Evaluation Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

854 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The consequences of wealth in the great gatsby

The American Dream in The Great Gatsby The Roaring Twenties staged a radical change throughout the United States. This time period will always be remembered as an era of deteriorated moral and social principles as well as a time of greed and mass consumption sustained by a national economic boom. Consequently, the idea that anyone, regardless of their race, social position or gender, could achieve wealth, was collectively shared. The belief that all individuals could obtain freedom, equality and opportunity was strong amongst American society during the 1920’s. In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald created the novel The Great Gatsby, which perfectly described how the American Dream influenced people's behaviour. In both the novel and the movie, directed …show more content…

Money was what kept both of them apart. Coming from a wealthy family, Daisy was brought up to understand that an affluent girl could not be with someone from an inferior social class. When Gatsby’s beloved Daisy went off to marry Tom Buchanan, he was determined to do anything in his power to win her back. Four years later, Gatsby came back looking for Daisy, after having developed an immense amount of wealth. He moved right across her house so that he could be close to her and threw massive parties hoping that she would potentially appear one night. “Can't repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “ Why of course you can!” (Fitzgerald p. 152 ). The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock across the bay kept fueling Gatsby’s hopes and dreams to be with her. In the movie, Luhrmann emphasizes the light many times, as a symbol of longing and desire. This symbol was what encouraged Gatsby to prevail in his attempt to make his dream come true. In Gatsby’s mind, Daisy was his American Dream. This fixation was what eventually drove the main character to his death. Fitzgerald used Gatsby’s infatuation with Daisy to represent how the American Dream was unattainable for most individuals and how their failure to achieve it led to their

Show More
Related

  • American Dream: A Pursuit Through Literature

    1501 Words  | 4 Pages

    The American dream is defined as “the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative”, yet many people in this day of age believe that this is no longer a plausible aspiration. Neverless, this demeanor is at the heart of the classic American tales of the highest and lowest points of the American spirit, making one question whether or not this fundamental dream is still worth pursuit. Though it is a path containing hardships and challenges, actively seeking to achieve what you desire is one of the most prominent life lessons throughout American literature, as evidenced through the Crucible, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Great Gatsby.

    Read More

  • Essay On The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

    729 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald criticizes the American dream very elaborately and shows the idea of the American dream to be connected with the goal of achieving wealth. Fitzgerald does not praise wealth in the Great Gatsby but condemns it by drawing attention to the dreadful fall made by Gatsby. Fitzgerald finds the desire of wealth to be a corrupting impact on people. Throughout the novel, the characters with money contradict the idea of the American dream. They are portrayed to be very snobbish and unhappy people. The American dream in the novel is shown to be unachievable. For some time, the American dream has been focused upon material things that will gain people success.

    Read More

  • The American Dream in The Great Gatsby

    811 Words  | 2 Pages

    The American Dream There is no set definition to be found anywhere of the true meaning of The American Dream. Any hope, dream, or goal pursued by anyone in the history of America is an American Dream. In modern times the accepted dream seems to be 2.5 children, a house with a white picket fence, and a perfect spouse. However, as it is shown throughout literature from the early days of America to contemporary times, the American Dream is not always so simple a concept. America was originally founded on the dream of freedom.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Idealism In The Great Gatsby

    2068 Words  | 5 Pages

    Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has indisputably been one of the most influential and insightful pieces on the corruption and idealism of the American Dream. The American Dream, defined as ‘The belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone,’ was a dominant ideal in American society, stemming from an opportunist pioneer mentality. In his book ‘The American Tradition in Literature’, Bradley Sculley praised The Great Gatsby for being ‘perhaps the most striking fictional analysis of the age of gang barons and the social conditions that produced them.’ Over the years, greed and selfishness changed the basic essence of the American Dream, forming firmly integrated social classes and the uncontainable thirst for money and status. The ‘Roaring Twenties’ was a time of ‘sustained increase in national wealth’ , which consequently led to an increase in materialism and a decrease in morality. Moreover, the

    Read More

  • How The Great Gatsby Relates to the American Dream

    951 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Great Gatsby is a story of the American Dream. The Great Gatsby is a view into the society of the 1920's masterfully created by Fitzgerald. In this society, the one and only Gatsby falls right into the middle. Gatsby is an exemplary example of one trying to live out the American Dream.

    Read More

  • Symbols of The Great Gatsby

    1239 Words  | 3 Pages

    The 1920s were a time of big dreams, moral decline, and hardships in America. The Roaring Twenties were a different time altogether with its bootleggers and speakeasies, women becoming more independent, the poor becoming poorer, but through all this was The American Dream keeping the hope afloat. F. Scott Fitzgerald captured this era in his book, The Great Gatsby. Through his many symbols he illustrates the hopes, the forgotten God, and the oppressed Americans of the Twenties. The symbols in The Great Gatsby help convey several different themes, from wealth to loss of morals, to poverty.

