Social Mobility In The Great Gatsby Essay

The American dream has been an alluring idea that people from all over the world have been coming to America, and striving to achieve the social mobility that is suppose to come with attainment of the dream. In The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Key., et al. The Great Gatsby. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009) by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, there are quite a few characters striving for the American dream, with Jay Gatsby (originally named James Gatz) being the foremost character in the race for the realization of the American dream. Though Gatsby has achieved the material elements of the American dream, Fitzgerald leaves us wondering if that really is the American dream because Gatsby never really moves in social status. Fitzgerald shares his pessimistic view on the American dream with the

Gatsby, from humble means, became an affluent man living in an estate that was second to none in extravagance. If one was to take the American dream literally then one could say that Gatsby achieved his goal, but in the novel Fitzgerald wants the reader to think that becoming a member of the upper-class is actually the point in which the American dream is fulfilled. This is why Gatsby had never achieved the American dream. His isolation from the upper-class is apparent when at his parties there were “few guests who had actually been invited”(41) and “sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all”(41). Fitzgerald seems to want the reader to notice how few friends Gatsby had. Gatsby’s lack of friends shows that despite the massive wealth he has accumulated he is not accepted into the upper class social circle because he didn’t come from a respectable family. The theme of division amongst social classes is reiterated in the novel because Gatsby keeps trying to break into the upper-class, but he is unable to do