Introduction
The Great Gatsby, written by the F. Scott Fitzgerald, explains the terrible story of Jay Gatsby, a strong self-made millionaire. In real Jay Gatsby was pursuing Buchanan Daisy, a solid wealthy young woman he had been in love with for quite some time. The book, the Jazz Age as popularized by Fitzgerald, captures the American economic boom where he states that “a whole race is going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure.” The Great Gatsby portrays a pessimistic perception of the American dream. The center foundations of the book are a remarkable transformation of rags to riches by Jay Gatsby, a poor boy from a farming background (Fitzgerald, 2020, pp. 7-8). This is evidenced where Fitzgerald quotes ‘[Gatsby’s] parents were shiftless and poor farm people’ (10). Additional quotes to show the poverty begins of Gatsby is deduced from the sections; ‘For more than a year, Gatsby has been shifting along the Lake Superior as a salmon fisher to get food and a place to rest.'(p. 98)
Main body
Jay Gatsby, a man once without anything tied to his name, presently entertains people in his big house located at Long Island. However, despite the proportional nature of Gatsby’s wealth, compared to people like Tom Buchanan, he cannot effectively penetrate the born wealthy society, one which Fitzgerald refers to as the ‘distinguished secret society.’Gatsby’s attempts to woo Daisy Buchanan, a born rich woman, results in his tragic death. Tensions between ‘old money’ and ‘new money’ represent the comparison between the Eastern and Western Eggs. The West Egg is depicted as “Chafed under the old euphemisms’. These clauses of people in the society are those born into riches, as in the case of Buchanan. On the other hand, the East Eggrepresents people who have struggled to make their ends meet, as in Gatsby’s end.
As narrated by Nick Carraway, the American dream within the Great Gatsby is depicted through Gatsby’s desire to acquire wealth to marry Daisy. The American dream is defined as unattainable as those that believe in it always strive to achieve something rather than bettering themselves (Fai, 2021, p. 70-77). In the attempt to achieve the dream, Fitzgerald argues that the majority of the people become so material immersed that they forget their happiness, which is portrayed in the stock market collapse, thus the great depression. Therefore, Gatsby’s hard work and immense wealth due to his love for Daisy is the American dream. The magnitude of his richness is evident in the quotes “Gatsby’s parties were filled with glamor and enhanced the period’s America’s carelessness” (p 40).
Gatsby actually is probably the greatest option for writing about the American Dream he emerges from modest beginnings he is the son of impoverished farmers from North Dakota as well as climbs to be fabulously wealthy, simply to have it all fall apart within the endtime. Numerous people make utilize of Daisy as the physical expression of the Gatsby’s big dream within their study. Believe, nevertheless, that within the standard American Dream, the personnel attain their goals all through honest tough labor, whereas within Gatsby’s situation, he swiftly accumulates a great sum of the money throughout crime. Also Gatsby attempt the very hard labor technique via his many years of devotion to Cody Dan, but somehow it then fails because Cody’s the ex-wife in addition obtains the full estate. So, instead, he also resorts to crime, and that is just via these mechanisms that he is capable to gather together the fortune he then desires.
Fitzgerald uses the characters in The Great Gatsby to symbolize these all socioeconomic changes. Both Nick as well as Gatsby, who served during World War I, reflects the war’s sudden multiculturalism as well as cynicism. The frequent social climbers in addition to ambitious speculators who also attend Gatsby’s parties reveal the greedy race for the riches. The whole novel’s allegorical geography replicates the argument among “the old money” or else “the new money”: Also East Egg as well represents the well-established nobility, whereas West Egg correspond to the self-made affluent. Meyer Wolfsheim’s wealth as well as that of Gatsby represents the development of very well organized crime in addition to bootlegging.
Gatsby presents the 1920s as a period of degraded societal as well as moral customs, exemplified by its pervasive cynicism, selfishness, with vacant pursuit of happiness. The entire novel’s major topic, on the other hand, is far broader but also less romantic overall scope. While all of the action happens over a few months over the summer of 1922 but also is situated in a specific geographical location near Long Island (Perdikaki, 2018, pp. 10).
The American dream is depicted as not necessarily leading to happiness, as explained by Fitzgerald (Åkesson, 2018, pp. 61). The people associating with Gatsby, his supposed friends were not genuine and only hung around him to enjoy the luxuries of the American dream. The fakeness of these friends is evidenced by Nick’s, Daisy’s distant relative overhearing one of the friend’s gossips, “He is a bootlegger, one time he murdered a man who discovered his relations with Von Hindenburg” (p.61). Gatsby was so immense in the American dream that he forgot his happiness. However, this changed when he met Nick. Their friendship extended even after Gatsby’s death as Nick went to pay his last respects. However, the generosity displayed by Gatsby was forgotten by society as Nick explains that no one was interested in making him responsible for the burial.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Fitzgerald elaborates on a moral decline leading to careless lifestyles among Americans. Americans’ continuous living of such lives will destroy as experienced by Gatsby. Therefore, achieving the American is impossible since it involves a constant desire to achieve something else, as in Gatsby’s case.
References
Åkesson, J. (2018). The Failed American Dream? Representation of the American Dream in F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Fai, S. F. Y. (2021). Ambivalence, Nostalgia, and the Injustice of the American Dream in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. South Central Review, 38(2), 70-77.
Fitzgerald, F. S. (2020). The Great Gatsby: The Graphic Novel. Simon and Schuster.
Perdikaki, K. (2018). Film adaptation as the interface between creative translation and cultural transformation: The case of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (No. 29). University of Surrey.
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