UNIVERSITY IN BELGRADE

FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Selma Slezovic

Great Gatsby – False vision of American dream

(RESEARCH PAPER)

Mentor

PhD Zoran Paunovic

Belgrade

2014.

Abstract

This paper deals with one of the Fitzgerald’s most famous works: The Great Gatsby. American

dream is one of the most important motifs inside of this literary work. Corruption of this vision

of American dream is also present. The belief that every man can rise to success no matter what

his beginnings are. Jay Gatsby was a poor boy that turned into a very wealthy man, but did he

live the American Dream? This paper has a goal to contribute the vast research of this matter.

Key words: The Great Gatsby, American dream, corruption, false vision.

The American dream originated from the early days of the American settlement, with

the mostly poor immigrants searching for new opportunities. It was first manifested in the

Declaration of Independence, which describes an attitude of hope. The Declaration of

Independence states that “all man are created equal and that they are endowed with certain

unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. In The Great Gatsby

the American dream plays a big role. Within this work it is possible to see what happened to it

during the 1920s. The values have totally changed, instead of striving for equality, they just

wanted to get as rich as they could get.

So it is not surprising that the new kind of American dream fails several times, which

F. Scott Fitzgerald describes in his work. He shows that people are not yet treated equally and

that social discrimination still existed, which is described in the scene where Wilson and Tom

talk to each other in Chapter II. For readers it is immediately clear that Tom sees himself as

superior to Wilson. We can see that when Wilson wants to resell Tom’s old car. Tom simply

goes on with his game with Wilson since he wants to continue his affair with Wilson’s wife, as a

result of that he does not give the car to Wilson.

In the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote of an economic effect called "The Great

Gatsby curve," a graph that measures fiscal inequality against social mobility and shows that

America's marked economic inequality means it has correlatively low social mobility. In one

sense this hardly seems newsworthy, but it is telling that even economists think that F. Scott

Fitzgerald's masterpiece offers the most resonant shorthand for the problems of social mobility,

economic inequality and class antagonism that we are facing today. In America, it is increasingly

called the failure of the American dream, a failure now mapped by the "Gatsby curve".

Fitzgerald had much to say about the failure of this dream, and the fraudulences that

sustain it – but his insights are not all contained within the economical pages of his greatest

novel. Indeed, when Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in April 1925, the phrase American

dream as we know it today did not exist.

Gatsby is the living embodiment of the American dream in many respects because of

his extraordinary gift for hope, his platonic conception of himself, his faith in life’s possibility

and his commitment to his aspirations. He represents the general public who is poor but has

hopes and dreams for which they are to strive to give meaning and purpose to their efforts. His

dream symbolizes the bigger American dream in which all have the equal opportunity to get

what they want. Nonetheless, the fiasco in his personal dream also typifies the failure of the

American dream on the whole in which social discrimination and class divisions, spiritual

avoidance and hollow gaiety, and the decadence of values and ideals prevail. The novel is a great

reminder that money cannot make the world go around, after all. 

Gatsby’s warmth and dedication makes his an infinitely more significant struggle. He

too desires Daisy Buchanan in all of her upper-class glory. At first, one cannot make a serious

social distinction between Gatsby and Daisy.  But social edicts will be harsh.  Daisy is presented

as wealthy and she also comes from a rich background. Gatsby is rich, but comes from quite a

different upbringing and earned his money in an illegal way. As with Myrtle, this can be seen as

a positive achievement, for Gatsby has climbed the social and economic ladder and succeeded. 

But because he had to change who he was, and become a bootlegger, he is tainted, and will never

be truly accepted in the Buchanan social mold. Listening to the many lives and "pasts" of Jay

Gatsby, at one point, Nick becomes utterly frustrated that Gatsby invents different backgrounds

for the sake of his false pursuit.  Nick’s intuitive gift for observation came the moment he met

Gatsby.  Gatsby’s "elaborate speech just missed being absurd. Sometime before he introduced

himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care" (Fitzgerald; 53). 

