The Book that Killed the American Dream

check out the horses store at www. horses. land F Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great gadsby is an evisceration of the American Spirit in ways both subtle and blatant Fitzgerald ridiculed the American dream positioning a knife at its very heart for the author American society had decayed into chaotic materialism and the country had taken this American Dream with it the events of the story are remarkable seething with Fitzgerald's distaste at the country around him every character in The Great Gatsby is truly deplorable and the worst of them Escape entirely unscathed in authoring this brief 200 Page

Nolla Fitzgerald reflected on the America of his age and predicted the America to come the book is rif with false prophets but it is Fitzgerald himself who emerges as the true psychic by cont templating The Great Gatsby and its context we can discover uncomfortable truths about the past and present of America and the American [Music] dream of course before we see how Fitzgerald dismantled it we would do well to identify the American dream itself this term the American dream was not actually coined until the early 1930s about 7 years after Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby

but the myth The Narrative had existed for centuries without such a tidy name the American dream is said to be the greatest dream for the individual it tells us that even those born at the bottom may rise up to the Pinnacle of society they can own a house impact the nation and move mountains this is usually achieved through some combination of tenacity Talent optimism grit for Fitzgerald this had all decayed into a propaganda it was a former truth long distorted by the realities of American society to come to his conclusion Fitzgerald simply examined the world

around him now Fitzgerald was not a philosopher or a social critic he was a writer of fiction so rarely has he expressed this disdain in a pointed non-fictional way but if we examine the cultural climate of his time and The Works Fitzgerald studied we can see how the author reached his rather pessimistic conclusion Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in the early early 1920s at a time of economic revolution in America after the first world war the US economy fell into a depression unemployment Rose to nearly 12% in 1921 the price of crops surged to problematic

unattainable Highs but these economic woses swiftly turned around unemployment dropped to 2.4% by 1923 the nation's GDP increased by 40% annual income per capita surged by 30% the SC scholar Robert a Divine has said the American people by the 1920s enjoyed the highest standard of living of Any Nation on Earth in the early 20s the American economy grew by 7% per year with the country responsible for 50% of the world's industrial output amidst Times Like These the American dream was as alive as ever but Fitzgerald and his contemporaries perceived danger the author Oswald Spangler published

a book called The Decline of the West in two volumes from 1918 to 1922 read today the book is massive confounding and provocative to the point of being self-indulgent it is at best a bore and at worst vaguely racist but it was a product of its time and indeed it became one of the most influential works in the era Fitzgerald once wrote in a letter I read Spangler the same summer I was writing The Great Gatsby and I don't think I ever quite recovered from him we cannot say with certainty which portions of the book

resonated so intensely with Fitzgerald but the overall Narrative of Western decomposition sits at the heart of The Great Gatsby Spangler wrote as soon as the market has become the town it is no longer a question of mere centers for streams of goods traversing a purely peasant landscape but of a second world within the walls the true Urban man is not a producer he has not the inward linkage with soil or with the goods that pass through his hands he does not live with these but looks at them from outside and appraises them in relation to

his own life upkeep in place of thinking in Goods we have thinking in money this idea of thinking in money is crucial to The Great Gatsby but it is like the clothing the book wears at the sole of Fitzgerald's novel we have a more profound disillusionment with the American dream with that in mind it is time to begin our investigation in earnest narrated by a man named Nick Caraway The Great Gatsby follows its titular character James Gatsby born impoverished Gatsby pursues a romantic idealized life which is represented by his ostensible love for a wealthy young

woman named Daisy essentially Gatsby tries to become the old money sort that Daisy desires Gatsby earns a fortune as a bootlegger reacquaints himself with the now married Daisy and tries to earn her favor as a very new man this could be romance is the driving point of narrative action in the great catsby but we must understand Gatsby himself if we are to discover the true meaning of this romantic entanglement Jay Gatsby was born as James gats in North Dakota it would be very blunt to say that Gatsby yearned to be rich more accurately and more

