They are corrupt along with the rest of society and toss away their only chance of a happy life in order to have a lavish lifestyle. The most important word in the definition of The American Dream is happy; Tom and Daisy are far from happy, revealing their failure - along with many others - to truly achieve it. Introducing The American Dream created huge expectations for an individual’s later years. It gave society a vision of how they wanted their life to turn out. Gatsby is undoubtedly one of them.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, he has many references relating to the American Dream, such as, “She only married you because I was poor and she was waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except me.” (Fitzgerald 130) This quote is related to the American Dream because Gatsby was once poor before he was wealthy, and he wanted to achieve the American Dream, so ideally, he became wealthy. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Daisy is tied in with being rich, since that is The American Dream for her. For Gatsby, then again, did not accomplish the American Dream through work, but rather by being a Bootlegger, and that is the reason the American
He is a jealous hypocrite, who lusts for all the power and puts shame to his name and affluent life. Even though Daisy and Tom both live the lives that all dreamers aspire to have. They put the faith and good heartedness of that dream to shame by being corrupted citizens of society who hold no moral and ethical purpose in their lives. All the hard work and good faith that people put into achieving the American dream is diminished by the selfish and careless acts of these characters. While their wealth has easily come to them, they do not see the worth in their surroundings and lives around them.
The “magnificent” Gatsby represented in the title was merely a miserable figure in the past never fully attaining the American dream. Through the eyes of Nick Carrow... ... middle of paper ... ...on who comes from modest a family could potential achieve the dream, if they work hard enough. The eyes glare down at the idea of the dream because it is virtually unattainable because for every rich family there is one hundred times poorer people. The dream may give one individual the money for the dream but for the most part they are like the ashes in the valley, hopeless and poverty stricken. The American dream is just a dream that people wish they could attain but life goes on and one can not dwell on the past.
People would do absolutely anything, no matter how unethical, to attain the American Dream; but what they did not realize was that money cannot buy happiness. The valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City, a “grey land with spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it” (Fitzgerald 27), truly epitomizes the moral decay of that time period. It reflects the greed people had and how they cared about nothing but their own pleasures. Tom Buchanan is clearly an immoral character. He states, “It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things” (Fitzgerald 17).
Furthermore, Daisy is described as having a “white face” (110) and is said to have had a white c... ... middle of paper ... ...int across that materialistic people will never achieve the American Dream because they always want more and they are never satisfied with what they have. Undoubtedly, the green light represents the central theme of the book: the American Dream. In conclusion, Fitzgerald uses symbols such as colors, cars, and the green light to connect everything to the main theme of the story. “The Jazz Age” was a time where the rich were getting richer, and the poor were getting poorer. The original American Dream was to achieve happiness but Fitzgerald saw so much corruption during this time that his view on the American Dream became tainted.
Society during the 1920's was masked by drinking, parties and extravagant wastefulness of money, but underneath there was misery throughout all the classes. Despite the variety of income, inheritance and economics, "there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well" and many men of this time were sick with depression (118). Fitzgerald makes it seem as though it was practically impossible to be happy during these times as no one could get what he or she really wanted. He describes this era in a cynical way but is historically accurate, and effectively depicts the misery of the decade and the failure to achieve the American Dream.
Everything seems to be lesser than before, Nick points this out when he says that “Tom was one of those men, who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one, that everything afterward savors of anticlimax” (Fitzgerald 6). Other men cheat because they want to feel wanted; Daisy never had much interest in Tom. Daisy has always been rich and did not need his money to be happy. On the other hand, Myrtle Wilson seems to want Tom; he begins his affair with Myrtle at the same time of Daisy and Gatsby’s affair. It could be said that their constant cheating eventually made their marriage fall apart.
Nick, as with all characters is a believer in the American Dream because even he moves East to work in the bond bu... ... middle of paper ... ...hen she talks about careless people, saying she "hates careless people" when she admits that she is one.) that contribute to the overall ethical decay within the American aristocracy. Fitzgerald shows that in the social classes that were represented in The Great Gatsby there is a running theme of how the American dream affects all of the characters, they each have their own aspirations for their own life but more often than not they revolve around money and the effects that wealth has on their style of life. Because of the tragic events within The Great Gatsby and the fact that the characters who are still alive at the end of the novel, bar Nick, are not drastically altered by their experience lend to the view that the 1920's and 1930's or the Jazz Age held a society of people who were ruled by materialism and trivial and depthless beliefs and values. -Cam
Gatsby's goal was to achieve the American Dream but unfortunately for him he was surround by all these factors to tarnished his chances of ever reaching it. All of his "friends" were the greedy and shallow people who destroyed Long Island's value. "On the flip side of the American Dream, then, is a naiveté and a susceptibility to evil and poor-intentioned people." (Telgen). Gatsby had one goal throughout the novel and it was to be with his one and only love, Daisy.