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"The American Dream" is the idea that any person can achieve success through hard work. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many characters struggle to achieve "The American Dream." Jay Gatsby, the protagonist, is unable to capture his interpretation of the "American Dream" because of his envy of Tom Buchanan and Gatsby's personal background. Tom Buchanan, Gatsby's personal rival, crushes all of Gatsby's hopes and dreams of happiness. Tom is married to Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby's one true love. All Gatsby desires is winning back Daisy's heart. Tom and Daisy inherited most of their wealth and live in East Egg. On the other hand, the narrator, Nick Carraway, describes Gatsby as living in West Egg which is "the – well, the less …show more content…
He is ashamed he did not grow up in the upper class society like Tom and Daisy. Jay Gatsby has not always been Jay Gatsby. In fact, he changed his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby. Nick states, "James Gatz - that was really, or at least legally, his name" (Fitzgerald 98). Jay Gatsby tries to start a new life and claims to others a fake past. Also, Gatsby asserts that he was an Oxford man. He falsely boasts to Nick, " I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West – all dead now" (Fitzgerald 65). The readers learn this is a false statement when Gatsby's father arrives to town. Gatsby claims, "I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition" (Fitzgerald 65). Gatsby is implying he comes from a British and aristocratic family. Yet, his family lived a modest lifestyle growing up. In reality, Gatsby only partially went to Oxford. Within months, he had to leave school to serve in the war. "The American Dream" is fulfilled through hard work. Gatsby was a bootlegger selling illegal liquor during the prohibition. Nick believes Gatsby is a poser and is trying to be someone he is not. In addition, when Gatsby sees the green light at the end of Daisy's dock, he believes it is a sign to go for his dreams regardless of the past. Gatsby's refusal to accept his past mistakes results in his overall failure.
After achieving enormous wealth by unethical means such as selling liquor illegally during the prohibition he purchases a mansion on West Egg, Long Island, just across from Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s mansion. He bought that mansion only in pursuit of Daisy and throws countless parties to try to lure her in. When Gatsby befriends Nick Carraway he begins lying to Nick about his past just like he did to countless others. He tells Nick that he “the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West — all dead now”( Fitzgerald 65) and that he “was brought up in America but educated at Oxfo...
However, he believes that there is a reason behind his dishonesty and that he is not a man of total fraud. Gatsby, indeed, has been dishonest, both with himself and with the rest of the world. He has lied to Nick and the others about where he comes from. His made-up story is that he comes from a wealthy family of now deceased people. He says that he is an Oxford-educated man. He also claims to be from the Midwest and lies about his own name. In reality, he is midwestern, but his father is alive and well. He is not an Oxford graduate (he only attended for five months) and he comes from poverty. His birth name is James Gatz. He is a man of new money, and he established his wealth illegally by selling drugs with his business partner, which explains his alias. In addition to Gatsby’s dishonesty by others, he is dishonest with himself. Gatsby has fabricated a dream—a fictional reality—in his mind. He wants Nick’s cousin, Daisy, whom he met five years prior to the story’s beginning, to marry him. However, this marriage could never happen, because Daisy is already married to an East Egg man named Tom, with whom she has a child. Despite the odds, Gatsby continues to push Daisy toward breaking it off with Tom. His dream overwhelms the harshness of his reality, thus causing Gatsby to continue to falsify reality and misshape it to agree with what he wants. His dishonesty is the root of his
The American Dream had always been based on the idea that each person no matter who he or she is can become successful in life by his or her hard work. The dream also brought about the idea of a self-reliant man, a hard worker, making a successful living for him or herself. The Great Gatsby is about what happened to the American Dream in the 1920s, a time period when the many people with newfound wealth and the need to flaunt it had corrupted the dream. The pursuit of the American Dream is the one motivation for accomplishing one's goals, however when combined with wealth the dream becomes nothing more than selfishness.
One of the traits of Gatsby that makes him truly great is his remarkable capacity for hope. He has faith that what he desires will come to him if he works hard enough. He does not comprehend the cruelty and danger that is the rest of the world. Gatsby, while a man of questionable morals, is as wide-eyed and innocent as a small child in his views of the world. These ideals are evident in Nick’s narration and in the words spoken by the other characters, including Gatsby himself.
