Question

How does Fitzgerald portray the American Dream in The Great Gatsby? Explain as simple as you possibly can.

Answer 1

The Amer­i­can Dream is a way of life: the idea that if you work hard, you will get lots of mon­ey, which will make you hap­py. In the fa­mous nov­el The Great Gats­by, Jay Gats­by is the ul­ti­mate sym­bol of The Amer­i­can Dream: he start­ed from noth­ing and worked his way up to the top. As The Dec­la­ra­tion Of In­de­pen­dence says: ‘All men are cre­at­ed equal, that they are en­dowed by their Cre­ator with cer­tain un­alien­able rights, that among these are Life, Lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness.’ In oth­er words, ev­ery Amer­i­can has a right to re­al­ly make them­selves in­to some­one, to fol­low the Amer­i­can Dream, to be Amer­i­can. Nick Car­raway, the nar­ra­tor, seemed to be si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly en­chant­ed and re­pelled by Jay Gats­by’s re­li­gious ded­i­ca­tion and be­lief in The Amer­i­can Dream. So F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s opin­ion on The Amer­i­can Dream is not de­ci­phered eas­i­ly through the nov­el. In this es­say I will ex­plain how Fitzger­ald puts across that The Amer­i­can Dream is un­achiev­able, but it is a pos­i­tive dream.

F. Scott Fitzger­ald por­trays The Amer­i­can Dream as pos­i­tive since it gives hope to those who fol­low it. Nick re­counts the time when he spot­ted Jay Gats­by gaz­ing sea­wards to­wards a green light - which, he learned lat­er, re­mind­ed him of his dream to have Daisy. ‘Gats­by be­lieved in the green light, the or­gas­tic fu­ture that year by year re­cedes be­fore us.’ The green light is the glow­ing bea­con sym­bol­is­ing Gats­by’s as­sured hope of gain­ing Daisy. Nick recog­nis­es the pos­i­tive mean­ing this dock light held for Jay Gats­by yet al­so reg­is­ters that, in re­al­i­ty, that light is slow­ly fad­ing away - along with Gats­by’s dream. ‘Be­lieve’ is usu­al­ly a pos­i­tive word, one to de­scribe your faith in the un­proved. Is it mere­ly a co­in­ci­dence that the light is ‘green’ ? Pos­si­bly not: green means go, it is a pos­i­tive colour and most of all - green means hope. But there is a dark side. Green is the colour of en­vy and sus­pi­cion - which are traits in fol­low­ers of The Amer­i­can Dream, and non-fol­low­ers. Of course ‘re­cedes’ is neg­a­tive - mean­ing ‘to go back­wards’, ‘move fur­ther away ’or ‘to with­draw from a prom­ise.’ ’Be­lieve’ is of­ten used in the con­text of be­liev­ing in a myth; and The Amer­i­can Dream is a myth: the fairy sto­ry told to Amer­i­can chil­dren, as­sur­ing them of a ‘Hap­pi­ly ev­er af­ter.’ - when, in fact, there isn’t one. As Gats­by stretch­es his arms out fur­ther to­wards the light, it gets fur­ther and fur­ther away from him… Fitzger­ald us­es Nick to de­scribe the pos­i­tive out­come of The Amer­i­can Dream - the op­ti­mism in reach­ing for the dream while the neg­a­tive is that the dream it­self is un­reach­able.

