...When my family moved to America from Pakistan before I was born, they chased the American Dream. This dream consists of having a fulfilled life with wealth, happiness and protection for the family. In the novel written by Scott Fitzgerald in 1925 called The Great Gatsby provides a great commentary for the life that people lived in the 1920s. The protagonist, Nick Carraway witnesses corruption with different relationships because of lavish lifestyles. Jay Gatsby, Nick’s neighbor throws lavish parties in hopes to attract his past lover, Daisy. He lost the love of his life when he went to war and came back realizing that she married a man with more wealth and security, Tom. The American Dream is defined as someone with low income or social status...
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...23 December 2015 Corruption of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby Dishonest work is a major role in the novel, The Great Gatsby. Throughout Gatsby’s life he was always working for his American Dream. That doesn't mean everything he did was honest. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the corruption of the American Dream through the illegal work of Gatsby, showing that, when one achieves wealth through illegal affairs and by doing dishonest work, one must prepare themselves for the consequences that pertain to that lifestyle. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Gatsby appears to be the embodiment of the American Dream until pieces of his past begin to come out. Early in the novel...
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...The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald is a novel that develops many conflicts, emotions, and doubts. The novel’s purpose is to intrigue readers with its diversity of conflicts. In the novel, the majority of the characters all have their own problems. Corrupting, in a way, is to fraud in the return of money or personal gain. Out of all the characters, the most corrupted character in the novel is Gatsby because of money and using objects to flatter. Gatsby is a very wealthy man who lives in a mansion in the West Egg. Throughout the majority of the novel, Gatsby comes off as a very mysterious man. Gatsby was once a soldier and went to war, giving the impression of being admirable. Although Gatsby gives the idea of being involved with some type of organized crime, Gatsby says his wealth comes from the death of his family. When Gatsby talks about the past, it all feels like an unsolved puzzle because there are so many questions and unexplained answers about Gatsby’s past and wealth. Gatsby can be considered as a...
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...Corruption can be a burden on many people, and with that, are a few ways to solve it. Your life can be elegant and are to pursue the American Dream and the other is no one does anything and lets their life go nowhere and ends up lifeless. The Great Gatsby consists of key components that are here in our society. Such as elegance with ladies and gentleman walking around believing they are more important than others. There is also corruption that takes over leaving your life hard to make it through the day. In the end one outcome is being happy with the life there is and the other is saying that there is no better place and giving up and letting your life be hopeless and lifeless. Gatsby lives in West Egg the least fashionable of the two eggs and the more wealthy people live in East...
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...The American Dream is defined as a happy way of living that can be achieved by anyone that works hard. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel that portrays the decline of the American Dream in the 1920’s. Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, the protagonists in the novel, as well as Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s wealthy husband, symbolize the corruption of the American Dream. Gatsby portrays the corruption of the American Dream through the way he makes his fortune, and by doing everything specifically to impress Daisy. Daisy exposes the American Dream as a fraud because she marries Tom for his wealth. Tom represents the wealthy person that never needs to work hard to be successful because he inherits billions of dollars from his father....
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...The Purity and Corruption of Women Compared to Flowers Women's rights movement was roaring with all the new rights they have obtained during the 1920s. Despite as many rights women could achieve there would never be true equilibrium throughout the 2 sexes. Men were still seen as the dominant men and women the lesser. During the '20s underneath the flashy lights and fireworks laid men beating up women. F. Scott Fitzgerald compares women to flowers to show the severity of women regardless of class being abused during the 1920s. The first comparison that Fitzgerald makes is the character Daisy Buchanan and a Daisy to show off how Tom Buchanan can just beat his wife to show that in the rich men abuse their wives. At the Buchanan's Daisy notices...
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...The early twentieth century consisted with the duality between prosperity and corruption. In response to this veiled reality of the nation, some people sought to disillusion society from conforming with the problematic status quo, two of which were famous writers Zora Neale Hurston and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The two had their own respective grievances about the nation, but both used their writings to bring awareness about the follies of society. Hurston and Fitzgerald challenge the preconceived status quo of a perfect and progressive American society—set with values such as separate but equal, social classes, consumer culture, and so on—through their respective essay and novel, the former dealing with the erasure of African American culture due...
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...The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, uses many events and many people from the 1920’s to entice his readers into reading a novel with an intriguing plot while learning bits from the past. Some of the references Fitzgerald makes in his novel are allusions. Allusions are references to other books, movies, historical events, or people that an author makes during the novel. The two most important allusions in The Great Gatsby are the references to prohibition and corruption in the 1920’s and both allusions drive the plot and affect many characters in the book. The first allusion made in The Great Gatsby is multiple references to prohibition. Prohibition was the outlaw of sale, manufacturing, buying, and shipping of alcohol. It was not illegal to consume or have possess alcohol but the secretive consumption led people to make poor decisions due to the amount of intoxication. Prohibition affected many people in the 1920’s such as alcoholics,...
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...The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel that takes a different spin on the stereotypical American dream. To say “through the novel, Fitzgerald puts across the idea that the American dream has been corrupted by the desire for materialism” would be accurate. Because “we see that Gatsby had a pure dream, but became corrupt in his quest towards that dream,” this is how the American dream was viewed as corrupt. Throughout the novel Gatsby displays many examples of how his quest towards the dream that was once pure, slowly becomes more and more corrupt. The first showing of corruptness in Gatsby’s dream, which is to marry Daisy, is his unethical means of obtaining a fortune. The stereotypical American dream is working hard for honest money. However, this is not the case for Gatsby. Gatsby attains his fortune through the illegal means of bootlegging. In the novel, the narrator Nick describes Gatsby, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a Son of God—a phrase that, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end” (The Great Gatsby Chapter 6 pg). This quotation shows how Nick saw Gatsby as trying to transform himself into the ideal person. He even goes as far as to...