sincerely he yearned to be what he was not according to the narrator Nick his parents were shiftless and unsuccessful Farm people his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all it is precisely this imagination which typifies and motivates Gatsby this rejection of his past this too can be said of the American dreamer as suggested by William Kan in his paper American dreaming really reading The Great Gatsby C Notes The Greatest American dreamers say yes but their power comes first from saying no the American dreamer is propelled by the dreamer's disavow of his

or her past the refusal to be that person I cannot accept these parents this upbringing who I am is intolerable to me and I will not endure my existence in this poultry life I will become someone else indeed this is Gatsby's goal already we can begin to see that Daisy is not exactly the love of his life his romantic interest in Daisy is just one facet of Gatsby's larger goal she is his trophy for his lifelong Quest Fitzgerald's first blow at the American dream comes when Gatsby's career is revealed he is a bootlegger who sells

alcohol illegally in pharmacies across the country here Fitzgerald rejects the traditional social Mobility which the American dream claims Gatsby is shown to be an intelligent capable man but even he resorted not to schooling and career building instead taking up a life of illegitimate gains and criminality through this methodology Gatsby does indeed amass a great Fortune it is a fortune which he displays ostentatiously for a number of reasons in fact his wealth often takes the place of Gatsby himself before we even meet him the titular character is defined by the opulence of his home the narrator

Nick describes it the house was a colossal Affair by any standard it was a factual imitation of some Hotel Deville in Normandy with a tower on one side spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy and a marble swimming pool in more than 40 acres of lawn and garden Gatsby is further defined by the rockus parties which he throws each weekend which are so blanketed and expense that they may as well be celebrations of money itself although glamorous Fitzgerald unmasks these parties and again in sizes the American dream to execute his events Gatsby employs

a small army of butlers Maids cooks and servants every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a frorer in New York every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves there was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of 200 oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed 200 times by a Butler's thumb the lower class the Butlers like this one then are little more than tools for Gatsby's glamorous lifestyle Gatsby who we take as the embodiment of the American

dream is built on the backs of the poor his life requires exploitation like his machine extracts the juice from oranges only to discard the quote pulpless halves Fitzgerald's American Dream squeezes the lay person to extract the juice of capital for those invited to the party Gatsby's absence continues through much of the book so instead of meeting Gatsby we are first introduced to his world his parties his house his cars Nick caroway offers us this there was music from my neighbor's house through through these summer nights in his blue Gardens men and girls came and went

like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars at high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the Tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his Beach while his two motorboats slit the Waters of the sound drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam on weekends his Rolls-Royce became an Omnibus bearing parties to and from the city between 900 in the morning and long past midnight while his station wagon scampered like a Brisk yellow bug to meet all trains and on Mondays eight servants including an extra

Gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing brushes and Hammers and garden shears repairing the ravages of the night before these are the results of the American dream as Fitzgerald sees it the sum of Fitzgerald's American dream is not in personal happiness but in material abundance these material things literally take the place of the man Gatsby himself so to fit Gerald the American dream and its results become something of an illusion Gatsby is and always has been happy to live in an illusion the people who attend his parties do not know who he is the

aftermath of the parties is quickly disposed of each morning Gatsby even proclaims that Daisy is a Catholic and that is why she cannot divorce Tom but Nick tells us outright that this isn't true Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the LIE Gatsby even lived himself as an illusion his wab isms pink suits and old sport verbage bordered on the Absurd to those like Nick Buchanan Gatsby does not recognize the elusory nature of his life he has convinced himself that the entirety of his life's efforts have been

for Daisy indeed it is his relationship with Daisy where we see Fitzgerald's impressions of the American dream and its Pursuit displayed most viciously when we are shown Gatsby and D 's very first introduction prior to the events of the book itself we can immediately see the true reasons for Gatsby's attraction Gatsby was a soldier when he met Daisy far removed from the debonaire life he would go on to attain he was stationed near her home and the young Gatsby went with a group of fellow soldiers to visit the residents Nick tells us he went to