Although Gatsby is not blatant or crude like Myrtle, Nick immediately notices that he seems

well-rehearsed.  It is impressive, but unnatural.

The American Dream is an ideal that has been present since American literature’s onset.

But what exactly is this famous American Dream? Some might say that it is a quest for wealth,

prosperity and generally higher position in society, while others might say that it is nothing else

but the act of settling down, having a family, being able to provide for them, and basically

having a good life. What is true is that all of these notions can be ascribed to the fundamental

idea of the American Dream. Through the passing of time, the original quest for settlement and

freedom has evolved into a continuing struggle to achieve a big house, a nice car, and a life of

ease. This materialistic aspect of the American dream is the one presented in The Great Gatsby.

What makes this piece of art so excellent, and the commentary that much more true, is

that it is timeless.  Over half a century has passed since Fitzgerald wrote this piece, and it applies

to the present as much as it does to the past.  Now, then, and always, the social foolishness of

America has turned promising, good individuals into nasty, pitiful beings. But there is something

that is so imperative never to forget. Beneath all the flash and materialism, there is something

quietly breathing and still alive. Behind what has been lost, we still find honesty. One, like Nick,

can see America’s tragic flaws in oneself and in others. Perhaps this is not something to be proud

of, but it may be a step towards something larger.  By finding Nick’s touching quality in all of

us, one can revive the American dream. 

Since its publication in 1925, F. S. Fitzgerald‘s novel The Great Gatsby has

become one of the most cited, criticized and analyzed pieces of fiction in the history of the

American literature. It has often been depicted as “perhaps the most striking fictional analysis of

the age of the gang barons and the social conditions that produced them“( Sculley, 1965: 1088).

Without a doubt, it is a fantastic representation of an age in American history when everything

was possible, or at least people thought it was. In his novel, Fitzgerald doesn‘t simply describe

the social, historical and economic conditions which drive his characters, but he also provides us

with an insight into the souls of his characters and the interior motives which they use to justify

their behavior and actions. The underlying cause for everything that happens in the novel is an

idea, an idea towards which everyone strives and dreams of. This idea is none other than the

omnipresent notion of the American dream. In The Great Gatsby this dream has suffered a

decline through the immoral actions of Fitzgerald‘s characters, but its foundation is the same as it

was when the first settlers explored the new promised land.

After reading Fitzgerald‘s novel, one cannot help but wonder how much of this dream

is reality, and how much of it is an illusion. In his book Achieving Our Country,

Richard Rorty says: “You have to describe the country in terms of what you passionately hope it

will become, as well as in terms of what you know it to be now. You have to be loyal to a dream

country rather than to the one to which you wake up every morning. Unless such loyalty exists,

the ideal has no chance of becoming actual“ (Rorty, 1998:55). He described the actual nature of

the concept of the American dream perfectly. The actual nature of this dream and the manner in

which people try to achieve it, as well as the moral implications their actions bring, are some of

the main themes explored in The Great Gatsby.

Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values,

evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless

jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by

the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the

corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed

more noble goals. The fundamental presupposition that the American dream can be achieved by

anyone as long as they work hard turns out to be nothing more than a mere illusion, a lie

intended to give people something to live for. In the novel, there is a strong division between the

rich and the poor. This division is clearly and somewhat witty summary in Mr. Klipspringer’s

song:

One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer

The rich get richer and the poor get – children (Fitzgerald, 2003:101)

This is further more developed in Fitzgerald’s juxtaposition of the West and East, which

can be applied both to geographical concepts, and as well as to the social ones. On one side there

is West Egg, and on the other there is East Egg. This division can be seen not merely as a

division between the haves and the have-nots, since some people in West Egg are also rich.

