F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby - A Tarnished American Dream

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The Great Gatsby: A Tarnished American Dream

Thesis: In his influential book The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald recognizes and describes many of the less alluring characteristics of the 1920's and the pursuit of the American Dream including dysfunctional relationships, materialism and classism.

The American dream states that people can work themselves up "from rags to riches" by hard work.1 For this reason, the new society has developed dreams of the blind pursuit of material, wealth, and economic success. F. Scott Fitzgerald realizes this big change in society, and considering the fact that he is a fighter for the old values, this novelist tries to warn people not to continue this wrong way. The ideal of the American Dream is based on the fantasy that an individual can achieve success regardless of family history, race, or religion simply by working hard enough. Dysfunctional relationships, according to Fitzgerald's way of writing, are based on infidelity, carelessness, and loveless couples. Materialism, on the other hand, situates wealth as advancement, and money, besides from becoming a shelter from the realities of life, acquires more importance than people. Classism, in the meanwhile, refers to racism, discrimination and snobbery, in the case of The Great Gatsby, present in West Egg. In his influential book The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald recognizes and describes many of the less alluring characteristics of the 1920's and the pursuit of the American Dream including dysfunctional relationships, materialism and classism.

F.Scott Fitzgerald describes and recognizes the pursuit of the American Dream present in the 1920's including dysfunctional relationships. These ...

... middle of paper ...

...that someone might really be happy with money, but without love?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Fitzgerald, F.Scott. The Great Gatsby. USA: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995.

2. http://www.allgatsby.com/gg.php?id=2&PHPSESSID=941b74eeb32ae15afea13a1b661098eb. All Gatsby. Date accessed: March 10, 2003.

3. http://www.homework-online.com/tgg/index.asp. The Great Gatsby Readers. Date accessed: March 13, 2003.

4. http://www.homework-online.com/tgg/quotes.asp. The Great Gatsby Quotes. Date accessed: March 16, 2003.

5. http://allfreeessays.com/student/free/The_death_of_the_American_Dream.shtml. Essay; The Death of the American Dream. Date accessed: March 16, 2003.

6. http://www.onlineessays.com/essays/literature/lit120.php. Great Gatsby: Theme and character analysis of Tom and Daisy. Date accessed: March 16, 2003.

Notes

1 American proverb.

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