The Great Gatsby and The American Dream - Essay Example

The American Dream is a widespread term used to describe the way Americans live generally that is by far not easy anyway. This dream always has something individual as until today nobody has succeeded in giving a universal and acceptable definition of the term. This term is a highly discussed topic within the society of American by various novelists and authors like T.C Boyle in his novel "The Tortilla Curtain" that deals with the topic of "The American Dream". Hollywood used and still uses the American dream term in a lot of movies, for example in "Pretty Woman" (Hearne 93). Historians like James Truslow Adams used it in their popular history of the United States entitled The Epic of America. They argued that the American Dream has its origins in the time when independence was declared to the Americans. Again, at a time of the first European settlers since the basic idea in the term is that every man and woman regardless of their birth, shall achieve what they are able to do and shall be treated, seen and recognized equally by the other individuals with regards to where they have reached in terms of positions (Pidgeon, 78). To achieve the “The American Dream” and ensuring that it comes true, all the Americans have to work together in all social aspects. However, according to Adams, too many Americans have built mistrust towards "The American Dream" because they have not reached and achieved what they had hoped for and as well as what they had expected (Barbara, 213). As per lots of people, the “The American Dream” is connected to becoming prosperous and wealthy as well and the ability to accomplish everything given that an individual works hard enough for it (Anne, 272). In a layman’s language, it is a transition from rags to riches if only that you work hard. Others say it is much more and is beyond materialism since according to them it is a dream of living a simple, happy and fulfilling life with the most important features being faith and equality in life. The American Dream also is about freedom and America being the country enriched with a variety of unlimited opportunities (Decker, 98). In another perspective, America is said to be Gods chosen country referred to as “City on the shining hill” a term meaning the new Jerusalem and all Americans have the obligation of bringing “The American Dream” to the rest of the world values such as Democracy as well as American values. America being a country of immigration with immigrants of different nationalities all hoped to live a better life in the new world, the American Dream has a lot to play. The immigrants have different ethnic backgrounds and different religious beliefs and can be fused together into a new nation without discarding their diverse cultures. America is thought of being a melting pot where everybody can live peacefully and happily together with others. However, majority of Americans are descendants of immigrants and nevertheless there are protagonist who in the end even hate the illegal immigrants a reason why nowadays a lot of people say "The American Dream" has become a nightmare (Hearne 132). F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby (1925) masterpiece is the ideal tale of the American dream regarding the heights an individual may reach, joy he may or not find, the past he can discard and the disaster that living the dream may bring him. This novel was set in what Fitzgerald called the “Jazz Age,” a period bridging the 1920s and 1930s that emphasized the life of pleasure and decadence after the tragedy and horror of World War I despite the national prohibition on alcoholic beverages. It was an age of miracles, of art, of excess, of satire. Modernism and technological conveniences burst onto the scene during this period along with the free-form style of Jazz music. Pleasure, eroticism and danger found in the sordid lower class gave this music style an ironic perspective as it gave the newly wealthy a vicarious thrill. Jazz symbolized one version of the American dream according to majority, a transition from rags to riches amidst the traditional face of old money (Fitzgerald 93). A middle-class westerner, Nick Carraway narrates this novel who is a keen observer of the American fairy tale come to life. He uncovered more and more about Gatsby and his obsession with Daisy Buchanan, realizing the high price of envy, materialism and desire. “The American dream”, just like Gatsbys house in the end of the novel, is empty, or may never have been to existence. Jay Gatsby was a poor dreamer and become financially successful and vitally attached to a romantic dream. This novel actually depicted the term "American dream" ironically, as according to critic Jeffrey Louis Decker, who noted that the concept was not put into print until 1931. In that sense, this book’s underlying narrative marked the beginning of a myth, one that shaped the meaning of success for future American society (Decker, 200) Fitzgerald wrote about the traditional dream of the white American which is born out of capitalistic ideals that are reliant on acquiring material and attaining high social status. He did a fine job creating shallow, wealthy characters that causes us to think twice about the benefits of wealth from a perspective of people residing in a privileged white world creating an association between the concept of American Dream and Calvinistic approach. Puritans came to America and brought the believed that God determines fate and they cannot change it. They are strongly obsessed with the idea that if they are strong in terms of material goods, they have to work and pray hard because God gives the material wealth to them. Striving to accumulate wealth has become a way for