The Great Gatsby and The American Dream Essay Example

The American Dream can be interpreted as something many people reach for. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is a prime example of the overwhelming hold the American DReam can take on people. Gatsby is someone who devotes the better part of his 20’s reaching for something he could never truly have, something that would never genuinely be rewarding. Countless people define their worth based on the American Dream, spend years and years chasing after something that, like Gatsby’s hopes and dreams, is never truly achievable. 

Fitzgerald's message is that the American Dream is an inadequate and disappointing goal to strive towards, this is especially apparent in the way Jay Gatsby's persona takes over who he used to be, how he helplessly reaches towards an unattainable goal, and the way he will never truly be fulfilled in his life.

Gatsby puts on a persona of sorts, many people view him as a mysterious figure, unknown to the people around him. His friends and family don’t know who he truly is. He puts up this persona as a means of protection, wanting to succeed and show people what they want to see. Gatsby puts on this persona in front of everyone, no one knows his true self, his past, and who he truly is deep down. He has a successful rich man persona that people fall in love with.  In the novel, Jay Gatsby’s father remarks, "Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he's got about improving his mind? He was always great for that" (Fitzgerald Ch. 9, par. 111). Jay Gatsby’s persona overtakes his old personality, and who he was before devoting years of his life to Daisy. This can be compared to the American Dream in the sense that people lose themselves in the process of devoting themselves to the American Dream. Ralph Ellison, a literary critic, states, “The contradictions he experienced and put into fiction heighten the implications of the dream for individual lives: the promise and possibilities, violations and corruptions of those ideals of nationhood and personality "dreamed into being," as Ralph Ellison phrased it, "out of the chaos and darkness of the feudal past." Fitzgerald embodied in his tissues and nervous system the fluid polarities of American experience: success and failure, illusion and disillusion, dream and nightmare” (qtd. in Callahan). Gatsby’s persona takes him over and ends up turning him into someone he’s not, disconnected from himself, his past, and the people around him in his life.

Daisy is a major constant in Gatsby’s goals, he spends most of his time developing a life that he could use to get her back. Daisy and Gatsby’s encounter years before changed the course of Gatsby’s life, and who he even is as a person. It sends him into a spiral of trying to impress her, gaining material items, earning more money, all for her. Jordan says, “She was the first "nice" girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him—he had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there” (Fitzgerald Ch. 7, par. 10).  Daisy is different than anyone he’s ever met. This is when his unhealthy need to be with her starts, he overestimates how much their meeting means. He devotes the next years of his life to her and getting to her. Similar to people who devote themselves to success in the American Dream, Gatsby commits himself. He’s surrendered himself to her and she doesn’t even know. Daisy moved on and got married, yet Gatsby doesn’t let go. Many people who try to achieve the American Dream never stop, even if it’s not a plausible idea anymore. People want what they can’t have and that applies to Gatsby and the American Dream: “The idea and covenant of American citizenship required that all individuals make themselves up in the midst of the emerging new society. And the process of creation would be vernacular, arising from native ground, the weather, landscape, customs, habits, peoples, and values of this new world in the making”(qtd. in Callahan). The American Dream pushes people to strive for something that only few people can truly achieve, it takes a toll on the person and demands so much from them. Gatsby is a great model of someone who strives endlessly to achieve what he wants, even if it’s self destructive and taking away from his ultimate happiness.

Gatsby is not someone who seems like he could be truly satisfied in life, similar to the people who spend their life aimlessly reaching towards an unattainable goal. Gatsby is a representation of people stuck in the loop of gaining, working, and striving. People who get lost in their success, their mind clouded by what they want vs what they need. Gatsby is a representation of people stuck in the loop of gaining, working, and striving. Nick says, “No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men” (Fitzgerald Ch. 1, par. 3). People get lost in their success, their mind clouded by what they want vs what they need. Gatsby is one of those people. From the beginning, learning about his childhood, and learning about who he used to be, it becomes apparent he gave up on himself, and his ultimate happiness and satisfaction in life, to surrender to what he wanted. Callahan touched on the idea of the ‘pursuit of happiness’ and what it truly means: “As human impulses, property and the pursuit of happiness are sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary metaphors for experience. Let property stand for the compulsion to divide the world and contain experience within fixed, arbitrary boundaries.” Gatsby’s ‘pursuit of happiness’ and sense of validation is reaching for Daisy, leaving behind his past life and who he once was.

Fitzgerald's message is that the American Dream is an inadequate and disappointing goal to strive towards, this is especially apparent in the way Jay Gatsby's persona takes over who he used to be, how he helplessly reaches towards an unattainable goal, and the way he will never truly be fulfilled in his life. He does this by showing us who Jay Gatsby is and what his life was life before, this gave us an idea of him being engulfed by his own persona. This is also displayed by the fact that he reaches towards Daisy even though she isn’t available to him, similar to the way people dedicate their lives to the American Dream. Lastly, reading the novel, it’s apparent that Jay Gatsby will never be truly happy, similar to the unrewarding nature of the American Dream.  Jay Gatsby is an excellent example of everything that centers the American Dream, he's a good representation of someone who’s lost himself reaching for what he wants, eventually leading himself to his own demise, not unlike the millions of people who started out hopeful and ended up basking in disappointment.