The Great Gastby American Dream Essay, Research Paper

Fitzgerald’s dominant theme in The Great Gatsby focuses on the corruption of

the American Dream. By analyzing high society during the 1920s through the

eyes of narrator Nick Carraway, the author reveals that the American Dream

has transformed from a pure ideal of security into a convoluted scheme of

materialistic power. In support of this message, Fitzgerald highlights the

original aspects as well as the new aspects of the American Dream in his

tragic story to illustrate that a once impervious dream is now lost forever to

the American people.

The foundation qualities of the American Dream depicted in The Great

Gatsby are perseverance and hope. The most glorified of these characteristics

is that of success against all odds. The ethic of hard work can be found in the

life of young James Gatz, whose focus on becoming a great man is carefully

documented in his “Hopalong Cassidy” journal. When Mr Gatz shows the

tattered book to Nick, he declares, “‘Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He

always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he’s got

about improving his mind? He was always great for that.’” (pg 182) The

journal portrays the continual struggle for self-improvement which has defined

the image of America as a land of opportunity. By comparing the young

James Gatz to the young Benjamin Franklin, Fitzgerald proves that the

American Dream is indeed able to survive in the face of modern society. The

product of hard work is the wistful Jay Gatsby, who epitomizes the purest

characteristic of the American Dream: everlasting hope. His burning desire to

win Daisy’s love symbolizes the basis of the old dream: an ethereal goal and a

never-ending search for the opportunity to reach that goal. Gatsby is first seen

late at night, “standing with his hands in his pockets” and supposedly “out to

determine what share [is] his of our local heavens” (pg 25). Nick watches

Gatsby’s movements and comments:

“-he [stretches] out his arms toward the dark water in a curious

way, and as far as I [am] from him I [can swear] he [is]

trembling. Involuntarily I [glance] seaward-and [distinguish]

nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that

might [be] the end of the dock.” (pg 25)

Gatsby’s goal gives him a purpose in life and sets him apart from the rest of

the upper class. He is constantly striving to reach Daisy, from the moment he

is seen reaching towards her house in East Egg to the final days of his life,

patiently waiting outside Daisy’s house for hours when she has already

decided to abandon her affair with him. Gatsby is distinguished as a man who

retains some of the purest traits of the old dream, but loses them by

attempting to reach his goals by wearing the dream’s modern face.

Fitzgerald attributes the depravity of the modern dream to wealth, privilege,

and the void of humanity that those aspects create. Money is clearly identified

as the central proponent of the dream’s destruction; it becomes easily

entangled with hope and success, inevitably replacing their places in the

American Dream with materialism. This replacement is evident in Gatsby’s use

of illegal practices and underground connections to attain his enormous

fortune. His ostentatious parties, boundless mansion, and lavish clothing are all

signs of his unknowing corruption. His ability to evade the law, demonstrated

when his traffic violation is ignored by a police officer, reveals his use of status

and privilege to get what he needs. Although Gatsby’s rise to prominence is

symbolic of the nature of the new dream, the most odious qualities of that

dream are evident in Daisy and Tom Buchanan, who live their lives with no

hopes and no regrets because the true foundation of their characters is their

opulence. While Daisy is never heard from again after Gatsby’s death, Nick

confronts Tom one last time, at which point Gatsby’s rival responds: “‘I told

him the truth… What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him’” (pg

187). Tom admits to the fact that he is responsible for Gatsby’s murder and

Wilson’s suicide, but continues to claim innocence because he has never

known guilt nor shame as a member of the established elite. Through Nick,

Fitzgerald pinpoints the effect of the modern dream on the upper class, thus

condemning an entire people and its revered society:

“It couldn’t forgive him or like him but I saw what he had done

was, to him, entirely justified… 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… ” (pg 187)

Nick realizes that Tom and Daisy represent a class of heartless citizens who

have attained success at the cost of dehumanization. Their vast wealth blocks

out all inspiration and all true emotion, resulting in a void of apathy buttressed

by status and power.

At the end of the novel, Fitzgerald creates a sense of utter hopelessness to

prove that the purity of the American Dream is dead with the examples

Daisy’s baby, Gatsby’s death, and Wilson’s suicide. The first hint of this tragic

loss is the introduction of the Buchanans’ daughter, whom Daisy refers to as

“Bles-sed pre-cious.” When the girl is brought into the Buchanans’ salon, Nick

observes an obvious disturbance in Gatsby’s attitude, thinking, “Gatsby and I

in turn [lean] down and [take] the small reluctant hand. Afterwards he [keeps]

looking at the child with surprise. I don’t think he [has] ever really believed in

its existence before” (pg 123). Daisy then calls her child an “absolute little

dream,” crushing all hopes Gatsby has of truly recreating the past. Society’s

complete replacement of the American Dream with materialism is pointed out

moments later, when Nick and Gatsby attempt to discern the charm in Daisy’s

voice. At the moment Gatsby blurts out, “‘Her voice is full of money,’” Nick

stumbles across a revelation which changes his entire view of society:

“That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money-

that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle

of it, the cymbals’ song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king’s

daughter, the golden girl. . . .” (pg 127)

At this point, all of Daisy’s charm and beauty is stripped away, leaving nothing

but money to be admired underneath. The dream Gatsby has been so

inexorably pursuing is ripped apart into dollar bills as he discovers that for

years he has been pursuing not love, but cold, hard, money, hidden behind the

disguise of a human face. Subsequently, when Gatsby dies, any chance the

American Dream has of surviving in the dehumanized modern world dies with

him. Nick later speculates on Gatsby’s last thoughts before death,

conjecturing, “He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening

leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw

the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass” (pg 169). The hopes and

dreams which have strengthened and uplifted Gatsby are shattered as he lies

in the pool, dazed and confused in a world which he no longer understands.

After shooting Gatsby, George Wilson, Fitzgerald’s symbolization of the

common man struggling to achieve his own success within the realm of the

modern dream, commits suicide. The deaths of a rich man and a poor man,

both pushing themselves towards the same impossible goal, mirror the death

of the original dream on which America was founded. At the end of the novel,

Nick returns to the Midwest with this disconcerting knowledge, reflecting on

Gatsby’s life as the struggle of the American people in a society losing its

humanity: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly

into the past” (pg 189). The dream is now utterly lost and can never be

resurrected.

Through the unfolding events of a doomed romance, Fitzgerald simultaneously

unfolds the tragic fate of American values. Gatsby and the other characters of

his story act as vessels for the author’s true message- the American Dream,

once a pure and mighty ideal, has been buried and is pressed into the ground

by the inhuman void of money. Nick Carraway conveys this message as an

outsider, an honest man who is witnessing the entire ordeal as an observer.

The Great Gatsby is not the eulogy of a man named Jay Gatsby; rather, it is

the eulogy of an institution which once was, but is now gone and can never

be.

Bibliography

thomas hardy book.