F. Scott Fitzger­ald ad­mires the in­de­pen­dence and de­ter­mi­na­tion that Gats­by takes up on his long road to the ac­quir­ing of Daisy. The good re­sult of earn­ing all that you are is be­ing pleased with your­self at get­ting there. Gats­by ad­mires his house with the pride one adopts when look­ing up­on some­thing that you have done en­tire­ly in­de­pen­dent­ly. ‘Took me just three years to earn the mon­ey that bought this.’ De­spite the fact three years is a short amount of time to earn mon­ey to buy a house - peo­ple buy­ing a house a third of the size would take much longer - the main point is that Gats­by would have wait­ed sev­en years if he had to. Time doesn’t mat­ter in Gats­by’s book, all that mat­ters is get­ting to the fi­nal page - how­ev­er long it takes. Any­thing that hap­pens on the way is no mat­ter ei­ther, as long as he gets there. He is a ‘new mon­ey’ man, who earnt his mon­ey through a long pe­ri­od of hard work, but one of the down­sides of this hero­ic ac­tion is that where he got his mon­ey is a pop­u­lar source of gos­sip for many peo­ple, he was ru­moured to be ‘a boot­leg­ger’, ‘nephew to Von Hin­den­burg’ and even ‘sec­ond cousin to the dev­il.’ But de­spite these ac­cu­sa­tions are in­sult­ing, Gats­by didn’t dwell on them. Ru­mours mean noth­ing - they are not a part of his Amer­i­can Dream. So there­fore cause no con­cern. His cor­rup­tion didn’t cause any em­bar­rass­ment for he was ‘the cor­rupt man’ with an ‘in­cor­rupt­ible dream’. Fitzger­ald writes the nov­el so the read­er, along with Nick, re­spects Gats­by for his man­ners and not re­spond­ing to the crit­i­cism that oth­ers give him. This is the work of The Amer­i­can Dream, it’s an en­tire­ly per­son­al life­style. Fitzger­ald prais­es The Amer­i­can Dream for mak­ing peo­ple in­de­pen­dent

In spite of the pos­i­tive out­comes of the Amer­i­can Dream, through­out the nov­el, Fitzger­ald us­es Nick to re­mind the read­er that the dream can­not be ful­filled. In the fi­nal chap­ter, the nar­ra­tor broods on Gats­by’s sur­re­al life and his fail­ure in reach­ing his dream. ‘His dream must have seemed so close that he could hard­ly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was al­ready be­hind him.’ Nick tries to em­pathise with Gats­by as through­out his whole life he be­lieved in some­thing that was, and nev­er will be, true. The word ‘grasp’ tells us the strug­gle that the fol­low­er goes through and that, even if they get there, it would not be easy. Daisy rang Gats­by a mere minute be­fore he was shot - so he was, quite lit­er­al­ly, ‘so close’. This quote high­lights the point that Gats­by is not pur­pose­ful­ly ig­nor­ing the im­pos­si­bil­i­ty of the dream but he tru­ly puts all his faith in it. ‘He did not know’ makes you think that Gats­by’s life was a lie - a fake am­bi­tion which en­sured his cor­rup­tion. This may cause the read­er to have sym­pa­thy with Gats­by, and pos­si­bly even make them have a neg­a­tive opin­ion of The Amer­i­can Dream; but we must re­mem­ber, Gats­by died know­ing that Daisy was ring­ing him - he died be­liev­ing that he would get there. In re­al­i­ty, The Amer­i­can Dream tricks and de­ceives, makes Gats­by think that he can be who­ev­er he wants to be, can have any­thing he wants, can do any­thing he wants - but he can’t. The Great Gats­by shows the fick­le­ness of The Amer­i­can Dream but shows that the fol­low­er is de­ceived til their dy­ing breath - so in a way, the fol­low­ers will al­ways have faith in their dream, which is pos­i­tive. Fitzger­ald high­lights the de­ceit, but doesn’t al­low the char­ac­ter to know of it.

