Fitzgerald’s American Dream
Francis Scott Fitzgerald in his book The Great Gatsby tells our American Society of the decadent state of The American Dream. The dream of the New World was that there should be few barriers to happiness, that with hard work, happiness is achieved. Now those dreams extend beyond that; they extend to a vitality so great that that it’s too much for any dream-bearer to take. Those dreams, like Jay Gatsby, the main character and the embodiment of these new dreams, have left the realm of practicality and have become a setup for failure “commensurate to [one’s] capacity to wonder” (180).
The newfound vitality of the Roaring Twenties had left people with a zeal for a dream, for a purpose beyond even their most wildest …show more content…
When Gatsby finally realizes his dream, his lost love, Daisy Buchanan, there were moments “when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams … because of the colossal vitality of his illusion” (96). The specific detail “colossal vitality” indicates where dreams of today stray from The American Dream: they’re just too big. And both Gatsby and American Society faced the consequences of their large, yet fragile dreams. Jay Gatsby “[broke] up like glass” once the ultimate obstacle, Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, destroyed that dream (148). American Society paid for it’s fragile dreams and terrible credit spending through the Great Depression. Also, with Gatsby destroyed, Gatz had to face his final moments as a man with no vitality, a man who began to realize the “high price” he paid for a “single dream.” The author wants to make sure that we realize the exorbitant cost that one pays for such a grand dream: a cost that consumes one’s entire life. But what Gatsby, and more importantly, American Society, needed to realize was that their dream lied “somewhere back in … the dark fields of the republic” (180). What they went through was unnecessary, the lives they wished to live weren’t from the dreams of such all-consuming grandeur, but rather, they rested in the national ethos of the United States of
Francis Scott Fitzgerald in his book The Great Gatsby tells our American Society of the decadent state of The American Dream. The dream of the New World was that there should be few barriers to happiness, that with hard work, happiness is achieved. Now those dreams extend beyond that; they extend to a vitality so great that that it’s too much for any dream-bearer to take. Those dreams, like Jay Gatsby, the main character and the embodiment of these new dreams, have left the realm of practicality and have become a setup for failure “commensurate to [one’s] capacity to wonder” (180).
The newfound vitality of the Roaring Twenties had left people with a zeal for a dream, for a purpose beyond even their most wildest …show more content…
When Gatsby finally realizes his dream, his lost love, Daisy Buchanan, there were moments “when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams … because of the colossal vitality of his illusion” (96). The specific detail “colossal vitality” indicates where dreams of today stray from The American Dream: they’re just too big. And both Gatsby and American Society faced the consequences of their large, yet fragile dreams. Jay Gatsby “[broke] up like glass” once the ultimate obstacle, Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, destroyed that dream (148). American Society paid for it’s fragile dreams and terrible credit spending through the Great Depression. Also, with Gatsby destroyed, Gatz had to face his final moments as a man with no vitality, a man who began to realize the “high price” he paid for a “single dream.” The author wants to make sure that we realize the exorbitant cost that one pays for such a grand dream: a cost that consumes one’s entire life. But what Gatsby, and more importantly, American Society, needed to realize was that their dream lied “somewhere back in … the dark fields of the republic” (180). What they went through was unnecessary, the lives they wished to live weren’t from the dreams of such all-consuming grandeur, but rather, they rested in the national ethos of the United States of