    Read More

  • Essay On The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

    1872 Words  | 4 Pages

    The American Dream is a powerful thing in the lives and hopes of its citizens, as shown in Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby. It is, and was, faith in individualism, expectation of progress, and mainly the belief in America as a land of opportunity. However, it also is differs from person to person. This plays a great part in Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby. His book took place in the 1920 's, which is also called the 'Roaring 20 's '. During this time, many Americans were freely spending. Moreover, the economy was doing extremely well and thus provided citizens with a sense of security and intense freedom. Many used that freedom and economic boom to become rich in business.

    Read More

  • The American Dream in The Great Gatsby

    672 Words  | 2 Pages

    Within the veins of every American flows the undeniable drive to succeed. This power creates rich from poor, turns struggles into money and ultimately opens the window for all peoples to better themselves. Although the American dream still converts dirt into gold today, views on this leap to greatness have changed moderately since the 1920’s.

    Read More

  • The American Dream In The Great Gatsby Analysis

    1189 Words  | 3 Pages

    F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby shows the American Dream is not obtainable by any person, no matter what the social economical level one might be born into, and its pursuit comes at a heavy price. Jay Gatsby, George Wilson, Tom Buchanan are just a few characters that risk everything to achieve the American Dream, but are incapable of ever reaching that euphoria. Dreaming, or “an idea or vision that is created in your imagination and that is not real” i s not part of this world and is pure fantasy, but Fitzgerald’s characters still think it is achievable.

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby and the American Dream

    864 Words  | 2 Pages

    The freedom in self endowment has always been the fuel to the average American citizen and his drive toward success. In other words, Americans always strive to achieve the ever so revered American Dream. What is the American Dream? David Kamp describes the American Dream as "the idea rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."(Kamp). The dream lies deeply rooted in American society and the very mention of it lights a passionate fire in the hearts of American citizens everywhere. The idea behind the dream is that if an individual has sufficient willpower, he or she has a fair chance of achieving wealth as well as the freedom and happiness that come packaged with it. Essentially, it offers the opportunity of achieving spiritual and material fulfillment. It promises success at the cost of hard work and perseverance. Over time however, this idea of attaining success through hard work and perseverance has been skewed into one which exploits greed and carelessness and The Great Gatsby is an excellent affirmation of this. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald derides the gradual corruption of hard work and perseverance in the American Dream by utilizing the motif of driving and incorporating it with the the ideas of greed and carelessness.

    Read More

  • Research Paper On The Great Gatsby

    1163 Words  | 3 Pages

    Up until now, the term American Dream is still a popular concept on how Americans or people who come to America should live their lives and in a way it becomes a kind of life goal. However, the definitions of the term itself is somehow absurd and everyone has their own definition of it. The historian James Tuslow defines American Dream as written in his book titled “The Epic of America” in 1931 as “...dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” The root of the term American Dream is actually can be traced from the Declaration of Independence in 1776 which stated “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby and the American Dream

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    Wealth, material possessions, and power are the core principles of The American Dream. Pursuit of a better life led countless numbers of foreign immigrants to America desiring their chance at the vast opportunity. Reaching the American Dream is not always reaching true happiness. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby achieves the American Dream, but his unrealistic faiths in money and life’s possibilities twist his dreams and life into useless life based on lies.

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby and the American Dream

    1547 Words  | 4 Pages

    F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby”, is one of the few novels he wrote in 1925. The novel takes place during the 1920’s following the 1st World War. It is written about a young man named Nick, from the east he moved to the west to learn about the bond business. He ends up moving next to a mysterious man named Gatsby who ends up giving him the lesion of his life.

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby And The American Dream

    1584 Words  | 4 Pages

    There have been many people whose success stories reflect the American Dream. Among these people is Richard DeVos who got his start by selling soap and distributing food products. Through hard work and good marketing, his business grew and turned into his own company called Amway. Through all his hard work, DeVos gained a great deal of money and became quite wealthy. A similar, but fictional story, is that of Jay Gatsby, whose central mission, to win Daisy, is the embodiment of the American Dream, the belief that anyone can achieve a solid career, have freedom to pursue their own dreams, and fundamentally in the values of optimism and hope.

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby: The Decline of The American Dream

    1066 Words  | 3 Pages

    The pursuit of the American Dream has been alive for generations. People from nations all over the world come to America for the chance to achieve this legendary dream of freedom, opportunity, and the “all American family”. However, in the 1920’s, this dream began to take a different form. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, unfolds what the American Dream really meant during the roaring 20’s. The Great Gatsby tells the story of the affluent Jay Gatsby and his dream of attaining the love of the married Daisy Buchanan.

    Read More

More about Evaluation Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

Open Document