The Collapse of Dreams in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

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The novel, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is about the American Dream, and the downfall of those who attempt to reach its illusionary goals. In the Great Gatsby the dream is that through wealth and power, one can acquire happiness. To get this happiness, Jay Gatsby must reach into the past and relive an old dream. In order to achieve his dream, he must have wealth and power.

Jay Gatsby is one character that longs for the past. He devotes most of his adult like trying to recapture it and dies in its search. In Jay's past, he had a love affair with a wealthy woman named, Daisy. Knowing he could not marry her because of the difference in their social position, he leaves her to make his wealth to equal her status. Fitzgerald shows Gatsby using a corrupt form of the American dream to acquire the wealth he thinks he needs to win Daisy. Gatsby had a pure dream, but uses a corrupt form of the American dream to acquire the wealth he thinks he needs to win Daisy's affection. Gatsby's energy has been directed into the pursuit of power and pleasure, and a very flashy, but empty form of success. Gatsby spends countless years obtaining his fortune for one purpose only, to win back Daisy.

Once he has gained this wealth, he moves close to Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan, and begins throwing extravagant parties, hoping that she might show up at one of them. He, himself, does not attend his parties but watches them from a distance. When Nick receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's weekend parties, he is very anxious to attend because he has only admired them from afar. "I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been i...

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...2). Gatsby believed he was once powerful, everybody wanted to go to his parties. At the time of his death, nobody came to his funeral.

Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald shows the collapse of dreams, whether they are dreams of money, status, or simply of happiness. The biggest collapse, however, is of the American Dream. The failure of the American Dream is unavoidable, not only because life cannot compare to dreams, but also because they are usually too perfect to be compared to reality. Dreams give purpose to life. Without dreams life has no meaning, as shown by Gatsby. The American Dream is something all people work toward. Although it is an admirable goal, it is often an unobtainable goal. To Gatsby, the American Dream remained just that, a dream.

Work Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

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