The American Dream is universally sought after and coveted, after all the possibility of becoming anything and rising above one 's meeger beginnings is tantalizing. However, the American Dream can also produce destruction and devastation. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the destructive nature of the American Dream through his characters Myrtle, Tom, Gatsby, Daisy, and Wilson and through his symbolic use of dust. Set in the Roaring Twenties, Fitzgerald’s novel focuses on these characters, who are intimately woven together through an intricate web of affairs, and dreams. Fitzgerald uses the relationships that each of these characters have to each other and their relationships to dust to reveal the true price of the American dream, and how those who idolize it will find themselves destroyed by it. Fitzgerald uses ashes and dust to symbolize how the American Dream leaves behind desolation and those who strive for it while trying to escape their own lives will ultimately find themselves smothered by it.
In his novel Fitzgerald demonstrates that the American Dream, for all its splendor and grandeur leaves behind desolation in its wake; Fitzgerald uses the Valley of Ashes to …show more content…
Fitzgerald showed that the American Dream is a dangerously deceptive idea that lures people into chasing it in an effort to escape their dust but ultimately burns through them until they themselves become ash. Through his use of dust and people chasing their dreams he illustrates how the American Dream is made up of “poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drift[ing] furiously about.”(161). In this way Fitzgerald shows that those who dream are like “poor ghosts”, they are already damned to die and live “drifting” through the air never achieving the dreams they covet. Those who chase the American Dream are ultimately destroyed by it and forever left in the
In his novel Fitzgerald demonstrates that the American Dream, for all its splendor and grandeur leaves behind desolation in its wake; Fitzgerald uses the Valley of Ashes to …show more content…
Fitzgerald showed that the American Dream is a dangerously deceptive idea that lures people into chasing it in an effort to escape their dust but ultimately burns through them until they themselves become ash. Through his use of dust and people chasing their dreams he illustrates how the American Dream is made up of “poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drift[ing] furiously about.”(161). In this way Fitzgerald shows that those who dream are like “poor ghosts”, they are already damned to die and live “drifting” through the air never achieving the dreams they covet. Those who chase the American Dream are ultimately destroyed by it and forever left in the