The American Dream In The Great Gatsby, By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, may at first glance resemble a story of unrequited love. However, closer examination reveals the work to be much more than that. The Great Gatsby is a story about The American Dream and the moral corruption that sometimes occurred in the pursuit of that dream. The American Dream has been described as being the pursuit of happiness while maintaining strong moral values. However,as Fitzgerald vividly portrays, The American Dream seems to have become the pursuit of wealth accompanied by extreme moral decay. Greed and selfish pleasure are the focal points of the book as portrayed by the interactions of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan.
The principal character, Jay Gatsby, becomes obsessed with achieving great

Gatsby took full advantage of Prohibition and secured his wealth by selling illegal alcohol. He and his crony, Meyer Wolfshiem, were in business together. “He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter,” (Fitzgerald, 133). With his fortune secured, Gatsby searched for Daisy and Tom. Having found them, he purchased a properly ostentatious mansion across the bay from them. Ironically Fitzgerald, places Gatsby’s mansion in West Egg, the part of town where the newly rich reside. The “newly rich” are looked down upon by the “old rich”. The old rich, which include Tom and Daisy, live in the more socially accepted East Egg. This means that while Gatsby is like them he is not of them, which is vitally important to social acceptance during the

It is an insight, perhaps, into Gatsby’s inner self that he never attended his own parties. He did, however, begin to enjoy the ability to be extravagant and wasteful. Daisy’s failure to attend Gatsby’s parties required him to seek other means of being near his true love. Delving into her life in an attempt to seek out her close friends, Gatsby meets Nick Carraway, Daisy’s cousin and his next door neighbor. He forms a friendship of sorts with Carraway and begins to confide some of his past. Gatsby never revealed his past association with the Mafia, nor did he share his criminal past with Carraway fearful that Daisy might discover this . Gatsby’s choice to attain the American Dream by whatever means necessary is an accurate representation of the 1920’s attitude. When an opportunity presented itself, one did not questions the morals or legalities of said opportunity. The old argument of “the means justifying the end” was perfectly acceptable. During the Prohibition era, many Americans abandoned legal ethics in favor of bootlegging alcohol and other criminal activity. it is only fair to state that some of the populace in taking up the criminal occupation of bootlegging did so out of need and not