The Great Gatsby and the American Dream
Created | Updated Sep 11, 2009
The Great Gatsby and the American Dream
1. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940)
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24,1896, in St. Paul Minnesota. He attended St. Paul's Academy, the Newman's School, and Princeton University. After his drop-out of Princeton (1917), he joined the army and in June 1918; Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama where he met his wife, Zelda Sayre, and when he began his writing career. During spring and fall in Valescure, near St. Raphael, Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, which was a lot less popular than his earlier novels and sales were disappointing. This early failure can be assigned due to the fact that a society, which is being criticised so harshly, is not likely to buy this book.
Still, The Great Gatsby is the one novel that gave him literary importance even today. The success of his first novels and the failure of his later ones contributed to Fitzgerald’s alcoholism and his wife’s mental breakdowns. Fitzgerald spent his last years in Hollywood writing movie scripts until he died of a heart attack in 1940. A few years after his death, the novels that he wrote later in life, which were disliked at his time, became the basis of his lasting fame.1
In the following paragraphs a brief summary of The Great Gatsby is given and the link between the story and the American Dream is described.1
2. The Great Gatsby and why it is considered a “classic”
Beautiful women. Elegant suitors. A lot of money. Fabulous parties. Obsession. Murder.
Although this might sound like the latest series of Desperate Housewives to you, it is Fitzgerald’s famous novel about the Jazz Age. The Great Gatsby was first published April 10th, 1925. The story is set in Long Island and New York City during the summer of 1922.
Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to Long Island and soon encounters his mysterious neighbour Jay Gatsby, an incredibly wealthy man with an obsession: Gatsby is still in love with Daisy Buchanan whom he met during his army service.
“But now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize how extraordinary a ‘nice‘ girl could be.”2
In an attempt to impress her, Gatsby bought a huge mansion just across the bay from the home of Daisy who has since married for money. In his blind obsession, Gatsby tries to use Nick, Daisy’s cousin and his neighbour, to reach her but his attempts remain fruitless. Tom, Daisy’s hulk of a husband, has an affair with Myrtle and when she is killed in a car accident caused by Daisy, Gatsby covers for her and takes the blame. The result of this turmoil is another unnecessary killing and the novel ends proving that money cannot buy you love or happiness.
So why is The Great Gatsby considered a classic? The novel combines all elements necessary to be considered a classic; it is clearly a novel about moral values or rather about the decay of morality and human values. The themes portrayed and criticized in the novel, such as the American Dream, the decay of moral values, the superficiality among the upper classes or blind obsession, are still of importance nowadays and so is the meaning behind it; it is a timeless novel. The Great Gatsby can be many things to many people: it is a classic love story, a story about the pre-Depression years, a thrilling murder story etc. Fitzgerald’s imagistic language directly appeals to the reader’s senses and his style as a whole makes the novel an enjoyable but also fascinating read. With the use of colloquial phrases of the actual time (“Old sport”) he manages to draw the reader into the story and into the Roaring Twenties.
The Great Gatsby is not only timeless in itself but it has also influenced nowadays culture. There are several examples of that the novel is still ‘alive’ in popular culture:
In an episode of "South Park" a psychiatrist reads the novel in its entirety to determine whether or not the boys have Attention Deficit Disorder. One "King of Queens" episode uses The Great Gatsby as a running joke as Carrie states in the beginning that she intends to read the book, but by the end of the episode she has clearly not read it. Doug eventually comes to the conclusion that Gatsby must be a magician due to his title.3
3. The Great Gatsby, the Roaring Twenties and the decline of the American Dream
On first view The Great Gatsby appears to be simply a tragic love story with an unhappy ending. But taking a closer look, it soon becomes clear that the main theme encompasses a larger scope. Although the setting, geographically as well as the time it is set in, is clearly marked, the novel symbolically takes up Americans and their way of life in the 1920s. The 1920s, also known as the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age, were a time of corruption and degradation of morals and values for the United States. Because of the end of World War One, people then were revelling in the new materialism – mass produced commodities, cars, radios and easier access to money. Fitzgerald idolised the glamour of this time but at the same time he did not conform himself to the unrestrained materialism and lack of morality that went with it. He depicts the rich Americans of the 1920s as emotionally cold and morally irresponsible.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast ignorance, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...”4
The original idea of the American Dream as described in chapter 9 is about moral values and the pursuit of happiness. It is written in the American Constitution that every individual has the right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”; the American Dream implies that every man or woman has the opportunity of achieving any set goal as long as they work hard enough for it. Throughout the 1920s this idea has taken a twisted turn and the pursuit for happiness soon turned into the pursuit of wealth and greed. The Great Gatsby is a perfect example of the fall of the American Dream as it shows the way people will fall into the hands of money, greed and illegal actions to achieve what they strive for.
The most prominent feature concerning the American Dream is Daisy, being Gatsby’s personal dream. But Gatsby having made himself wealthy through illegal means also embodies the complete opposite of the American Dream. In this novel, a dream of self-love, greed and corruption replaces the original dream founded on virtues and moral standards. “[...] Gatsby instils Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsby's dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and pleasure.”5
Having lost Daisy leaves Gatsby with nothing but a reason to die and with his tragic and violent death, Fitzgerald foretells the collapse of the post-war era and the disillusionment of the American Dream. From Fitzgerald’s view, America has wasted its dream. With his novel, Fitzgerald also provides an opportunity to examine American ideal and to reflect on social issues coming along with plain materialism and unregulated desire.
1Compare: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/naal/vol_d/bio/fitzgerald.htm, 15 April 20092F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1950, Penguin Books, p. 1423http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Scrapple8, 15 April, 20094F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1950, Penguin Books, p. 1705http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gatsby/themes.html, 15. April, 2009
