Untitled Essay, Research Paper

Fitzgerald & # 8217 ; s dominant subject in The Great Gatsby focuses on the corruptness of the American Dream. By analysing high society during the 1920s through the eyes of storyteller Nick Carraway, the writer reveals that the American Dream has transformed from a pure ideal of security into a convoluted strategy of mercenary power. In support of this message, Fitzgerald highlights the original facets every bit good as the new facets of the American Dream in his tragic narrative to exemplify that a one time imperviable dream is now lost everlastingly to the American people. The foundation qualities of the American Dream depicted in The Great Gatsby are doggedness and hope. The most canonized of these features is that of success against all odds. The moral principle of difficult work can be found in the life of immature James Gatz, whose focal point on going a great adult male is carefully documented in his & # 8220 ; Hopalong Cassidy & # 8221 ; diary. When Mr Gatz shows the tatterdemalion book to Nick, he declares, & # 8220 ; & # 8216 ; Jimmy was bound to acquire in front. He ever had some resolutenesss like this or something. Make you detect what he & # 8217 ; s got about bettering his head? He was ever great for that. & # 8217 ; & # 8221 ; ( pg 182 ) The diary portrays the continual battle for self-reformation which has defined the image of America as a land of chance. By comparing the immature James Gatz to the immature Benjamin Franklin, Fitzgerald proves that the American Dream is so able to last in the face of modern society. The merchandise of difficult work is the pensive Jay Gatsby, who epitomizes the purest feature of the American Dream: ageless hope. His firing desire to win Daisy & # 8217 ; s love symbolizes the footing of the old dream: an aeriform end and a ceaseless hunt for the chance to make that end. Gatsby is foremost seen tardily at dark, & # 8220 ; standing with his custodies in his pockets & # 8221 ; and purportedly & # 8220 ; out to find what portion [ is ] his of our local celestial spheres & # 8221 ; ( pg 25 ) . Nick watches Gatsby & # 8217 ; s motions and remarks: & # 8220 ; -he [ stretches ] out his weaponries toward the dark H2O in a funny manner, and every bit far as I [ am ] from him I [ can curse ] he [ is ] trembling. Involuntarily I [ glance ] seaward-and [ distinguish ] nil except a individual green visible radiation, minute and far off, that might [ be ] the terminal of the dock. & # 8221 ; ( pg 25 ) Gatsby & # 8217 ; s end gives him a intent in life and sets him apart from the remainder of the upper category. He is invariably endeavoring to make Daisy, from the minute he is seen making towards her house in East Egg to the concluding yearss of his life, patiently waiting outside Daisy & # 8217 ; s house for hours when she has already decided to abandon her matter with him. Gatsby is distinguished as a adult male who retains some of the purest traits of the old dream, but loses them by trying to make his ends by have oning the dream & # 8217 ; s modern face. Fitzgerald attributes the corruption of the modern dream to wealth, privilege, and the nothingness of humanity that those facets create. Money is clearly identified as the cardinal advocate of the dream & # 8217 ; s devastation ; it becomes easy entangled with hope and success, necessarily replacing their topographic points in the American Dream with philistinism. This replacing is apparent in Gatsby & # 8217 ; s usage of illegal patterns and belowground connexions to achieve his tremendous luck. His pretentious parties, boundless sign of the zodiac, and munificent vesture are all marks of his ignorant corruptness. His ability to hedge the jurisprudence, demonstrated when his traffic misdemeanor is ignored by a constabulary officer, reveals his usage of position and privilege to acquire what he needs. Although Gatsby & # 8217 ; s lift to prominence is symbolic of the nature of the new dream, the most abominable qualities of that dream are apparent in Daisy and Tom Buchanan, who live their lives with no hopes and no declinations because the true foundation of their characters is their luxury. While Daisy is ne’er heard from once more after Gatsby & # 8217 ; s decease, Nick confronts Tom one last clip, at which point Gatsby & # 8217 ; s rival responds: & # 8220 ; & # 8216 ; I told him the truth & # 8230 ; What if I did state him? That chap had it coming to him & # 8217 ; & # 8221 ; ( pg 187 ) . Tom admits to the fact that he is responsible for Gatsby & # 8217 ; s slaying and Wilson & # 8217 ; s self-destruction, but continues to claim artlessness because he has ne’er known guilt nor shame as a member of the established elite. Through Nick, Fitzgerald pinp

oints the effect of the modern dream on the upper class, thus condemning an entire people and its revered society: “It couldn’t forgive him or like him but I saw what he had done was, to him, entirely justified… They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made… ” (pg 187) Nick realizes that Tom and Daisy represent a class of heartless citizens who have attained success at the cost of dehumanization. Their vast wealth blocks out all inspiration and all true emotion, resulting in a void of apathy buttressed by status and power. At the end of the novel, Fitzgerald creates a sense of utter hopelessness to prove that the purity of the American Dream is dead with the examples Daisy’s baby, Gatsby’s death, and Wilson’s suicide. The first hint of this tragic loss is the introduction of the Buchanans’ daughter, whom Daisy refers to as “Bles-sed pre-cious.” When the girl is brought into the Buchanans’ salon, Nick observes an obvious disturbance in Gatsby’s attitude, thinking, “Gatsby and I in turn [lean] down and [take] the small reluctant hand. Afterwards he [keeps] looking at the child with surprise. I don’t think he [has] ever really believed in its existence before” (pg 123). Daisy then calls her child an “absolute little dream,” crushing all hopes Gatsby has of truly recreating the past. Society’s complete replacement of the American Dream with materialism is pointed out moments later, when Nick and Gatsby attempt to discern the charm in Daisy’s voice. At the moment Gatsby blurts out, “‘Her voice is full of money,’” Nick stumbles across a revelation which changes his entire view of society: “That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money- that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl. . . .” (pg 127) At this point, all of Daisy’s charm and beauty is stripped away, leaving nothing but money to be admired underneath. The dream Gatsby has been so inexorably pursuing is ripped apart into dollar bills as he discovers that for years he has been pursuing not love, but cold, hard, money, hidden behind the disguise of a human face. Subsequently, when Gatsby dies, any chance the American Dream has of surviving in the dehumanized modern world dies with him. Nick later speculates on Gatsby’s last thoughts before death, conjecturing, “He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass” (pg 169). The hopes and dreams which have strengthened and uplifted Gatsby are shattered as he lies in the pool, dazed and confused in a world which he no longer understands. After shooting Gatsby, George Wilson, Fitzgerald’s symbolization of the common man struggling to achieve his own success within the realm of the modern dream, commits suicide. The deaths of a rich man and a poor man, both pushing themselves towards the same impossible goal, mirror the death of the original dream on which America was founded. At the end of the novel, Nick returns to the Midwest with this disconcerting knowledge, reflecting on Gatsby’s life as the struggle of the American people in a society losing its humanity: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (pg 189). The dream is now utterly lost and can never be resurrected. Through the unfolding events of a doomed romance, Fitzgerald simultaneously unfolds the tragic fate of American values. Gatsby and the other characters of his story act as vessels for the author’s true message- the American Dream, once a pure and mighty ideal, has been buried and is pressed into the ground by the inhuman void of money. Nick Carraway conveys this message as an outsider, an honest man who is witnessing the entire ordeal as an observer. The Great Gatsby is not the eulogy of a man named Jay Gatsby; rather, it is the eulogy of an institution which once was, but is now gone and can never be.