The Great Gatsby American Dream
Introduction
The American Dream is attractive. Most will think it is about the love story between Gatsby and Daisy or people's struggles with success. In fact, it does not host the strongest of all love stories, nor does it allow the characters to struggle through their 'success.' It is about the spectators who "are the people who float through life." The literary style explores the realm of social success and American ideals. It boldly highlights people's failure in seeking the American Dream, the pursuit of happiness.
It makes the American Dream intriguing and substantial. Both of these things help create a book that is very appealing to a wide audience, not just a group of high school students or critics. This classic freedom promotes and exacerbates the values, behavior, and attitudes that most individuals can understand, relate to, and probably learn. In order to attract more readers to the audience, it expresses and expands the American Dream through the style and form of a work of literature and analysis. By the end of this love story, and the myriad interpretations usually associated with it, many people are not aware of it, or they more than breathe in the valuable material of the basic American Dream. They have absorbed the fresh visionary tradition of American society.
Plot Overview and Characters
The novel centers around the protagonist, Jay Gatsby. Told through the eyes of the man next door, Nick Carraway, the novel takes place in Long Island during the Roaring Twenties. Jay Gatsby is a self-made man and has dedicated his entire life to becoming the most affluent man in order to fulfill a dream he created for himself long ago. He finds this dream in Daisy Buchanan, a woman he seduced and fell in love with before enlisting in the war. Surrounding Gatsby is Tom Buchanan, Daisy's domineering and outspoken husband, Jordan Baker, Daisy's friend, a character of ambiguous sexuality, and Myrtle Wilson, Tom's girlfriend, and George Wilson's wife. Myrtle Wilson is later killed in a car accident that Tom and Jordan pass by on the way from New York to Long Island. The incident sets off a series of events that ultimately leads to Gatsby's own murder. In the end, Daisy leaves Gatsby and runs off with Tom, distancing herself and betraying Gatsby's undying love for her.
The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, a Midwestern native making a living in New York as a bondsman. Seventy years after these events occurred, the reader is introduced to the man who solves Gatsby's death for what it was: a crime of passion committed by Wilson. The novel explores the relationships between Gatsby and Daisy, Daisy and Tom, Gatsby and Meyer Wolfsheim, and Nick and Jordan. The novel's prevailing element is a continuous illusion wrapped with themes relating to the American Dream, love, and excess. Throughout the novel, the reader deals with the conflicting reality of all of the characters, exposing some people's society, the truth of love, and the self, and zeros in on exposing Gatsby's dream.
Symbolism and Themes
In 'The Great Gatsby', wealth is symbolized in valuable assets such as Gatsby's mansion. The American Dream is represented by the green light, as well as the Valley of Ashes. In both ideas, moral decay is portrayed as the absence of wealth, with being poor as proof of a lack of character or motivation. The eyes have also been rendered as significant to the American Dream, but with a more destructive significance. Money is the way in which the characters attempt to solve their problems, only to the satisfaction of the person being paid. Love and romance are also associated with wealth, and consequently the American Dream.
Two further themes in The Great Gatsby that are associated with the American Dream and one's pursuit of happiness entail this continual intertwinedness of love, money, and motivation. Many would have us believe that more general themes of love in the novel are Christian or moral in nature. They suggest that the most valuable of Gatsby's possessions, in the end, is the ability to "dream," love, and aspire. Both money and age reach a loveless and unlovely conclusion in The Great Gatsby, both also being represented by the novel's significant symbols. Social stratification considered in its place, the theme does, though, create self-awareness on account of the characters' attitudes. All are sympathetic figures in one way or another, yet it is easier to criticize them, aware that they see themselves through an existing delusion. The characters finally argue against the widespread belief in the idea of progress, confidence in our ability to change ourselves out of our spiritual smallness. A reading produces nothing of the idealism the novel desires us to project onto it concerning the possibilities of a better future to replace the dusty present.
The Corruption of the American Dream
The majority of people have their own personal American Dream, which has the ability to become the main theme of the novel. In order for this theme to be considered as the American Dream, it does not necessarily have to be about making money, but it should be the focus of the story and the goal that allows the author to create his work. In the novel, this theme seemed to be the main idea of the story. Despite the fact that the story is told by Nick Carraway and all the events that take place are seen through his eyes, the novel still seems to represent the views and the voice of Jay Gatsby. His dreams and ambitions are what the story centers around. Through his life, actions, and character, the image of the American Dream is illustrated.
It is a search for success, happiness, and freedom. It is the belief that no matter what, an individual can become successful as long as they are willing to work hard for it. The American Dream is so important to the novel that it really makes up the majority of the story. Without this theme, there would be no story. The particular way that the author wrote the novel creates not only an interesting plot but also a very insightful view of the American Dream. The main character of the novel, Jay Gatsby, has not seen the success that he wished for, and that was the only reason why he wanted so much to live according to the American Dream.
Critical Analysis and Contemporary Relevance
The Great Gatsby is more often discussed as an exploration of the darker side of the American Dream than as a celebration of it. The originally ‘demythologized aspects of American consumer capitalism’ were so skilfully re-mythologized that much of the original darkness lingers only beneath the surface. The term ‘Valley of Ashes’ society describes the arrangements of power, control and acquisition that have destroyed the relationship between nature and humanity. As the power of money becomes increasingly lethal in the novel, the grotesque transformation of the original dream of freedom becomes total. Right from the opening pages, when the apparently ‘devilish’ eyes watch Godless New York for hypocritical America, the uneasy duality of the Great American Delusion begins to be sensed. Oddly enough, as the total confusion and self-deception increases in the story, so does the clarity, sharpness and urgency of the novel’s statement. The critical contemplation of contemporary society that was previously the sole province of the towers of learning is now the focus of the whole life of popular American culture. In the sumptuous psycho-pop teen magazine, there are features with titles such as ‘Help, I’m Addicted to Being Popular’ and, quite extraordinarily, ‘Are There Still Flappers in America?’ It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s a female teenager magazine because waste, narcissism, hedonism and the black despair of parents who cannot communicate properly with their children affects everyone. It probably doesn’t matter in which respect this double-edged question is taken, because the answer that can be deduced directly from an analysis of the decline of consumer faith and coercion is that the simple question is specifically central. What is significant, of course, is that The Great Gatsby still provokes the question after seventy years. With the right encouragement, too, youthful spirit and feminine energy are in a prime position to win the day.
The Great Gatsby American Dream. (2024, Dec 27). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/the-great-gatsby-american-dream/