Decline In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby and the Decline of the American Dream The novel The Great Gatsby is a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald based on the 1920’s, also referred to as the Jazz Age. This Jazz Age was a time of American prosperity as well as overindulgence. The overindulgence in the jazz age include wild parties , large consumptions of alcohol, and a spending of money in the kind of way that Gatsby bough an entire orchestra every weekend for his parties. During the novel, the reader follows Nick Carraway and his time spent in the eastern part of the United Sates, specifically New York City. While in New York, Nick meets many people who will become major participants in the plot, such as the Buchannan’s, Meyer Wolfshiem, George Wilson, and most importantly, …show more content…
Jay Gatsby has a past with Daisy, and hopes to rekindle that relationship. Before being sent by the Army to World War I, their relationship was starting. “They were so engrossed in each other that she didn’t see me until I was five feet away… [h]is name was Jay Gatsby…that was nineteen-seventeen.” (Fitzgerald 74-75). He wishes he could take back the past years and go back to a time similar to the one he had with Daisy in nineteen-seventeen, “’I wouldn’t ask too much of her’ …’you can’t repeat the past.’… ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously.’ Why of course you can!’”(Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby’s remarks show that he is stuck in the memories of the past, he’s not even thinking about the future. He doesn’t even realize that Daisy has changed. She is no longer the person she was when he last saw her. A major representation in his hopes and dreams of the future through Daisy is the green light at the end of her dock directly across the water from Gatsby’s mansion in which he puts the belief she is perfect for him and she is worthy of all he has given to her in his mind, however Daisy is unworthy of that impossible idealistic perfection Gatsby has bestowed upon