It’s meaning is that of a symbolic representation of two sets of moral values. “When the early

explorers first came to America, escaping the corruption of their old world in search of the

promise of a new world, they traveled from east to west. Now, America itself is corrupted, so the

characters in The Great Gatsby travel from west to east - in search of wealth and sophistication -

leaving the moral values and stability of the west behind. It is this eastern part which is called a

"valley of ashes" by Fitzgerald, a place where morals are left out and only superficial, material-

driven people can live in peace. Fitzgerald uses this change in direction as a symbol for the

deterioration of American ideals and the American Dream, helping to prove that our quest for

wealth and sophistication is corrupting our culture, and causing us to live in a wasteland of

morals - an ash heap of civilization.“ (Millett: 2001; 126)

Furthermore, the West is usually associated with traditional values like raising a

family and providing for them, and in a sense that is still the American Dream for many people

who strive to nothing more than a secure and a fairly good life. However, the East, especially in

the 1920s, represents the corruption of the original notion of the American dream. “The lure of

the East represents a profound displacement of the American dream, a turning back upon itself of

the historic pilgrimage towards the frontier which had, in fact, created and sustained that dream”

(Bloom, 1985:75). Everything concerning the lives of the people living in East Egg is connected

with money and material possessions, the purpose of which is to ensure the easiness of their

lives. In The Great Gatsby this obsession with material possessions becomes absurd. It doesn’t

matter whether a thing is actually necessary, as long as it can be bought. This absurdity becomes

obvious when the narrator describes Gatsby’s house and says: “There was a machine in the

kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour, if a little button

was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb“(Fitzgerald, 2003:44).

The fact that Gatsby owns such a gadget and actually makes his butler press a

button two hundred times for simple orange juice shows how much have his morals and vision of

good life become distorted. Fitzgerald’s characters like Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, as

well as the people who attend his parties, are all driven by a powerful desire to climb the social

ladder no matter what it takes. Once this goal is achieved, preserving it becomes the only

important thing in life. The only way to gain reputation and wealth, especially if you have a poor

social background, is to reinvent oneself. This notion of reinvention has been present since the

very beginning of the American dream, and the manner in which it is explored in The Great

Gatsby provides us with an insight into the deepest secrets and motivations of Fitzgerald’s main

characters.

Perhaps the most prominent example in the novel of how a person reinvents oneself in

order to achieve a certain goal is the life of Jay Gatsby, who is actually James Gatz. Coming

from a modest family in North Dakota, as a seventeen year old boy James Gatz drifts from one

place to another, working his way to a better life. However, he comes closer to his goal only

when he comes in contact with shady people who introduce him into the way of making a

fortune through shadowy means – it is later revealed that Jay Gatsby’s wealth actually comes

from his bootlegging activities. In that period, even though he acquired some money, he is

rejected by Daisy Fay, whose background is far more distinguished than his. Even though she

does feel some sort of affection towards him, the fact that he had to go to war and his poor

background represented a serious financial and social obstacle. After that, Gatsby had even more

reason to become a completely different person, and Fahey claims that “he has lived not for

himself, but for his dream, for his vision of the good life inspired by the beauty of a lovely rich

girl” (Fahey, 1973:71). Because of his obsession with Daisy, Gatsby deludes himself into

thinking that he can buy love with money. Regardless of his riches, he is not a happy man

because the love of his life is married with another man, and she seems to ignore him despite all

of his achievements. The reason why he throws his lavish and flamboyant parties is not to make

friends or socialize, it is only to attract Daisy.

Even though his house is full of people we learn that he is in fact lonely even when

among the very people who visit his parties. The nature of Gatsby’s parties provides us with a

symbolic representation of people’s values and lifestyle characteristic of the age in which the

novel is set. People come to Gatsby’s parties, often uninvited, for the sole purpose of being seen

in the company of rich men. By participating in such extravagant parties they see themselves as

members of the elite to which they wish to belong, and they deceive themselves into thinking

that they could improve their social status if they meet the right people. Anyone who has money

is immediately seen as welcome. This is apparent from Nick Carraway’s words when he attends

the party for the first time. He says: “They were, at least, agonizingly aware of the easy money in

the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key“. (Fitzgerald,

2003:46).The mere fact that they thought Nick had money was enough for them to accept him as

their own. Through this, Fitzgerald demonstrates how empty and rotten have become the lives of

people who devote themselves to nothing more than accumulating money and social standing.

