The American Dream is the idea that anyone can fulfill their goals and dreams if they work hard enough. It is rooted in American ideals set out in the Declaration of Independence, and usually focuses on upward social mobility and materialistic success. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is set in the summer of 1922, which is the beginning of the “Roaring Twenties” or the “Jazz Age”; and a golden age of American materialistic success. The stock market was booming, illegal alcohol was flowing and societal norms had relaxed after the horrors or World War I. (Saunders 343-358). In the novel, all of the characters represent an aspect of the American dream.
Nick Carroway is the narrator. He has just arrived in West Egg from the Midwest to work as a bond trader. He comes from a wealthy family, but has good values, and considers himself “one of the few honest people that I have ever known” (p. 170). He is not a snob and does not like to judge people. He frames his own philosophy by repeating some advice he got from his father: “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you had.” (p. 7). He went to Yale University and knows people, including his cousin Daisy, over at East Egg, where all the “old money” types lives. Nick already has money, but he wants to go where the money is - Wall Street. This was a big economic phenomenon of the era, everyone was speculating and making a lot of money on stock market (Saunders). At the end of the decade, in 1929, it would all come crashing down and usher in the Great Depression, which was largely caused by the excesses of the 1920’s. Therefore, Nick’s profession is a representation of the roaring twenties.
Nick’s mysterious neighbor is Jay Gatsby. He has a mansion, drives shiny cars and wears luxurious suits. He throws lavish parties attended by promiscuous flappers – another symbol of the Jazz Age. However, no one knows what he does, where he comes from, or where he got his money. Ultimately, we learn he is a gangster and operates in the underworld with other shady characters like his partner Wolfsheim. This is another American dream based theme of the 1920’s, when illegal trade in alcohol, caused by Prohibition, created wealthy gangsters like Al Capone. However, Gatsby is not your typical gangster. He fancies himself an “Oxford man” and is desperately attempting to pass as a member of the American upper class. He has a fake English accent and calls everyone “old sport”. However, he comes from humble origins. The American Dream is seductive because it appeals to the idea that anyone can become rich, successful and pursue their dreams (Pearson). His dream involves an old girlfriend, Daisy, who he briefly dated before joining the military. We learn Gatsby became “great” because he wanted to win Daisy away from her husband Tom. Gatsby wants Daisy because she represents the upper class lifestyle he has always dreamed about; now that he has the money, he wants the girl. However, as her husband Tom will point out, it takes more than money to be part of the upper class.
Gatsby is initially an enigma, but Nick describes him very sympathetically:
It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five
times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole
external world for an instant, and then concentrated on
you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It
understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself”
(53).
Gatsby makes people feel comfortable and has a positive energy. His eternal optimism and hope is another symbol of the American Dream. Nick notes that Gatsby has an “extraordinary gift of hope” (p. 6). This was another theme of the 1920’s. World War 1 was over, the US had won and the economy was booming. People wanted to have fun, make money and enjoy themselves. It was a hopeful and optimistic era.
Tom and Daisy already have the American Dream, they were born into it. However, they are cruel and careless people, who use and exploit others. Nick does not describe Tom in the same way he describes Gatsby; after many years, he notes Tom’s aggressive nature:
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was
a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth
and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had
established dominance over his face and gave him the
appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not
even the effeminate swank of his riding boots could hide
the enormous power of that body — he seemed to fill
those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and
you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his
shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body
capable of enormous leverage — a cruel body (p. 31).
