...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 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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...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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...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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...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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...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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...In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we follow the main character Jay Gatsby through his life through the eyes of Nick Carraway, his neighbor. Both of these characters live on the West Egg of New York. Gatsby and Nick earned their wealth, unlike the people who live on the East Egg of New York. Those people, such as characters, Daisy and Tom, were either born wealthy or inherited their wealth.The Eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleberg, on the front cover of the book, symbolizes the fact that all the greed and corruption that people commit, is watched over by someone. Jay Gatsby has the purest dream of them all. He wants it all, the only problem is he wants the girl as well. The greed and corruption are what results in Gatsby not getting everything...
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...materialistic vision of a big house, nice car, and living the easy life. As represented in the novel The Great Gatsby and Baz Luhrmann’s, The Great Gatsby, the American Dream was more focused on instant gratification of material things and needing material things as an indication of success. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby and Baz Luhrmann’s, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is a renaissance man; a man who has it all but started out with nothing. His plan was to achieve his dream. He was so blinded by his possessions, in front of him, that he could not see that money could not buy love or happiness. Fitzgerald demonstrated how a dream can be corrupted by one’s focus on accruing wealth, power, and expensive things. Gatsby’s dream was “ambiguous, contradictory, romantic in nature, and undeniably beautiful while at the same time grotesquely flawed” (Hearne 189). His American Dream had become tarnished and corrupted by the culture of money and opulence that surrounded him. Gatsby was ‘new money’, and his romantic view of the wealthy did not prepare him for the self- absorbed, snobbish, group of people he was about to associate himself with. He threw lavish parties every night, yet he had no real friends to surround himself with. Gatsby bought expensive things and entertained a lot of people, but he was hoping for something more. Nick Caraway realized that Gatsby was involved in a few...
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...over the course of time. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is a classic example of a rags to riches man, but learns the hard way that money and materialistic things cannot fill one’s need for happiness. Not only that, but F. Scott Fitzgerald also portrays the corruption of an individual's American Dream through their foolish pursuit of wealth and physical...
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...The Colourful World of The Great Gatsby In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes colour symbolism to enhance each character’s personality flaws and convey a symbolic meaning behind everything the characters do. Throughout the novel, the colours that highlight these flaws are Green, Yellow, White, and Silver. Each colour conveys important symbolic meanings, which ultimately highlight each character’s tainted personalities. Fitzgerald magnifies these clearly identifiable flaws in Gatsby, Daisy, and Myrtle through the use of colour symbolism throughout his novel. The first colour, which F. Scott Fitzgerald introduces to the reader, is the colour green. Green embodies the hope in which Gatsby clings on to and the limitless dream...
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...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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...The Great Gatsby: The Corruption of the American Dream through Materialism The American dream is an ideal that has been present since American literature’s onset. Typically, the dreamer aspires to rise from rags to riches, while accumulating such things as love, high status, wealth, and power on his way to the top. The dream has had variations throughout different time periods, although it is generally based on ideas of freedom, self-reliance, and a desire for something greater. The early settlers’ dream of traveling out West to find land and start a family has gradually transformed into a materialistic vision of having a big house, a nice car, and a life of ease. In the past century, the American dream has increasingly focused on material items as an indication of attaining success. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is a self-made man who started out with no money—only a plan for achieving his dream. He is so blinded by his luxurious possessions that he does not see that money cannot buy love or happiness. Fitzgerald demonstrates how a dream can become corrupted by one’s focus on acquiring wealth, power, and expensive things. Gatsby’s dream “is a naïve dream based on the fallacious assumption that material possessions are synonymous with happiness, harmony, and beauty” (Fahey 70). His American dream has become corrupted by the culture of wealth and opulence that surrounds him. Gatsby is a “nouveau riche,” and his romantic view of wealth has not prepared him for the self-interested...
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... In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the American dream withers away like a rose in the hot sun. The green light, through its unattainability, symbolizes Gatsby’s yearning for Daisy, money, and favorable reception. The corruption the American dream has on James Gatz represents destructive tendencies the pursuit of the American dream has on people's moral character. The American dream is unachievable, nothing can be so perfect as one could imagine. The American dream dies throughout the book and is untouchable because the fact that it will never live up to expectation. The green light represents our constant desire to achieve the American dream, as Nick describes it, “Gatsby believed in the 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 out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (182). In these concluding words of the novel, Nick returns to the motif of the past to dreams of the future. Using metaphors, Fitzgerald describes the current as tearing them backward as they attempt to push on toward the green light. The futility of their journey emulates the inability to achieve the American dream, no matter the effort or timeless hope put in. In a very similar manner, the green light is physically sought out by Gatsby. Nick sees Gatsby, “stretched out his arms toward the dark...
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...Literature[->0] Sunday, April 1, 2012 The American Dream: A Raisin in the Sun vs. The Great Gatsby Word Count: 514 The American Dream is the national culture of what we believe as a society and as Americans to be success, prosperity, and freedom. Aspects of the American Dream can be found in the play A Raisin in the Sun and the novel The Great Gatsby. The two pieces of literature are very different and represent two distinct eras and lifestyles. A Raisin in the Sun takes place in the 1950’s and centers around a very poor family living in a poor neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. All the members of the family share an interest in wanting to have a better life although, a “better life” is defined differently by each member. The concept of a “better life” is one that is weighted heavily in the American Dream. Lena Younger and her husband had dreamed of an improved living condition when they were first married. When they first rented their apartment they believed it would be temporary and that they would move up the social chain and have a house of their own. Therefore, the American Dream in Lena’s eyes is having her own house with her own garden. Walter’s idea of the American Dream is much more materialistic than his mother’s. He dreams of having a large house and lots of money. In the novel The Great Gatsby the American Dream is presented differently. The Great Gatsby centers on a group of individuals who live in New York in the 1920s. The American Dream is...
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