American Dream Essay: The Great Gatsby And The American Dream

The Great Gatsby and the American Dream The Great Gatsby is depicting the story of a young man trying to win back a long-lost love. Nick Carraway is narrating the story from the future in the order of events it happened. The story of Gatsby and Daisy is only on the surface, in fact, The Great Gatsby is communicating a larger theme. The Great Gatsby exposes the ugly truth of pursuing the American Dream. A common misconception of the American Dream is that anyone has the potential acquire a fortune and reverse the past. Gatsby is considered wealthy, but there is a difference between the rich. Gatsby earned his riches through organized crime and smuggling, Daisy is someone who is born into an aristocratic family. Opposed to Gatsby, who is vulgar,

He believes that he can become anything he wants to be and remove his past, which he successfully does. Jay Gatsby is not his real name, but James Gatz is. Nick mentions in his narration,“James Gatz__that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career--when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior.” (104) As Jay Gatsby, the person formerly known as James Gatz wanted people to see him as someone who is prosperous and constantly throws lavish parties that have rich and famous guests in attendance. He did not want people to know that he was in fact James Gatz from North Dakota, whose parents were unsuccessful farmers. His American Dream includes Daisy Buchanan, who had married Tom Buchanan at the end of World War One instead of waiting for Gatsby. In 1917, when Gatsby was about to leave to fight in the war, he meets Daisy, a young woman from Louisville who is extremely rich and has many suitors hoping to win her love. He expected Daisy to marry him when he returned from the war, but Daisy had already married Tom and was still on her wedding trip to France. Even though Daisy is married, Gatsby feels that the love from a woman that he loved briefly

“Gatsby has dismissed every servant in his house a week ago and replaced them with half a dozen others… ‘I wanted somebody who wouldn‘t gossip. Daisy comes over quite often – in the afternoons’” (119, 120) Gatsby defends his actions with the argument that he does not want he servants to find out and gossip about his affair with Daisy. This happens after Tom and Daisy attends one of Gatsby’s parties, and Daisy did not enjoy the boisterous nature of Gatsby’s parties. He has an ulterior motive to appealing to Daisy’ wishes: to make Daisy say that she had never loved Tom. After the party, Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy did not like the party, and dismissed Nick’s question about his dance with Daisy. Nick comments in his narrative, “He [Gatsby] wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you.’ After she obliterated three years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house--after if it were five years ago.” Gatsby wants Daisy to tell Tom that she never loved him over those years, and thinks that one sentence is powerful enough to separate Daisy and Tom. Gatsby has oversimplified the method to put asunder the couple, and does not consider that Daisy and Tom have a child together. He does not understand