The American Dream: The Great Gatsby

It can be said that chasing the American Dream is a never ending journey. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, Gatsby seems to undertake great efforts in pursuing the life he wants to live, the so-called American Dream. The novel is Fitzgerald's vessel of commentary and criticism of the American Dream. As he paints a vivid portrait of the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald defines this dream, and through Gatsby's downfall, expresses the futility and agony of its pursuit. Through Gatsby's longing for it, he depicts its beauty and irresistible lure in a manner of which any philosopher would be proud. The aspects of the American Dream are evident throughout Fitzgerald's narrative. Take, for example, James Gatz's heavenly, almost unbelievable rise from "beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger and a salmon-fisher" to the great, i.e. excessive, Gatsby, housed in "a colossal affair by any standard...

The cover of the first edition of The Great Gatsby...

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

with a tower on one side... a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden". The awe in which Fitzgerald presents his awakened phoenix clearly conveys the importance of improvement, or at least what one thinks is improvement, in the American Dream; it is not necessarily a life of excesses and wealth Fitzgerald defends as the Dream, for the audience sees clearly their detriments in the novel through Tom and Daisy, but rather a change in the style of life, reflecting the equally-American pioneering spirit. Love represents the other side of the coin of wealth: as opposed to material wealth, it refers instead to emotional wealth. Whatever its plane of existence, love plays a pivotal role in the American Dream, in Gatsby's Dream. Perhaps love is the most valuable of the aspects presented thus far of the Dream. For example, it is...