Nick is the nar­ra­tor of the sto­ry. He is es­sen­tial­ly the mes­sen­ger who de­liv­ers Fitzger­ald’s opin­ion on The Amer­i­can Dream - so we must pay close at­ten­tion to his opin­ion of Gats­by: who is The Amer­i­can Dream. Nick had mixed thoughts on Gats­by, but near­er Gats­by’s death, Nick al­most looks up­on him as a hero. The first and last com­pli­ment Nick pays Gats­by is that of him be­ing ‘worth the whole damn lot put to­geth­er’. Nick al­so called them a ‘rot­ten crowd.’ He was com­par­ing him to Daisy, Tom and Jor­dan. The dif­fer­ence be­tween them and Gats­by is that they don’t fol­low The Amer­i­can Dream. ‘Worth’ of­ten ap­plies to what an item is worth - usu­al­ly an amount of mon­ey - so this could sug­gest that Nick rates Gats­by’s mon­ey high­er than ‘old mon­ey’ be­cause he earnt it in­stead of in­her­it­ing it. That must be Fitzger­ald’s opin­ion on mon­ey, which is con­tro­ver­sial since in the 20s, old mon­ey fam­i­lies tend­ed to be more re­spect­ed. Call­ing them a ‘rot­ten crowd’ em­pha­sis­es the in­di­vid­u­al­ism of The Amer­i­can Dream, like it’s Gats­by against the world, fol­low­ing his per­son­al dream…

Fitzger­ald por­trays The Amer­i­can Dream as a fo­cus on striv­ing to get back to the past. Nick talks about peo­ple’s per­cep­tion of The Amer­i­can Dream: ‘It elud­ed us then, but that’s no mat­ter - to­mor­row we will run faster, stretch out our arms far­ther… And one fine morn­ing -
The at­ti­tude in The Amer­i­can Dream is al­ways op­ti­mistic: we didn’t achieve our am­bi­tion then, but that doesn’t mat­ter be­cause to­mor­row we will do bet­ter; and one day we will get there. ‘Elude’ means to avoid, to es­cape from. As if al­though they didn’t achieve their goal, they think it’s ‘hid­ing round a cor­ner’ or very close by. ‘But that’s no mat­ter’ be­cause to­mor­row is a new day, where they will do ev­ery­thing bet­ter and faster. Fitzger­ald knows The Amer­i­can Dream is un­achiev­able, this is shown by ‘one fine morn­ing’ be­ing cut off. Amer­i­cans be­lieve that a beau­ti­ful day will dawn when their dream will be ful­filled, but that day will nev­er come. There is al­ways the de­sire for more, the un­quench­able thirst that is the re­al­i­ty of The Amer­i­can Dream.

The Great Gats­by fin­ish­es on this mem­o­rable de­scrip­tion of The Amer­i­can Dream: ‘So we beat on, boats against the cur­rent, borne back cease­less­ly in­to the past.’ De­spite most Amer­i­cans know­ing The Amer­i­can Dream is un­achiev­able they, un­in­ten­tion­al­ly, still fol­low it. Us­ing ‘boats’ em­pha­sis­es that The Amer­i­can Dream is a jour­ney and ‘cease­less­ly’ could sug­gest that The Amer­i­can Dream is not hard at all. But these prais­ing words are con­tra­dict­ed by the ‘cur­rent’ which they are up against and ‘beat’ points out the strug­gle of even mov­ing clos­er to the dream. ‘Borne back’ ‘in­to the past’ again, tells us that The Amer­i­can Dream is try­ing to get back to the time when the Dutch sailors found the land of Amer­i­ca - the land of hope, where any­thing can be achieved.

In con­clu­sion I be­lieve that in The Great Gats­by F. Scott. Fitzger­ald prais­es The Amer­i­can Dream yet recog­nis­es and puts across that it is im­pos­si­ble to achieve. His high opin­ion of The Amer­i­can Dream is read from Nick’s view on Gats­by - since Nick, as the nar­ra­tor, is Fitzger­ald’s mes­sen­ger and Jay Gats­by is his sym­bol of the Amer­i­can Dream. The death of Jay Gats­by re­veals the im­pos­si­bil­i­ty of achiev­ing The Amer­i­can Dream. As well as this, the nar­ra­tor once stat­ed that he was ‘si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly en­chant­ed and re­pelled by the in­ex­haustible va­ri­ety of life’; this quote I think sums up Fitzger­ald’s opin­ion on The Amer­i­can Dream - in­trigu­ing yet re­pelling. At the end of the nov­el we are left in the rock­ing boat from the last line - stuck be­tween op­po­si­tions: past and fu­ture, progress and re­gres­sion, dream and re­al­i­ty.