Nick Carraway, perhaps the only person in the novel who hasn’t fallen victim to this corrupt set

of values, ironically comments on his surroundings when he moves across Gatsby’s mantion. He

describes his own house an “an eye-sore with a partial view on his neighbour’s lawn in the

conforming proximity of millionaires“. (Fitzgerald, 2003; 10)

The fact is that to him the proximity of wealthy people is not comforting at all, in fact

it makes him even more anxious. In a way, this is because Nick just recently came from the

West, and he hasn’t yet been much influenced by the corrupt society in the East. He still

represents the old, traditional values which lost all of their meaning in the age when the size of

one’s bank account and the number of cars a person owned became the principal things

according to which success in life was measured. Nick’s dream is closer to the original American

dream, which was focused more around family than wealth and an unending quest for success.

Nick represents the opposite path that Gatsby could have taken from the Midwest. “It is the

counterpoint to Gatsby’s sustaining dream, which it frames and interprets, a dream of aspiration

that moves Gatsby to follow it to imagined glory and unforeseen defeat”. (Fahey, 1973:79)

Much more than Gatsby, who is ultimately recognized as a good person by Nick, the baseness of

the American dream in the novel is represented by Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom. Even

as a young girl, Daisy was heavily influenced by false splendor of a life in rich society. “For

Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery

and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of

life in new tunes“. (Fitzgerald, 2003:158) It is in these words that the narrator describes Daisy

Buchanan when she was young, and throughout the novel she doesn’t seem to be much changed.

The only thing that is different about her is that she has become even more absorbed in her own

world filled with money, parties, fast cars and new dresses. She has become completely

insensible to other people’s emotions, which is evident in the manner in which she plays with

Gatsby’s and her husband’s feelings.

Daisy is the symbol of all that Gatsby strives for; her voice is full of money, as Gatsby

describes it. Her voice was “full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in

it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song in it” (Fitzgerald, 2003:127). ”For Gatsby, Daisy is his

American Dream. From then on he does everything he can to achieve her. Gatsby refuses to see

Daisy’s faults and she can do no wrong. ” (Galley, 2008) The fact that Gatsby isn’t able to

realize that his dream, which mostly includes Daisy, is nothing more than the product of his

misconceptions about the things which are really important in life will be the main cause for his

untimely demise.

Because Gatsby still retains some aspects of morality and goodness, and Daisy seems

to be the epitome of both material success and corruption that wealth can bring, they cannot have

a future together. She can only stay with her unfaithful husband with whom she shares the same

vision of an affluent and corrupt life. Both her and her husband’s true characters are described by

Nick: ”They are careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and

then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness of whatever it was that kept

them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made”. (Fitzgerald, 2003:187)

Their selfish insensitivity culminates in their undisturbeness and readiness to pass on the guilt

to someone else when Daisy caused Myrtle’s death. ”Any plausible hopes we might have for

Gatsby’s dream of Daisy evaporate when Nick advises him not to ”ask too much of her”

because ”you can’t repeat the past. ” To which Gatsby responds: ”Can’t repeat the past? Why

of course you can! ” (Cullen, 2003:181) We can see how Gatsby continues to delude himself

until the very end. In the penultimate chapter of the book, Nick ponders on whether Gatsby

actually realized the futility of his actions, as well as the unachievability of his dream, and

says: ”I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come and perhaps he no

longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a

high price for living too long with a single dream”. (Fitzgerald, 2003:169)

Fitzgerald uses Gatsby and his dream as a symbol of the American dream. ”Gatsby

genuinely believes that if a person makes enough money and amasses a great enough fortune, he

can buy anything. He thinks his wealth can erase the last five years of his and Daisy's life and

reunite them at the point at which he left her before he went away to war.” (Singer, 2008) In a

similar fashion, all of the Americans at the time have a tendency to believe that if they have

enough money, they can manipulate time, staying perpetually young, and buy their happiness

through materialistic spending.

