Role Of Excess In The Great Gatsby

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, a life of luxury and excess is symbolized and objectified as the American Dream. This ideal of greatness, power, and happiness is what this country was founded upon the turn of the 20th century. As a country we idolize those who have a “rags to riches” story, those who are beaten down by forces outside of their control and are able to create an empire of success. Nick Carraway our narrator for the novel tells the story of his marvelous and wonder-filled neighbor Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is a man of excess living a life of extreme luxury with extravagant parties, however, we find that he is never truly happy. Fitzgerald invites the reader into the reality that the idea of the American Dream is nothing more …show more content…
Rising from nothing and earning a living and achieving wealth is as a nation, what allows us to be unique. He works to at all possible instances deconstruct and expose this idealism for its flaws and its falsehoods. Fitzgerald achieves this the best with his character Jay Gatsby. He uses this character to show that dreams and aspirations of the characters in his novel end up never turning out for them in a positive light. Gatsby desperately desires to rekindle a former love he shared with Daisy Buchanan, a woman that Gatsby loved in his past before the war. This is shown on a broader scale when viewed as the idea again of false hope and how it never leads to what you desire, “Gatsby was not a fool for dreaming, only for not knowing how dreams intersect with realities” (Birkets 96). Dreams are important in life they drive you to fulfill aspirations and work towards your goals, but trying to rewrite the past is what caused Gatsby to meet his untimely end. Emptiness and sorrow when Gatsby looks across the lake to the green light and it is no longer obtainable because he had it, he finally, after years of searching and planning he had his prize, but never realizing his dreams were as hopeless as his