False American Dream
The Great Gatsby serves as a literary piece which exposes the truth about the American Dream. Fitzgerald shows that the American Dream was an ideal which captivated the poor, such as Gatsby by romanticizing it by believing that hard work can lead to the gain of wealth and power in the society. Such ideas pose as a disturbance in the way the old money usually acquired their status. Their name in society was pre owned by their ancestors, such as Tom Buchanan’s (Hays). This poses the idea that the American Dream was in fact corrupted where sin takes place in the form of murder, infidelity and crime in order to gain money at a faster rate. In the 1920s, the economy started changing where goods were mass produced. This lead …show more content…
Therefore, many people owned cars and houses which served as symbols of wealth in society. For example, cars were viewed as monetized elements of wealth during the 1920s, when everyone wanted to buy them. The used car market was booming just as the new, factory-made automobile market was. In The Great Gatsby, Wilson's hope for making money and climbing up from the lower class by selling the car for a higher price implies his want for money. In the valley of ashes, lower class people always looked for ways to obtain wealth and become new money just as Gatsby, so Wilson uses the blue Coupe as an object which will aid in his hope for the American dream, therefore establishing Tom Buchanan as a part of the American dream (Fitzgerald 25). During this time, many people learned to monetize anything due to the industrialization, such as steel, glass and wood (Little). This is shown in the polysyndeton syntax where Gatsby is described to have a car that stood with a “rich cream color, bright and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-sheilds that mirrored a dozen suns”(Fitzgerald 33). By describing the car to have such a complex structure and richness through its color and materials shows that the new money, which consisted of many people of lower class backgrounds, could also gain this wealth. But the combination …show more content…
The erased division in society between the people of the Valley of the Ashes and the old money parallels the idea that women, regardless of their class, strive to be governed by the wealth and status of Tom Buchanan. Myrtle in turn chooses to live as a part of this sin, defying the morals given my god, in order to reach the American dream. This is shown through the imagery of the furniture in the “cake slice” of the distorted marriage. The repetition of the word “small” in comparison with the word “enormous” used for top when describing the furniture and wealth in the apartment establishes the differences in the members of the relationship (Bloom). Infidelity also represents the shallow quality of the characters’ lives thus signifying the hollowness of the American Dream. The wealthy have everything but are still not happy. All the relationships in the novel contain a motive or purpose. For instance, Tom has an affair to satisfy his boredom, and escape from his relationship at home. Gatsby being equivalent to a “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” diminishes the American Dream as a status where you are able to be excepted. The division between the old money and new money shows the lack of presence even after a member of the lower class is given the opportunity to gain wealth in society. This statement is hypocritical because Tom has committed infidelity, but talks about family
The Great Gatsby serves as a literary piece which exposes the truth about the American Dream. Fitzgerald shows that the American Dream was an ideal which captivated the poor, such as Gatsby by romanticizing it by believing that hard work can lead to the gain of wealth and power in the society. Such ideas pose as a disturbance in the way the old money usually acquired their status. Their name in society was pre owned by their ancestors, such as Tom Buchanan’s (Hays). This poses the idea that the American Dream was in fact corrupted where sin takes place in the form of murder, infidelity and crime in order to gain money at a faster rate. In the 1920s, the economy started changing where goods were mass produced. This lead …show more content…
Therefore, many people owned cars and houses which served as symbols of wealth in society. For example, cars were viewed as monetized elements of wealth during the 1920s, when everyone wanted to buy them. The used car market was booming just as the new, factory-made automobile market was. In The Great Gatsby, Wilson's hope for making money and climbing up from the lower class by selling the car for a higher price implies his want for money. In the valley of ashes, lower class people always looked for ways to obtain wealth and become new money just as Gatsby, so Wilson uses the blue Coupe as an object which will aid in his hope for the American dream, therefore establishing Tom Buchanan as a part of the American dream (Fitzgerald 25). During this time, many people learned to monetize anything due to the industrialization, such as steel, glass and wood (Little). This is shown in the polysyndeton syntax where Gatsby is described to have a car that stood with a “rich cream color, bright and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-sheilds that mirrored a dozen suns”(Fitzgerald 33). By describing the car to have such a complex structure and richness through its color and materials shows that the new money, which consisted of many people of lower class backgrounds, could also gain this wealth. But the combination …show more content…
The erased division in society between the people of the Valley of the Ashes and the old money parallels the idea that women, regardless of their class, strive to be governed by the wealth and status of Tom Buchanan. Myrtle in turn chooses to live as a part of this sin, defying the morals given my god, in order to reach the American dream. This is shown through the imagery of the furniture in the “cake slice” of the distorted marriage. The repetition of the word “small” in comparison with the word “enormous” used for top when describing the furniture and wealth in the apartment establishes the differences in the members of the relationship (Bloom). Infidelity also represents the shallow quality of the characters’ lives thus signifying the hollowness of the American Dream. The wealthy have everything but are still not happy. All the relationships in the novel contain a motive or purpose. For instance, Tom has an affair to satisfy his boredom, and escape from his relationship at home. Gatsby being equivalent to a “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” diminishes the American Dream as a status where you are able to be excepted. The division between the old money and new money shows the lack of presence even after a member of the lower class is given the opportunity to gain wealth in society. This statement is hypocritical because Tom has committed infidelity, but talks about family