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 Fitzgeralds 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 Toms old car. Tom simply
goes on with his game with Wilson since he wants to continue his affair with Wilsons 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 lifes 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.
Gatsbys 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. Nicks intuitive gift for observation came the moment he met
Gatsby. Gatsbys "elaborate speech just missed being absurd. Sometime before he introduced
himself Id 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 literatures 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 Americas 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 Nicks touching quality in all of
us, one can revive the American dream.

Since its publication in 1925, F. S. Fitzgeralds 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 doesnt 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 Fitzgeralds characters, but its foundation is the same as it
was when the first settlers explored the new promised land.

After reading Fitzgeralds 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 musicepitomized in The Great Gatsby by
the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday nightresulted 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. Klipspringers
song:

One things sure and nothings surer
The rich get richer and the poor get children (Fitzgerald, 2003:101)

This is further more developed in Fitzgeralds 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.
Its 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 doesnt
matter whether a thing is actually necessary, as long as it can be bought. This absurdity becomes
obvious when the narrator describes Gatsbys 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 butlers 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. Fitzgeralds 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 Fitzgeralds 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 Gatsbys 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 Gatsbys parties provides us with a
symbolic representation of peoples values and lifestyle characteristic of the age in which the
novel is set. People come to Gatsbys 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 Carraways 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 hasnt fallen victim to this corrupt set
of values, ironically comments on his surroundings when he moves across Gatsbys mantion. He
describes his own house an an eye-sore with a partial view on his neighbours 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 hasnt 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
ones bank account and the number of cars a person owned became the principal things
according to which success in life was measured. Nicks 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 Gatsbys 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 doesnt 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 peoples emotions, which is evident in the manner in which she plays with
Gatsbys and her husbands 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 moneythat 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
Daisys faults and she can do no wrong. (Galley, 2008) The fact that Gatsby isnt 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 husbands 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 Myrtles death. Any plausible hopes we might have for
Gatsbys dream of Daisy evaporate when Nick advises him not to ask too much of her
because you cant repeat the past. To which Gatsby responds: Cant 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 didnt 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 Fitzgeralds 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 ones own family and living a peaceful and
quiet life in ones 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 novels characters. In a way, what was once a dream
became a nightmare. In Jordans 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 ones 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 peoples 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