Americans to ease their consciences with one’s morality often being measured by the ability to acquire material possessions (Fitzgerald 95). This novel illustrates the tragic cost of the American dream. Jay Gatsby at the end lost his life in the pursuit of success, or at least the appearance of success. According to Gatsby, the American dream meant being able to exchange the impoverished pasts for the good life. But unluckily the good life is a deception. Gatsbys premature death can also be attributed to his all-time expedition to disguise his humble origins and become someone reputable enough for Daisy Buchanan. The ability to control outside perceptions was identical to Gatsby’s beginnings, as well as his unexpected end and if people knew the true Gatsby, he would not have attained his financial power or social reputation, though his life might have been kept. Gatsby was an ambitious boy, former lover, a wealthy businessperson, a con man, a success storyteller and a murderer according to readers. However, Gatsby did not create his identity alone until after Gatsbys death, a Jewish crime boss, Meyer Wolfshiem, who was also in a hot pursuit of the American dream told Nick of Gatsby that he made him and raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter (Anne, 300). By the same slip, Myrtle Wilson also finally dies because of her dream of a more worldly and sophisticated existence full of social aspirations. This is evident when Myrtle went with Tom and Nick to New York. When Myrtle arrived in the city, her physical change reflected her social aspirations. She changed her dress to brown figured muslin that stretched and held her rather wide hips tight. She bought herself a copy of Town Tattle along with a moving picture magazine. In the station drug store, she bought a small flask of perfume and some cold cream for herself. She let four taxi cabs drive away in the solemn echoing drive upstairs before choosing a another one (Fitzgerald 179). Myrtle found her life with George Wilson too ordinary. She believed, like Gatsby, that the trapping wealth will give her a new identity and, consequently, a new status in society. She tells Mrs. McKee that she only wore her cream-colored chiffon when she didn’t care about her appearance, which is clearly an ironic statement. She felt powerless as if her life was in need of repair just like the cars in her husbands shop. She saw an endless possibility in the material things being Tom Buchanan’s lover and she could dispose of a dress on urge and easily acquire another without a second thought. She changed whenever she liked, traveling from rags to riches on an afternoon train (Hearne 156). She yearned for money and status with a different identity believing that happiness will follow. However, misery and destruction are all what they could achieve. Gatsby and Myrtle later died showing the dark side to striving to achieve the American dream. While interpreting The Great Gatsby historically, we should stop using the American dream as an analytical category altogether. Gatsbys dream is a piece of Jazz. Racial natives peculiar to the Tribal Twenties also sweep it along. Gatsby had devoted his life to two things: wealth accumulation tantamount in his eyes with “The American dream,” and with winning Daisy Buchanan. He portrayed a metaphor for the spiritual emptiness that too often sat at the center of the materialism condemned in Fitzgerald work.  This novel scenery took place during a period when domestic euphoria was exaggerated along with the great depression and black Friday coming out the horizon illuminating the fragility and rarely the superficiality of the American dream to which so many, personified in Gatsby himself, aspired. Jay Gatsby represents the figure of misguided obsession with materialism with Tom, Daisy Buchanan representing the moral emptiness of it as their couple is of considerable wealth, yet their relationship, and lives are devoid of meaning. They could spend a year in France for no particular reason drifting here and there restlessly wherever people played polo (Fitzgerald 180). Gatsby wanted this manner of living and his insistent pursuit of the empty-headed Daisy is the novel’s ultimate declaration of the despair of shedding one’s fate to the pursuit of the dream. The “new money” wealth, a symbol of cultural lowliness in the environs of the upper class in 1920s, was a wall that divided Gatsby from that which he most desired.  Gatsby lived a life full of criminal injustices and unethical undertakings as well as associations, which were prohibited, so important to his ability to accumulate wealth, which eventually ruined him and damned him to the side of the wall that he will never be able to trounce.  Gatsby is portrayed to be dissatisfied despite of his high living and Nick finds out why. Daisy, a young girl was married to Tom Buchanan for long time and fell in love with Gatsby. Gatsby asked Nick to help him meet Daisy once more, and Nick finally agrees arranging tea for Daisy at his house. Gatsby and daisy finally meet and the two ex-lovers soon rekindle their affair. Tom begins to suspect and challenges them revealing something that the reader had already begun to suspect that Gatsby made his fortune through illegal gambling and bootlegging. Gatsby and Daisy drive back to New York where daisy hits and kills a woman in the wake of the emotional confrontation with Gatsby. Gatsby is determined to take the blame as he feels that his life would be nothing without Daisy. George Wilson later discovered that the car that killed his wife belonged to Gatsby. He then came to Gatsbys house and shot him. Nick who is a close friend to Gatsby arranges a funeral for him, and then decides to leave New York saddened by the fatal events