Free Misery In The Great Gatsby's American Dream Literature Review Example

American literature knows many authors who had a tragic destiny, who quit early and did not implement what their gift engaged for. Amid an American life, these authors were perishing from loneliness and alcoholism. They stayed with no help and without a word of participation, as if they were in an abandoned desert. Every event like this repeatedly calls the attention of intellectual people all over the world to vice of American capitalistic culture and American lifestyle, which is extremely indifferent to people’s destinies. In the period of time “amid two wars”, there was the most evident drama – the tragic death of one of the most prominent substitute of American great prose, Scott Fitzgerald. “The Great Gatsby” pertains to the attitudes of American and world literature and correctly may be regarded as one of the greatest attainments of American novel of the twentieth century. “The Great Gatsby” is one of the best Fitzgerald’s works. It contains two properties of author’s talent – pathos, an emotional intensity of the romantic and critical, even satirical view of the realist. These virtues deeply in intertwine in an artistic fabric of this work. They create a bright and individual picture. The main Fitzgerald’s goal is to uncrown an American Dream in the novel “The Great Gatsby”. American Dream, which does not bring happiness and eventually through misery, leads to the tragic end.
So what is an American Dream? In a certain sense, it is a desire of the flash-like success and prompt enrichment. The main thing is that happiness and wealth are identical for people who confess postulates of this American Dream. American Dream – a dream of the earthly sanctuary for a lone person; in America, in this country of the general equality the path to the most upper step of social scale for average person is not closed.
Dream unconscious controls Jay Gatsby. The rules that he determined for himself from his youth up – they are like a finished codex of behavior for believers in Dream. This believer firmly decides to open the way in life using a painstaking work, efforts, a thrift and a sensible view. In addition, he determines to prove by his example the fact that chances are equal for everyone and that a decisive are only person’s features. However, Gatsby also knows aspirations of another type – not utilitarian. Such aspirations are also accordant to the Dream. It suggested that in America, person is free to choose his destiny by himself and nothing can prevent him to live in a harmony with himself. It said that in a country where everyone can take place in the sun. That there are many untrodden tracks for everyone, a human is infinitely free again, and he can once more be truly happy, as was free and happy Adam.
As well as Gatsby Nick Carraway is almost thirty. He grew up in a successful and upright bourgeois family in one of the small towns of the Middle West and came to New York because he wanted to learn credit and banking business. Nevertheless, he with irony formulates assigned task by himself. Nick Carraway belongs to the so-called “lost generation” of American civilized youth. In addition, the First World War lies between university and practical life that he is entering in with late arrival.
Temper of Gatsby consists a vagueness and a diffusion. Temper that dooms Jay to misery. He is “indistinct” as a matter of fact because there is a conflict developing in at Gatsby’s heart. A conflict of two incompatible aspirations, two heterogeneous beginnings. First beginning is a “naivety”, a simplicity of heart, always blazing reflection of the “green light”, and star of the incredible future happiness (Bloom 10). Gatsby believes that happiness with all his heart – “new Adam’s”’ traits. Another one beginning is a steady head of the bigwig-bootlegger who gets used to a dangerous but profitable game, who even in the happiest day in his life, when Daisy crosses the threshold, gives instructions to the branches of his “firm”. There is a dreaminess on the one pole and a practicalness on another. He is unscrupulous and that is the cause of why he has those villa and millions. The generosity of spirit and the unscrupulousness that switch to one and another. The energy and strength attract Fitzgerald; however, the wasting of virtues disturbs him.
Resources that were chosen by the main character for conquest the happiness cannot secure the happiness that Fitzgerald’s hero desires. It brings the misery that directly connects to the dream of the main character. The Dream collapses – not only because Daisy is mercenary but also because Gatsby intends to conquer happiness through paying a huge amount of money for Daisy. The bigger sum than Daisy. He is not squeamish about anything to collect that amount. Without a Dream, the existence of Gatsby is pointless: George B. Wilson’s shot is similar to the dagger thrust that was used in the middle Ages when there was a need to terminate somebody who is dying of wounds.
Why is Gatsby great? He is great in his role of a rich man with the mysterious reputation, master of magnificent night festivals that he organizes with a hope to attract Daisy’s attention. He is great because of the strength of his feeling, devotion to Dream, “rare gift of hope” and hearty generosity. Gatsby and Daisy fell in love with each other a long time ago (Bloom 22). However, they cannot marry because Gatsby was a young officer who intended to take the field; he was a poor man. Further, Gatsby returns as a hero but as earlier, he is tapped out. After demobilization, he even cannot buy the civilian clothing. Daisy fails in waiting Gatsby and gets married a rich businessperson Thomas Buchanan. However, after a while, a happiness smiles at Gatsby and he becomes a millionaire.
Nevertheless, Gatsby’s fortune is tragic because it is a fortune of a poor man. Success, recognition and even triumph of love in the bourgeois world depends on money. One should remember though that one of the postulates of the American Dream is an equality of opportunity for every American irrespective of social status. Fitzgerald is criticizing here the society that distorts human feelings and relationships, that incites a person to the crime. It makes a tragedy if not an inevitable then at any rate natural. In addition, there are strong emotional evidences, which tie the writer in particular to Jay Gatsby. In the letter that applies to “The Great Gatsby”, Fitzgerald notices that from the beginning he started to describe Jay Gatsby as the stranger he knew; however, then he suddenly began to write the protagonist from himself.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby. New Haven: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Print.