The American Dream is an alluring idea which has existed for nearly a century. It has brought hope and determination to many people over the generations causing many people to either rise to prosperity and wealth or poverty and strife. In the novel The Great Gatsby the American Dream is portrayed in a variety of ways throughout many different characters. One of the characters in the book, Tom Buchanan, is an old money rich man. Tom cheated on his wife, Daisy Buchanan, with a woman named Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the Valley of Ashes, where all the lower class citizens live. After a fight between Tom and Jay Gatsby, a new money protagonist, Gatsby and Daisy drive back with Daisy driving and in a tragic turn of events Myrtle gets hit by the car and her husband, George Wilson thinks it is Gatsby and he kills him. In the book there are a lot of different variations of the tradition American Dream. The traditional American Dream is the ability for people no matter their place on the social ladder to become successful. Myrtle’s Dream is analogous with the traditional American Dream in the aspect that it is rising from low class to high class. However Myrtle’s dream is unique because she plans on achieving it by using her voluptuous body to marry a man of a higher class.
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Scott Fitzgerald presents the American Dream as a way to achieve a higher status, however it is a dangerous path which is seldom succeeded because of people being naive, jealousy and poor
Scott Fitzgerald presents the American Dream as a way to achieve a higher status, however it is a dangerous path which is seldom succeeded because of people being naive, jealousy and poor