Commercialism In The Great Gatsby

We as people are constantly changing, attempting to find the role our society dictates us to fill. We let our labels define us, allowing us to be tucked away like soup cans into our categories of “male”, “female”, “old money”, “new money”, “working class”, along with hundreds of other labels whose only purpose is to separate us. Our society clings to the belief that this labeling process only exists in tawdry cinematic dramas about high school, but the references are as old as human history. The Great Gatsby demonstrates the effects of this stereotyping through the emergence of 1920’s commercialism and demonstrates the effects it has on society and the American dream. The history of the American dream leads many to question its attainability. The American dream was created as …show more content…
Very few experienced the American dream which everyone aspired to. The American dream was only for those who were born into money, separating the prestigious old money from the entrepreneurial new money. By analyzing the realism of the American dream, the attainability of prestige, the preference towards old money, and the moral corruption of the East it is evident that the American dream is only real for the rich. For the rest of us, the American dream is just a dream, a green light that represents “the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us,” (). But that’s okay, because the American dream shouldn’t be the goal. The goal should be happiness and fulfillment, that 's where the problems in the Great Gatsby occur. The characters relinquish happiness and fulfillment in order to attempt to achieve the American dream. The American dream is consumerism at its starkest and most awful peak and it faces us with a cold choice: pursue the American dream and live in discontent, or reject the corruption around you and retain your