The Effect of Materialism on the American Dream - Essay Example

The Effects of Materialism on the American Dream The American Dream has been the of numerous literature – with each having its own respective interpretation. Sentimental authors write about the triumph of virtue over money in their pieces while those on the other side of the fence set store on progress. What these show, however, is that the modern American Dream has become anchored on the economic and the social in the quest for progress. To observers, the pursuit of material wealth dominated the last quarter of nineteenth century onwards. For example, the novelist Sherwood Anderson described the years when grew up as: the most materialistic age in the history of the world, when wars would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God and only pay attention to moral standards, when the will to power would replace the will to serve and beauty would be well-nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquisition of possessions. (Anderson 57) The Great Gatsby written by the prolific F. Scott Fitzgerald has come to represent what dominated the modern American thought in regard to the American Dream. The novel is about the corruption of a dream through unawareness of the taint that materialism brings. Unfortunately this dilemma as interpreted by the novel infected the entire America in which the novel is set. Set in the backdrop of the 1920s or the so called "the Jazz Age" due to the unprecedented boom in the American economy, The Great Gatsby Chronicled the life of a man named Jay Gatsby as told by Nick Carraway. In the novel, Gatsbys own interpretation of the American Dream is particular with two things - that of money and Daisy. While The Great Gatsby is a love story, love here became fashioned and shaped by other desires, especially an acquisitive urge in the form of materialism. This paper will explore how this relationship between love and materialism defined the meaning of the modern American Dream. Symbolism To start with, the characters in the novel were great symbols of the leisure society. Jay Gatsby is a shady millionaire whose wealth was acquired in underground trading. He is an idealist who made his life into a form of fairy tale in order to justify the means taken to achieve them. On the other hand, Nick Carraway, or at least his family and his values, represented the old American economy of the self-made man, of staid conservatism, and of opulence although of the previous decade’s. Daisy, Gatsby’s love interest, is perhaps materialism personified in their relationship. She was superficial and characterized by a passion for appearances and the consumerist self. Her love of things was aptly depicted in this part: While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher – shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and applegreen and lavender and faint orange… Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily… ‘They’re such beautiful shirts,’ she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such beautiful shirts before.’ (Fitzgerald 59) The characters of The Great Gatsby depicted many a drama penned by the American philosophy that is characterized by a language which reflects a debate about a country becoming more and more opulent but less heroic and less true to the grand passions of the past. Romanticizing Materialism Gatsby’s love for a woman is closest to what we can use as a form of symbolism to the depiction of materialism in the American Dream. Here, he is driven by his love for Daisy who symbolized everything that he wanted, even as she led him to the things that he despised. Their relationship was placed within the consumerist environment: Gatsby would throw lavish parties in order to meet Daisy, who for her part, would be love struck with how cool and wealthy he is. Gatsby believed in his happiness – his dream - and in Daisy as its object. He may be wrong about his dream or its kind that is possible, or with the woman that represented his happiness, but he has committed himself to it nonetheless. Gatsby has pursued Daisy against impossible odds and this is widely regarded as the American way of wringing new life from destiny. Although the dream was a failure, it successfully described what it has become in our time. Through Gatsbys experience, there was the depiction of modern mans continuing quest for meaning in a culture which unfortunately no longer has meaning. This came with Gatsbys belief that if he can only reconstruct some point in the past, everything will be all right. Dalton Gross and Mary Jean Gross had more to say on this part taking after the Faustian concept of constant searching and striving, always pushing beyond the limits of human experience: For them, Gatsby is a Faustian man who has found nothing in his experience to match his longings.1 Nick Carraway pondered this in the novel: Gatsby believed in green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms farther… So we beat on, boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (Fitzgerald 115) It is the good life that is always the object of a dream. For Gatsby, and perhaps the American Dream, the idea of the good life became the acquisition of money, things, property. Gatsby showed us, for instance, his fondness for his car, his most treasured possession: A rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns. (Fitzgerald 51) Materialism and Idealism There is an interesting assumption set forth by George Santayana in an essay about The Great Gatsby and materialism in general in America. The idea was that materialism and idealism do not necessarily cancel each other out. Here, Gatsby or the Americans are almost excused for being materialistic because they do not have many other alternatives. It is the material life that offers one of the few recognized ways in which the American can express idealism. To quote: There is enthusiasm in his sympathetic handling of material forces which goes far to cancel the illiberal character which it might otherwise assume… his ideals fall into the form of premonitions and prophecies; and his studious prophecies often come true. So do the happy workmanlike ideals of the American. When a poor boy, perhaps, he dreams of growing rich, he grows rich… He dreams of helping to carry on and to accelerate the movement of a vast, seething progressive society, and he actually does so. Ideals clinging so close to nature are almost sure of fulfillment. (175-176) In the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald juxtaposed two themes: the numerous references to the original American Dream - the vision of the first European settlers in the New World and the ideals of the colonialists and the nations founding fathers - and the materialism of the Roaring Twenties. Perhaps this is Fitzgerald’s own conflicting attitude towards the subject. Through Carraway, he displayed how he found the new American lifestyle and its unrestrained materialism seductive and exciting. Even so, he saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age the need for some form of a moral center. And so he attacked the hypocrisy and the emptiness of this era. Some say that materialism is inevitable with the progress that America has achieved. Gatsby tried to rationalize materialism and corruption, but he failed in his dream. The Great Gatsby novel underscored that this failure stemmed from the fact that Gatsby with his dream, and hence Americans with their own, do not see their own complicity clearly. What Santayana argued elsewhere in this paper is worth considering, that materialism is good up to some degree especially if it showcases the American fortitude and ambition. Perhaps everything boils down to the ills of doing and having things in excess. The American Dream is a unique philosophy and could be viewed in various different lights depending on the background of the observer. Fitzgerald explored from within and he saw the problem: unbridled materialism corrupts the American Dream. Bibliography Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Fitzgerald, Francis Scott. The Great Gatsby. Wordsworth Editions, 1993. Gross, Dalton and Gross, Mary Jean. Understanding the Great Gatsby. Greenwood Press, 1998. Santayana, George. Character and Opinion in the United States. Transaction Publishers, 1991. Read More