How Is The American Dream Justified In The Great Gatsby

When asked, most Americans would say they have healthy aspirations when it comes to family, money, and love. “The American Dream” means that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby creates unrealistic dreams that would transform him from a poor young soldier into a man of wealth in order to impress the woman of his dreams, Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby obsesses about recreating the past by becoming rich so that Daisy would leave her husband for him. By the end of The Great Gatsby, Gatsby’s dream becomes warped and obsessive. They play a major role in his untimely death. His idealized visons of Dasisy …show more content…
Tom Buchanan does not step aside but exposes Jay Gatsby as a fraud. He says, “I found out what your 'drug-stores ' were." He turned to us and spoke rapidly. "He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That 's one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn 't far wrong." (Fitzgerald, 252) Daisy Buchanan has expressed no desire to give up her wealthy lifestyle with her cheating husband, For Gatsby, it means there was no chance to rekindle a long ago romance. Had everything worked out, Daisy would have left Tom for Gatsby. In the end, they would have driven off into the sunset and had a happy life together but it was not to be. However, Gatsby has an incorrect view of Daisy because she would never leave her lifestyle. Earlier in the book Nick Carraway noted that Daisy “looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged" (Fitzgerald, 22). We soon see the objects of Gatsby’s obsession for what they are and it is a very sad portrait. Daisy tells Gatsby that she loves him but the reader is left wondering if this is all about getting revenge on her husband because he is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson. On the way back to Long Island, Daisy runs over and kills Myrtle Wilson in Gatsby’s car. Daisy flees the scene. Sadly Tom Buchanan tells Wilson that Gatsby was at the wheel when his wife was killed. Wilson goes mad and Gatsby before turning the gun on himself. For Gatsby’s funeral, Daisy is nowhere to be found, having left the country in a hurry. Instead of running off with the love of his life, Gatsby is left face down in his swimming pool. Nick Carraway said “They were careless people, Tom and