In his novel Fitzgerald demonstrates that the American Dream, for all its splendor and grandeur leaves behind desolation in its wake; Fitzgerald uses the Valley of Ashes to …show more content…
Fitzgerald showed that the American Dream is a dangerously deceptive idea that lures people into chasing it in an effort to escape their dust but ultimately burns through them until they themselves become ash. Through his use of dust and people chasing their dreams he illustrates how the American Dream is made up of “poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drift[ing] furiously about.”(161). In this way Fitzgerald shows that those who dream are like “poor ghosts”, they are already damned to die and live “drifting” through the air never achieving the dreams they covet. Those who chase the American Dream are ultimately destroyed by it and forever left in the