F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book The Great Gatsby showcased the ideology behind the American Dream in the 1920s and the ways in which that dream was corrupt, flawed, and would inevitably fall apart. In varied cases, that dream crumbled to ash before it was ever reached; sometimes it was snatched away in mere seconds, and sometimes that dream was a ruse behind which cowards hid. In this book Gatsby, Wilson, and Daisy are examples of people with failed or corrupt American Dreams. They all reached for the stars but, in the end, only ended up with a handful of clouds, and vapor easily slips through the fingers. From the beginning of the book, Jay Gatsby was portrayed as an extremely elusive and mysterious person; a man of great power and wealth.
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Gatsby devoted his life to one main goal; getting Daisy back. He rose to wealth not so he himself could enjoy it but so he could become everything Daisy wanted. Daisy on the other hand, born into her wealth as she was, had life easy from the start. She fell for Gatsby at a young age then turned from him when she wanted to gain stability in her life, before turning back to the charming man she fell for in her youth only to again turn her back when she killed someone and he willingly offered to take the fall. Daisy is morally corrupt and a completely selfish person, though she probably feels that that is the only way to protect herself in a nation like America. Wilson is the American Dream gone awry, the very person you aim not to become. He lived a life of poverty, scraping by with unfulfilling work and an unfaithful wife he pretended did no wrong. None of the characters in this book are known for their likeablility nor did any have the perfect idealistic lives of the so called “American Dream”. According to the essay by Hearne “Fitzgerald sees the American dream...as a contradiction to and a distortion of reality” (190) and this book is a testimony to the truth in that statement. Every one of these characters lost in the end; no one came out living the perfect, blissful realities they pictured in their heads. With the way this
Gatsby devoted his life to one main goal; getting Daisy back. He rose to wealth not so he himself could enjoy it but so he could become everything Daisy wanted. Daisy on the other hand, born into her wealth as she was, had life easy from the start. She fell for Gatsby at a young age then turned from him when she wanted to gain stability in her life, before turning back to the charming man she fell for in her youth only to again turn her back when she killed someone and he willingly offered to take the fall. Daisy is morally corrupt and a completely selfish person, though she probably feels that that is the only way to protect herself in a nation like America. Wilson is the American Dream gone awry, the very person you aim not to become. He lived a life of poverty, scraping by with unfulfilling work and an unfaithful wife he pretended did no wrong. None of the characters in this book are known for their likeablility nor did any have the perfect idealistic lives of the so called “American Dream”. According to the essay by Hearne “Fitzgerald sees the American dream...as a contradiction to and a distortion of reality” (190) and this book is a testimony to the truth in that statement. Every one of these characters lost in the end; no one came out living the perfect, blissful realities they pictured in their heads. With the way this