Red White and Blue - The American Illusion Tommy Hilfiger, world renowned entrepreneur, states that “The road to success is not easy to navigate, but with hard work, drive and passion, it 's possible to achieve the American Dream.” The Brookings Institute defines the American Dream as the ideal that every U.S. citizen is equal in the sense that everyone has the equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald challenged this definition. When World War I ended in 1918, the stock market rose and the national wealth and materialism increased dramatically. A person from any background could strike it rich, but American families
…show more content…
This is why Gatsby is so infatuated with Daisy throughout his life and believes her to be his American Dream. In The Great Gatsby, white ultimately symbolizes vacuity, superficiality, and selfishness. Daisy’s life is full of nothing besides materials and she wastes everyday in loneliness. Daisy cried, “What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon, and the day after that, and the next thirty years?” (Fitzgerald168). When Gatsby dies at the end of the novel, Daisy shows no grief, which exemplifies her selfishness. White symbolizes Daisy’s loneliness and selfishness. On the other hand, Gatsby regards Daisy as his American Dream, so it indicates his dream to be a hallucination and worthless. White also implies that his American Dream is bound to be …show more content…
During the 1920s, the American Dream started to diminish in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald believed that the Jazz Age - during 1918 - people lacked social and moral values, shown through its greed and empty pursuit of pleasure (red, white, and blue each symbolize this). This led to extravagant parties - epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the parties that Jay Gatsby throws every Saturday night - and this ultimately led to the decline and ever growing hard to approach American dream as the desire for money surpassed more noble goals. As this increased the American dream became less and less achievable by the average American citizen. On the American Flag, red symbolizes the great courage American soldiers face in battle, white signifies purity and innocence, and finally blue represents perseverance and justice. In The Great Gatsby, patriotism, narcissism, and cold-hearted all go hand in hand. The American Flag, is taken over by selfishness, and the upper class. F. Scott Fitzgerald captures the idea that the American Dream was and still is becoming increasingly dangerously difficult to grasp, possibly becoming an illusion to the everyday, average American, and is becoming an empty promise to citizens and immigrants, yet people are still being blinded to it because they are so wound up in the idea that it is
This is why Gatsby is so infatuated with Daisy throughout his life and believes her to be his American Dream. In The Great Gatsby, white ultimately symbolizes vacuity, superficiality, and selfishness. Daisy’s life is full of nothing besides materials and she wastes everyday in loneliness. Daisy cried, “What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon, and the day after that, and the next thirty years?” (Fitzgerald168). When Gatsby dies at the end of the novel, Daisy shows no grief, which exemplifies her selfishness. White symbolizes Daisy’s loneliness and selfishness. On the other hand, Gatsby regards Daisy as his American Dream, so it indicates his dream to be a hallucination and worthless. White also implies that his American Dream is bound to be …show more content…
During the 1920s, the American Dream started to diminish in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald believed that the Jazz Age - during 1918 - people lacked social and moral values, shown through its greed and empty pursuit of pleasure (red, white, and blue each symbolize this). This led to extravagant parties - epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the parties that Jay Gatsby throws every Saturday night - and this ultimately led to the decline and ever growing hard to approach American dream as the desire for money surpassed more noble goals. As this increased the American dream became less and less achievable by the average American citizen. On the American Flag, red symbolizes the great courage American soldiers face in battle, white signifies purity and innocence, and finally blue represents perseverance and justice. In The Great Gatsby, patriotism, narcissism, and cold-hearted all go hand in hand. The American Flag, is taken over by selfishness, and the upper class. F. Scott Fitzgerald captures the idea that the American Dream was and still is becoming increasingly dangerously difficult to grasp, possibly becoming an illusion to the everyday, average American, and is becoming an empty promise to citizens and immigrants, yet people are still being blinded to it because they are so wound up in the idea that it is