
The two have an affair before he goes back to war and he is shocked that she has moved on when he returns. "As a seventeen-year-old he transformed himself from plain James Gatz, to Jay Gatsby for whom anything is possible” (Telgen par.56). Gatsby decides to follow a new model of himself that converts reality into possibility. "We see how the focus has become blurred: how the possibilities of life are conceived of in material terms. But in that heroic list of the vaster luxury items - motor-boats, aquaplanes, private beaches, Rolls-Royces, diving towers - Gatsby’s vision maintains its gigantic unreal stature” (Bewley par.12). Although he has all his materialistic possessions, he has not hoarded his wealth for himself. Everything he has done in life has been done to fulfill his dream which is to prove to Daisy that he is worthy of her. In fact, Gatsby pursues in illegal activity to get rich quick and win Daisy’s heart. “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn‘t far wrong" (Fitzgerald 133-134). He is oblivious to how reality works because he declares …show more content…
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" (Fitzgerald 188). Tom is indirectly responsible for Gatsby 's death because Tom uses George Wilson 's hatred and jealousy against Gatsby to make Wilson believe that Myrtle was Gatsby 's mistress. This shows the true hatred and villainous side of Tom
After World War I, America seemed to guarantee unlimited financial and social opportunities for anyone willing to work hard – the American Dream. For some, however, striving for and realizing that dream corrupted them, as they acquired wealth only to seek pleasure. Even though the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby appear to adore the freedom of the 1920s, their lives reveal the decline of happiness that results when wealth and pleasure swallow them. Specifically, through the wealth-greedy lives of three characters, Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, and Daisy Buchanan, Fitzgerald portrays that a materialistic lifestyle does not lead to happiness and causes a decline of the American Dream.
A character who holds …show more content…
The two have an affair before he goes back to war and he is shocked that she has moved on when he returns. "As a seventeen-year-old he transformed himself from plain James Gatz, to Jay Gatsby for whom anything is possible” (Telgen par.56). Gatsby decides to follow a new model of himself that converts reality into possibility. "We see how the focus has become blurred: how the possibilities of life are conceived of in material terms. But in that heroic list of the vaster luxury items - motor-boats, aquaplanes, private beaches, Rolls-Royces, diving towers - Gatsby’s vision maintains its gigantic unreal stature” (Bewley par.12). Although he has all his materialistic possessions, he has not hoarded his wealth for himself. Everything he has done in life has been done to fulfill his dream which is to prove to Daisy that he is worthy of her. In fact, Gatsby pursues in illegal activity to get rich quick and win Daisy’s heart. “He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn‘t far wrong" (Fitzgerald 133-134). He is oblivious to how reality works because he declares …show more content…
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" (Fitzgerald 188). Tom is indirectly responsible for Gatsby 's death because Tom uses George Wilson 's hatred and jealousy against Gatsby to make Wilson believe that Myrtle was Gatsby 's mistress. This shows the true hatred and villainous side of Tom