The Ideal American Dream In The Great Gatsby By Scott Fitzgerald

1265 Words3 Pages

Jamie Moran
English 096
Professor Ludwig
5 November 2014
American Dream
The ideal American Dream is that every citizen in the US would have a promising future, happiness, a family, and health. Some reach the American Dream, and some settle for less. People who do not obtain some type of American Dream cannot truly be happy because their life is not truly fulfilled, which does not satisfy their ambition. In reality most Americans settle for something other than what is promised to them. In the book “The Great Gatsby” by Scott Fitzgerald, people did not notice that Jay Gatsby encompassed the idea of the American Dream. Many people thought Gatsby obtained the typical American Dream money, luxury, and happiness, but Gatsby himself was not truly …show more content…

Nick described him as an “unbroken series of successful gestures,”(Fitzgerald 2) and makes remarks that there was “something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away” (2). When Nick states this, he is clearing saying that the beauty of Gatsby is the same beauty he finds in the American Dream. The American Dream is truly beautiful when people truly obtain their American Dream, then people will see the beauty of life, the beauty of being happy and achieving something that not many do. It is through Gatsby’s “heightened sensitivity to the promises of life” (2) Nick admitting that their is still ambition towards the vision of the American Dream. This shows that he still feels that the American Dream can be accomplished and bring happiness to people who work hard for it. The author Barbara Will states in her article “The Great Gatsby and The Obscene World,” What matters to Gatsby is what matters to “us”; Gatsby’s story is “our” story; his fate and the fate of the nation are intertwined. That Gatsby “turned out all right in the end” is thus essential to the novel vision of a transcended and collective Americanism (Will 126). Since Gatsby is the idea of what the American Dream consist of and what it should bring us happiness, she is clearing stating that no matter what we goals we accomplish in life everything will be find. People might not obtain every single thing they want in life but in the end, they are happy. Just like Gatsby in the end he did obtain his American Dream even if was for a

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