and dismayed by the easy way lived their lives. Gatsby’s power as a character is inextricably linked to his wealth. Fitzgerald as an eponymous hero described him with an enigma and a young millionaire with a shady past who can savoir the frivolity that he had created around him. Conversely, the realism in the situation is that Gatsby was a man in love and had focused all of his life on winning Daisy (Hearne 175). Gatsby created himself, his aura and his personality around rotten values of the American dream that money, wealth and popularity are all what is to be achieved in this world. He was devoted and gave everything he had, emotionally and physically, to win, and it is this uncontrolled desire that contributed to his eventual downfall. Fitzgerald attacked the shallow social climbing and emotional manipulation, which only caused pain. With an immoral distrust, partygoers in The Great Gatsby do not see anything beyond their own enjoyment. Gatsbys love is aggravated by this social situation and his death symbolized the dangers of his chosen path. Gatsby had a Rolls-Royce that was transformed to an omnibus to ferry parties to and from the city early in the morning and later in the evening. He also possessed a station wagon scampering like a brisk yellow bug to intercept all the trains on the weekends (Fitzgerald 39). The meaning of success in America was in changeover from the traditional notion that connected work with virtue to a more materialistic understanding of the “American Dream” that was entirely economic and free of moral obligation in the early 1920s (Brauer, 23). Fitzgerald painted a picture of a lifestyle and a decade that is both fascinating and horrific capturing a society and a set of young people. Fitzgerald himself was a part and victim of that high-living lifestyle. He was among the beautiful but he was also forever ill fated. In all its excitement pulsating with life and tragedy this novel captures vividly the American dream in an era when it had descended into dissipation. Nick described the dissolution world of Jay Gatsby, as the dream personified by Daisy Buchanan precipitated his downfall, as he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world and suffered a price of a long dream. He must also have looked up at an unusual sky through terrifying leaves and shivered as he found what a bizarre thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass (Fitzgerald 139). Jay Gatsby had a mansion located in the West Egg section of Long Island, a section that was reserved for the inferior “new money” types. Across the bay in the direction of East Egg was the site of “old money” types like the Buchanans. F. Scott Fitzgerald criticized “the American dream” that was defined during the period described in his novel as one of a desolate, emotionless existence. The novel was written prior to the riotous events yet to come, mainly the stock market crash and onset of the depression. The story of Fitzgerald can be viewed as having been predictive regarding the moral and practical inferences of the gross materialism that defined the American dream (Decker, 146) The problem of Gatsby is that he did not understand the society as he is quite innocent in a sense he lives in his dream world. He does not seek to master or understand the society he is living in. One should pass from innocence through experience to sophistication, but Gatsby retains innocence throughout his life. He doesn’t agree or see the emptiness of American Dream and Daisy a dream that kills him. Gatsby was aware of that Wilson was coming to kill him but he chose to stay  because he really preferred to die rather than face up to the fact that his dream was not worthy of him (Pidgeon, 114). In a conclusion, one could say that "the American Dream" is the belief of the US-American Society that each individual through hard work and strong mind can achieve everything. The dream is ambiguous, controversial, romantic in nature, and undeniably beautiful while at the same time grotesquely flawed (Hearne 189). Martin Luther King realize never saw this "American Dream”. Cándido and América did not even get the opportunity to achieve everything, regardless of their abilities. In order for us to achieve a rich and full life in which we can share and play our parts, and if the American dream is to be a reality, our intellectual life and communal spirit must be distinctly higher than elsewhere, where groups and classes have their separate habits, interests, arts, markets and lives (Topham, 136). Work cited Viewfinder Topics. New edition. The American Dream, Humankinds Second Chance. ISBN 3526510024 - Klett Verlag, Stuttgart Anne Marie Hacht .2007. Literary Themes for Students: The American dream.Detroit: Gale Virtual Reference Library. Pg 264-276. Decker, Jeffrey Louis. Gatsbys Pristine Dream: The Diminishment of the Self-Made Man In the Tribal Twenties. NOVEL 28.1 (Autumn 1994): 52-71 Literature Resource Center. Web. 04 April, 2015. Hearne, Kimberly. Fitzgeralds Rendering Of A Dream. Explicator 68.3 (2010): 189-194. Literacy Reference Center. Web. 06. April. 2015 Pidgeon, John A. “The Great Gatsby.”  Modern Age 42.9 (2007): 178-182.  Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Nov. 2014 Will, Barbara. CRITICAL READINGS: The Great Gatsby And The Obscene Word. Critical Insights: The Great Gatsby (2010): 205-229. Literary Reference Center.Web. 07 April. 2015. James Topham 2015. “The great Gatsby Review” http://classiclit.about.com/od/greatgatsbythe/fr/aa_greatgatsby.htm Brauer, Stephen. “Jay Gatsby and the Prohibition Gangster as Businessman.” F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 2 (2003): 51-71. Print. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York; Scribner, 2004. Print. Read More