Indeed, in his novel Fitzgerald gave a striking representation of the American society

in the 1920s – the era of infinite possibilities. Almost all of Fitzgerald’s characters represent a

certain aspect of the great idea of American life in general, namely, the idea of the American

dream. While there was a time when caring for one’s own family and living a peaceful and

quiet life in one’s own home was the pinnacle of what a man could achieve in his life, in The

Great Gatsby, the definition of success is everything but this notion. There is no limit to the

greed and self-centeredness of the novel’s characters. In a way, what was once a dream

became a nightmare. In Jordan’s words: ”There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy

and the tired”. (Fitzgerald 85) This is in fact a very accurate description of the people of that

age. In The Great Gatsby everyone is trying so hard to keep up with the Joneses that even

their original goals have slipped from their sight, and their struggle for wealth and a higher

social position became a purpose in itself. The corruption is not only limited to those who

already have money, it also spreads to all those who come in contact with this world of

opportunities and eventually lose themselves. Those who manage to resist the temptations of

money and power are few and far between. The American dream in The Great Gatsby is

mostly presented as a decayed and corrupt shadow of what it used to stand for in the past.

However, we might ask ourselves whether Fitzgerald is portraying the American dream as

corrupt and deceitful in itself, or is it that the people of that time are the ones who corrupted

and twisted the dream? Regardless of how one understands the notion of the American dream

in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald effectively offers a powerful critique of a materialistic society

and the effects it can have on one’s hopes and dreams.

In a sense, the American dream has failed both Tom and Myrtle, for the former has all

the material wealth that should lead to happiness by lacks spiritual fulfilment, while the latter

seeks to advance herself to such a state but is unable to do so because American society is

unequal, and the High Society is one which is born into, not achieved. What has happened to

Jefferson's assertion that "all men are created equal"? In order to more fully explore what

Fitzgerald is saying to us about America, we must look at Gatsby, who is in many senses acts

almost as a personification of what America stands for. 

A second culprit to the failure of the American dream is the moral decadence of

people in general. In essence, spiritual improvements are concomitant with material

improvements. They are mutually complementary. However, with the material part too easily

achieved, perhaps thanks to the emergence of a new concept called ‘easy money’ – the selling of

bonds, insurance, automobiles, etc, people begin to lose their spiritual purpose as material

achievements blindfold people’s spiritual aspirations. As a consequence, the society shows a

decline in spiritual life of its inhabitants, and their lives become lacking in meaning and ideal.

And this is often identified as the ‘Jazz Age’, during which the overwhelming atmosphere of

careless gaiety and wild celebration is prevalent. This becomes almost evident when Gatsby

throws an enormous number of lavish parties where its wild extravagance and the shallowness

and aimlessness of the guests are by no means implicit.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

BOOKS:

1. Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Chelsea House

Publishers, 1985.

2. Cullen, Jim, The American Dream, New York, Oxford University Press, 2003.

3. Fahey, William: F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream. New York:

Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973.

4. Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby, New York: Scribner, 2003.

5. Sculley, Bradley: The american tradition in literature, Revised Impresum: New York : W.

W. Norton & Company ; Beograd : Ambasada SAD, 1965

6. Galley, Jenna. (2008). The American Dream in The Great Gatsby. Retrieved April 4, 2011,

from http://www.suite101.com/content/the-american-dream-in-the-great-gatsby-a781992.

7. Millett, Frederick C. (n.d.). Analysis: The Great Gatsby. Retrieved April 3, 2011, from https://www.msu.edu/~millettf/gatsby.html

8. Rorty, Richard, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, Harvard University, 1998. Retrieved April 3, 2011, from http://books.google.hr/books

9. Singer, Drew. The American Dream and The Great Gatsby (2008). Retrieved April 4, 2011,from http://www.helium.com/items/1104111-american-wealth-great-gatsby