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...The Great Gatsby Essay On the outside, The Great Gatsby seems to be a story about a twisted love affair. Fitzgerald is showing the many changes happening during the 1920’s society, and how it affected the idea of the American dream. Fitzgerald shows the strive for the wealth, which defined the American dream in the 1920’s and which continues to defines as a desire for wealth and success today. In the book, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is showing the corruption of the American dream by throwing parties, making love and having money. After WWII, there was an economic boom which left people suddenly rich, and they were referred to as the “new money.” There quickly became a difference between the “new money” and the people who were previously wealthy. What used to “pursuit of happiness” is now the pursuit of money and greed. The “new money” people don’t like the “old money” people. Jay Gatsby throws parties throughout the summer to show of how much money he has. “There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer night.” ( ) This quote shows that Gatsby has a lot of money because he can afford to throw parties throughout the summer. Money is everything in the world today and it was a huge part in the world back in the 1920’s economy too. The Great Gatsby also symbolizes love throughout the story. There were love affairs between married couples and single people. The biggest affair out of all the characters was definitely Daisy and Gatsby. Jay Gatsby has the biggest...
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...Gold In most cases nowadays, the color of gold or yellow is highly regarded as a “wealthy” or “proper” color. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, the author uses symbolism to show how gold is symbolic of richness and wealth, and in turn, corruption and death, with clothing/setting choice, Myrtle’s house, and Mr. Gatsby’s car. According to John Green, when Gatsby talks about his first meeting with Daisy, it is apparent that Gatsby is more in love with her mansion than Daisy herself. Green also points out the not-so-obvious fact that when Daisy and Gatsby finally meet again, everything is yellow. Gatsby’s suit, Daisy’s buttons, Gatsby’s Windows, and even the flowers outside Gatsby’s mansion. In this situation, the color gold is shown with a positive connotation. Gatsby is happy to have Daisy again, and he finally has plenty of money. However, there are negative connotations involved with this color as well. At the beginning of the novel, the readers are quickly informed that Tom Buchannon is having an affair. And who would want to cheat on Daisy, the “Golden Girl?” (Fitzgerald 120). Later on in the novel we meet Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s mistress. This woman is an obvious sign of corruption. We learn that she and Tom have an apartment together in New York, and that they have been seeing each other for a long time. Fitzgerald reveals a simple and easy-to-miss fact, that the Wilson home was a “small block of yellow brick” (Fitzgerald 28). This associates the color with...
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...When Nick Carraway came back from the east after the summer of 1922, he was disgusted with what he’d seen. Only one man was exempt from his disgust, that man being Gatsby. In the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald creates an America society that contradicts everything America prides itself on which is lack of aristocracy and equal opportunity. The United states is a country that was so great due to the idea of the American dream, which the founding fathers of the nation built the country on. Fitzgerald utilizes deep characterization and symbolism to elaborate themes of the American dream to display what the American dream truly stood for and what it has become. Throughout the plot we come to recognize themes of American dream, through deep insight into characters and what they represent in the American society. After Nick...
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...Diana Montes Ms. Hart American Literature 8th of April, 2015 Corruption in the government system and in the 1920’s Mexico is a country that has become known to be very corrupt to its people, and this is mostly because of its Institutional Revolutionary Party, also known as PRI. This political party dominated Mexico’s political institutions for approximately seventy years. Many of its members that have served in Mexico’s government have corrupted Mexico in some way. Some of them have taken money from the country for their own selfish needs and robbed their own people. The main theme in The Great Gatsby is “Excessive wealth and materialism leads to carelessness, corruption, and destruction.” In connection to that, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary...
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...and accomplishment. F Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, is an effective critique on the corruption that surrounds the American Dream. It is also a commentary on the warped view of Western hedonism and idealized lifestyles. The dream is portrayed strongly through the characters, depicting undignified ways to obtain wealth, the amoral social interactions and the illusion of affection and false fellowship. Thus exposing the unscrupulousness, self-absorption and disillusionment that lie at the wake of the American Dream. Fitzgerald critiques on the ideal of ‘self-made’ men (financially) and how through sheer desperation, men stray from conformity and followed a deviated path in order to reach wealth. The American Dream is the belief that regardless of one’s socio-economic background, an individual could still reach financial triumph through hard work, education and drive-which has been the belief of the American society. According to American sociologist Robert K. Merton, American society has generated common desires and pressures for material possession-which is how success was measured- those who fail to succeed by conformity or valid means, resort to devious acts to do so. Fitzgerald comments on this aspect of his society through the portrayal of Gatsby in the novel; who employed unorthodox ways of obtaining wealth in order to gain his incommunicable desire for Daisy’s affection. His illegal background was hinted by Gatsby himself: “… You see, I carry on a little business...
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...“The Great Gatsby” represents the American dream. Typically, the American dream is rising through the social ladder and obtaining wealth. This can be achieved in multiple ways. Unfortunately, wealth or wanting wealth can lead to corruption. Occasionally, if a someone wants to live the American dream, they will do anything to achieve it. Also, once living the American dream, some people think too highly of themselves. Next, corruption comes in many forms. Two include: corruption of the mind and corruption through money. Mainly, Myrtle, Tom and Gatsby fall into one of the two categories. Myrtle’s mind is corrupted, Tom mind is also corrupted, and Gatsby is corrupted by money. First, Myrtle’s mind is corrupted by Tom, a wealthy man. At the...
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