Nick’s naïveté and innocence leads to continual judgement of the deceiving upper class community he surrounds himself with; however, he realises Gatsby is the most genuine and optimistic man he has ever met. Gatsby’s never ending confidence in his dream of a future with Daisy represents blind faith of an unattainable dream, yet Gatsby never ceases to reach for his goals. Gatsby even believes that he can fix every mistake he has made in the past (Fitzgerald 128). His naive and ignorant outlook on his future influences many vindictive decisions he has made in his past. Nick’s admiration of Gatsby’s ambitions compels him to recognize Gatsby’s efforts. Nick exclaims that Gatsby is “worth the whole damn bunch put together” (Fitzgerald 126). Nick idolizes Gatsby because his questionable actions were driven by his immense passion for Daisy. Believing that the elite, upper class society is corrupt, Nick found that Gatsby was the only wealthy individual he had met who is pure of
The American Dream is the concept that anyone, no matter who he or she is, can become successful in his or her life through perseverance and hard work. It is commonly perceived as someone who was born and starts out as poor but ambitious, and works hard enough to achieve wealth, prosperity, happiness, and stability. Clearly, Fitzgerald uses Gatsby to personify the destruction of the American Dream Gatsby started out as a poor farming boy, meticulously planning his progression to become a great man. When Gatsby’s father showed Nick the journal where Gatsby wrote his resolution, he says, “Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he 's got about improving his mind?” (182). The written resolution demonstrates how ambitious and innocent Gatsby was in pursuing his dreams and how much he wanted to improve himself that his father applauded him, which once characterized the process of pursuing the American Dream. While pursuing Daisy (Gatsby’s American Dream), Gatsby becomes corrupt and destroys himself. He did not achieve his fortune through honest hard work, but through dishonesty and illegal activities. Furthermore, Gatsby has a large, extravagant mansion, drives flashy cars, throws lavish parties filled with music and
At the beginning of the book Nick sees Gatsby as a mysterious shady man. In the beginning of the chapter Nick somewhat resents Gatsby. In Nick’s opinion Gatsby was the representation of “…everything for which I have unaffected scorn.” (Fitzgerald 2). Nick sees Gatsby as what he hates the most in life, rich folk. Since the start of the novel it was obvious that had “Disapproved of him from beginning to end.” (Fitzgerald 154). As time passes, Nick realizes his neighbor has quite a mysterious past. Some think he’s a bootlegger, and a different person wa...
middle of paper ... ... With the occurrence of who Gatsby was at a young age to who Gatsby turned out to be, he likes change, which represents why he lives in West Egg. However, because Daisy lives in East Egg, she doesn’t want change even though she loved Gatsby at a younger age. “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his platonic conception of himself.
The novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald relates the story of the mysterious Jay Gatsby through the eyes of an idealistic man that moves in next door to the eccentric millionaire. Nick Carraway comes to the East Coast with dreams of wealth, high society, and success on his mind. It is not long before Gatsby becomes one of his closest friends, who offers him the very lifestyle and status that Nick came looking for. As the story unfolds, it is easy to see that the focus on Jay Gatsby creates a false sense of what the story truly is. The Great Gatsby is not the tragic tale of James Gatz (Jay Gatsby), but rather the coming of age story of Nick Carraway.
He tells Nick a lot about himself. He said he was a war hero and that he was, in fact, an Oxford man. Gatsby also said he came from San Francisco but we later learn that was not true because he also said he was from the Midwest. Nobody really
Who is Gatsby, “Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.”(30). In the novel , “The Great Gatsby” by author F. Scott Fitzgerald. a story told by a previous neighbor of a millionaire takes place in the early 1920s located in New York and new jersey on the west and east egg. The Character Jay Gatsby better known as Gatsby will be analyzed. Gatsby is a military veteran who people believe became a millionaire off bootlegging and various illegal acts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” A certain literary character did just that, making himself into one of the greatest and most tragic men ever created. This man was set in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, wherein F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays a wild era in the upper class, infected with money, drinking, carelessness, and adultery. The story is soon filled by the mystery of the man named Gatsby, and rightly so. As the protagonist, he provides a significant contrast to the society in which he immerses himself, both in how he got there and his actions within.
There’s always been something grotesque about the word gorgeous. Like the iconic character Nick Carraway had once said before in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel “The Great Gatsby”, the acclaimed figure Jay Gatsby was a gorgeous human being, or the well rounded man. Unfortunately, his gorgeousness was a mask that concealed his true identity. It wasn’t the name that mislead its readers, but the reality of who he truly suppressed from the world. Gatsby believed in finding success, the American Dream.
After having dinner with his second cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom, Nick returns home to find his neighbor Mr. Gatsby in his yard. Nick says “ [about Gatsby] he stretched out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could’ve sworn he was trembling” (21). Nick see’s Gatsby reaching out towards the water, actually at what is right across the sound; the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. The green light represents Gatsby’s own dream throughout the novel; to be with Daisy, but at this moment when he’s reaching for his dream he is depicting the drive and struggle within anyone who has attempted to achieve the American dream. The metaphorical and in this instant literal reaching for the dream that is so close you could nearly touch it if you reached far enough. Fitzgerald uses Gatsby’s reaching for the green light to symbolize the need to obtain each persons own respective dream, the dream that is said to be easily obtained with hard work and determination. Later Nick finds himself at a party at Gatsby’s, one that only he has been invited to despite the hundreds of guests, he is
He believed himself to be. James Gatz built Jay Gatsby up to become someone he was not. However, the process did not change James into Jay, it merely gave him a