Tom also beats women. When Myrtle taunts him about Daisy, he responds by breaking her nose. Everyone aspires to be rich like Tom and Daisy, but they are disgusting people. Tom is a brute. Daisy is beautiful; but superficial and empty. The basic premise of the American dream is that anyone can become successful. However, as we see throughout the novel, there is a difference between money and old money. When Tom exposes the truth about Gatsby, he is pointing out a fundamental truth. Gatsby might be rich, but he is not one of them. Tom feels so strongly about this, that he allows Daisy to drive home with Gatsby. He no longer sees Gatsby as a potential threat, because he knows that Daisy would never leave him for someone who was not part of the established “old money” upper class.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from Tom and Daisy, is Myrtle and George. They are poor, but desperately want to be become rich and be part of the jazz age “winners”. George wants to buy Tom’s car. This is a representation of George’s desire to be part of the upper class. However, Tom just plays with him and has no intention of selling him the car. George works hard, but never quite makes it, being taken advantage of by people like Tom. This is represented in the way Tom manipulates George over the car deal, and he is having an affair with Myrtle, George’s wife. Tom considers someone like George, and his wife Myrtle, to be used and disposed of. Myrtle is impressed with wealth and flashiness, and dreams of getting away from George and moving to the city and living the kind of lifestyle she dreams about. George is the owner of an auto shop in a depressingly industrial area between West Egg and New York City called the Valley of Ashes. It is literally a dumping ground. This valley is a symbol of the destruction of capitalism. The areas between the city and the fashionable resort area for the rich, is a run down wasteland inhabited by poor people. Like Gatsby, George and Myrtle are both striving for something they will never have. Nick recognizes this insatiable desire in Myrtle, and her focus on class-consciousness: “Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry” (p. 93). In the American Dream system, almost everyone has the luxury of feeling better off than someone.
There are other characters reinforcing Fitzgerald’s major themes. Jordan Baker is an athletic, rich and successful professional golfer. In the context of the 1920’s Jazz Age, she represents that changing roles and identities of women. She does not hang around the kitchen and have children. She is independent, playing golf and living an exotic lifestyle. Another character is Gatsby’s mentor, Wolfsheim. He represents the corruption of the prohibition era underworld. Wolfsheim tells Nick “I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a fine appearing gentlemanly young man and when he told me he was an Oggsford I knew I could use him good” (p. 179). Fitzgerald spends a great deal of the novel exploring the dark side of the American dream - exploitation, immorailty and materialism. Wolfsheim and Gatsby are involved in the prohibition era underworld. In an economy and society where wealth is so important, Wolfsheim is a person who takes money by any means necessary.
Gatsby is a pretender, Tom and Daisy are careless and cruel aristocrats, and George and Myrtle are materialistic, lower middle class people that get used and abused by the system. George eventually murders Gatsby, thinking he was the one having an affair with his wife. Gatsby is innocent, he was not even driving – it was careless Daisy.
At the end, Nick the narrator is left to try to make sense of it. Only he and Gatsby’s father show up to the funeral, showing that Gatsby had no real friends, despite throwing popular parties. Gatsby’s father is also delusional about the American Dream. He tells Nick: “If he’d of lived he’d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill. He’d of helped build up the country” (page 176). James J. Hill was an American businessman who rose from nothing to become a wealthy American shipping and railroads tycoon.
Nick recognizes that Gatsby was chasing a dream, but he also believes that he represented what was good about the American Dream; while people like George, Myrtle, Wolfsheim, Tom and Daisy represented the dark and immoral aspects of it. He thinks Gatsby was great because he created himself out of thin air, and what he created was honorable, and had merit:
I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time,
even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful
farm people—his imagination had never really accepted
them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby
of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic
conception of himself. He was a son of God – a phrase
which, if it means anything, means just that – and he
must be about His Father's business, the service of a
vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just
the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was
faithful to the end. (6.6-7) h
Gatsby believed in himself, the person he created and presented to the world, in the same way Americans believe and have faith in the capitalist system. It is about “transforming dreams into reality, and for most it is just that – a dream” (Pearson 638). Gatsby wanted money, but only because it would gain him access to his Daisy, his version of the American Dream. He had “come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night” (p. 189)
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald clearly illustrates the duality of the American Dream. It can be shiny and beautiful, like a nice car or a silk shirt; but he is also painting a very depressing portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age. The consumerism, materialism and moral decay of the 1920’s led to the Great Depression. The grand parties that Gatsby threw were like the 1920’s in general. In this way, Fitzgerald was predicting the future. There would be a day of reckoning for all the partying. The idea of everyone getting what they want is a dream and not a reality (Pearson). Only the truly exploitative, dishonest and horrible, like Wolfsheim and Tom and Daisy thrive in a world that is all about money. The rest of society, like Gatsby, George and Myrtle, are left behind. Nick, however, seems to come to a solid conclusion when he decides to quit Wall Street and move back to the Midwest, where he can focus on living his life and not chasing a dream.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 1996. Print.
Pearson, Roger L. "Gatsby: False Prophet of the American Dream." English Journal (1970): 638-645.
Saunders, Thomas J. "The Jazz Age." A Companion to Europe 1900-1945(1900): 343-358.
