American Values From an Outsider’s Point of View The American Dream, or the action of making dreams into reality, is the foundation to the capitalistic society in which we live today. It is a representation of combined values and aspirations that triumphed over all others, ascending the United States into the supreme world power it has become today. The city of New York best represents the notion of what the American Dream is because, New York is a melting pot of cultures that live together side by side in the same city. At the Start of the 20th century, New York was home to many European migrants. It had a booming economy, and it was a place where the richest of rich demonstrated their wealth through extravagant parties and lavish gatherings.
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Recounting his move to New York to the Neighborhood of West Egg, and being the only one of his neighbors who came from an established background. There is a social hierarchy within The Great Gatsby, which is ranked: old money, new money, and the lower class. This is represented by the way in which the neighborhoods are segregated with West Egg being separated from New York by the valley of ashes, which is an area, comprised of the lower class. Not just that, but there is also a strict separation between western American values vs. eastern American values and who the two cannot coexist. Nick admires Gatsby because of his progressiveness, his self-made wealth, and Gatsby’s per formative agency as an “educated” man from Oxford. He tells the readers that; “He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself,” in order to emphasize his fascination with Gatsby (Fitzgerald Ch.3). Nick however, quickly realizes that there is something wrong with Gatsby’s story, but is to fascinated to question it any further. After Gatsby is killed, and Tom and Daisy, along with all of Gatsby’s would-be friends, disappear, Nick comes to the realization that the values of upheld in the east were fake and shallow, which disgusted him. Nick choses to return to the mid-west, thinking that because he is from the west, he, along with Daisy, Tom, Jordan, and Gatsby, was not able to adjust to eastern American values. At the end of the novel, before he moves back to the mid-west, Nick takes one last look at West Egg and wonders what it must have been like to be an old explorer and finding
Recounting his move to New York to the Neighborhood of West Egg, and being the only one of his neighbors who came from an established background. There is a social hierarchy within The Great Gatsby, which is ranked: old money, new money, and the lower class. This is represented by the way in which the neighborhoods are segregated with West Egg being separated from New York by the valley of ashes, which is an area, comprised of the lower class. Not just that, but there is also a strict separation between western American values vs. eastern American values and who the two cannot coexist. Nick admires Gatsby because of his progressiveness, his self-made wealth, and Gatsby’s per formative agency as an “educated” man from Oxford. He tells the readers that; “He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself,” in order to emphasize his fascination with Gatsby (Fitzgerald Ch.3). Nick however, quickly realizes that there is something wrong with Gatsby’s story, but is to fascinated to question it any further. After Gatsby is killed, and Tom and Daisy, along with all of Gatsby’s would-be friends, disappear, Nick comes to the realization that the values of upheld in the east were fake and shallow, which disgusted him. Nick choses to return to the mid-west, thinking that because he is from the west, he, along with Daisy, Tom, Jordan, and Gatsby, was not able to adjust to eastern American values. At the end of the novel, before he moves back to the mid-west, Nick takes one last look at West Egg and wonders what it must have been like to be an old explorer and finding