Corruption Of American Dream In The Great Gatsby

For people who do not live in America, but wish to immigrate in order to create a better life, a primary motivation is to achieve the American Dream. People describe the Dream as all US citizens having an equal opportunity to gain success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the corruption of the American Dream through Jay Gatsby, a rich man who came to wealth through shady means. Fitzgerald demonstrates that the American Dream during the 1920s had turned into a competition among people for status and wealth, rather than looking to create a better life. Furthermore, Fitzgerald illustrates the corruption of the Dream through Gatsby, as he fails to obtain a better and more fulfilling life due to the inability to separate himself from a shallow vision of wealth and status he created as a poor farm boy. Beneath the distorted image of a …show more content…
Fitzgerald illustrates in The Great Gatsby, the corruption of the American Dream in the 1930s, as Jay Gatsby represents the American’s failure to obtain a better and fulfilling life due to their inability to separate themselves from their shallow visions of wealth and status. Fitzgerald perfectly created the extreme of a wealth focused life and the results that come with it. Nick cited, “He had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” (161). Gatsby prevented himself from living a fulfilling life by limiting his dreams and ambitions to Daisy and money, which reflects the average American’s greed for wealth in today’s society as people today drift away from the value of friends and the great experiences life has to offer, and more towards the idea of a single dream for