In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the American Dream becomes a main theme running through Gatsby and Nick’s adventures. The American Dream becomes this search for the “perfect life”, and to Gatsby, he’s spent so long searching for his “perfect life” that all he needs now is the girl. Gatsby’s girl is Daisy, and the green light is him trying and trying but never getting to her. Gatsby’s American Dream begins to crumble when he realizes he will never have Daisy and that part of his dream is gone. When Gatsby and Daisy are in Gatsby’s house, he covers her in a pile of shirts, a physical representation of the burden and toll a “perfect life” can take on you. Gatsby’s American Dream is a perfect life, a life he’s built out of nothing,
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When they finally reach Gatsby’s room she lays on his bed and he begins throwing folded shirts onto her, one after the other. Daisy bursts out sobbing and says, "They're such beautiful shirts, she sobbed, her muffled in the folds. It makes me sad because I've never seen such beautiful shirts." (Fitzgerald, 92) Daisy and Gatsby both become overwhelmed by both the mental pressure trying of to live the “perfect” American life and the physical value placed on material things. Both of these characters feel overwhelmed and suffocated by something so simple as a pile of shirts, because of the meaning it all holds. Gatsby muses, "Her voice is full of money... That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money - that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbal's song of it..." (Fitzgerald, 120) He falls prey to the irresistible charm of wealth and the material benefits and his American Dream comes crashing down as he realizes “having it all” isn’t what it’s meant to be. When the shirts get thrown, it becomes a physical representation of them suffocating under the pressure of being perfect and having it all. Daisy and Gatsby’s American Dream dies because it is only on the surface and is easily cracked and broken under
When they finally reach Gatsby’s room she lays on his bed and he begins throwing folded shirts onto her, one after the other. Daisy bursts out sobbing and says, "They're such beautiful shirts, she sobbed, her muffled in the folds. It makes me sad because I've never seen such beautiful shirts." (Fitzgerald, 92) Daisy and Gatsby both become overwhelmed by both the mental pressure trying of to live the “perfect” American life and the physical value placed on material things. Both of these characters feel overwhelmed and suffocated by something so simple as a pile of shirts, because of the meaning it all holds. Gatsby muses, "Her voice is full of money... That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money - that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbal's song of it..." (Fitzgerald, 120) He falls prey to the irresistible charm of wealth and the material benefits and his American Dream comes crashing down as he realizes “having it all” isn’t what it’s meant to be. When the shirts get thrown, it becomes a physical representation of them suffocating under the pressure of being perfect and having it all. Daisy and Gatsby’s American Dream dies because it is only on the surface and is easily cracked and broken under