her house at first with other officers from Camp Taylor then alone it amazed him he had never been in such a beautiful house before but what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at Camp was to him Gatsby's takeaway from his first meeting with Daisy was not actually Daisy herself instead it was her home the house had a breathless intensity the house was beautiful not Daisy on that same page the pros goes on to wax further about the home

again the word beautiful only appears to describe the house not Daisy herself we are told too that Daisy has been loved by many men prior to Gatsby's first meeting this only encouraged Gatsby it excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy it increased her value in his eyes with the distinct choice of words increased her value we see Daisy referred to in Market terms she is classified more as an asset than a person which is emblematic of Gatsby's material Obsession here we also have a remarkable parallel with the American dream it is one

exalted by many even proven by many famous individuals others have fulfilled it so the masses are encouraged by these stories of success so too with Daisy the fact that other men had loved her only encouraged Gatsby's belief in his Pursuit Gatsby did ignite a romance upon first meeting Daisy but the way it is communicated to the reader is remarkably unromantic Fitzgerald writes he took what he could get ravenously and unscrupulously eventually he took Daisy one still October night took her because he had no real right to touch her hand in his army uniform Gatsby wore

a disguise he was unburdened by the cheap clothing which he would have otherwise worn he could spin lies to Daisy about his past and his future which he precisely did when we see Daisy and Gatsby's relationship as a metaphor for the American dream This truly becomes a vicious attack on that dream from Fitzgerald those who pursue the American dream do so ravenously and unscrupulously they steal lie and deceive because this is the only way for Fitzgerald to make the American dream into reality Gatsby has perhaps convinced himself to the contrary that he has an Earnest

love for Daisy but we can see very clearly that Gatsby's love was not for Daisy it was for Daisy's world for what she represented so his love was false was always false in the same way Fitzgerald believes the American dream is also false at the end of their test Nick tells us Daisy quote vanished into her rich house into her rich full life leaving Gatsby nothing she left him no thing rather than nobody and indeed for Gatsby Daisy was just that a thing an idea not a person and so like Americans pursued their dream with

every bit of Faculty which existed in their lives Gatsby does the same at Daisy he spends years creating himself as the ideal match for her as someone worthy of accomplishing her when he finally reaches this Pinnacle when this height of the American dream is so occupied by money and material things Fitzgerald begins to show us the illusion of it all when Gatsby meets Daisy at the time of the story we are once again shown the true nature of his infatuation fit Gerald writes it was Gatsby who was breathless who was somehow betrayed her porch was

bright with the bought luxury of Starshine the Wicker of the saete squeaked fashionably as she turned towards him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth she had caught a cold and it made her voice huskier and more Charming than ever and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves of the freshness of many clothes and of Daisy gleaming like silver safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor here Gatsby again recognizes not the beauty of daisy as a person but as a symbol she gleamed like silver

safe and proud above the struggles of the poor struggles Gatsby knew intimately well she is more territory than person a Promised Land he can access if only he can win Daisy's affection earlier we discussed Gatsby's desire as the American dreamer to erase his past to say no to his own background he too imposes that on Daisy even after Daisy admits to loving Gatsby that isn't enough Gatsby tells her to tell Tom that she doesn't love him this has been his lifelong Vision it never occurs to Gatsby to consider whether Daisy herself wants to participate in

his dream he assumes that she does and that she will immediately erase the fact that she has been and is married to Tom and is the mother of Tom's child indeed here is Fitzgerald's indictment on the American dream once again according to our myth the dreamer need not consider if the Society of America wants to oblige his Ambitions the dreamer need only act and he will achieve his ends we are told but Fitzgerald believes this to be false he perceives that it is in large part up to the society if one is permitted to achieve

their American Dream for her part Daisy ultimately does not allow Gatsby in the naive nature of the American dream is relayed once again in this exch change between Nick and gadsby I wouldn't ask too much of her I ventured you can't repeat the past can't repeat the past he cried incredulously why of course you can he looked around him wildly as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house just Out Of Reach of his hand I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before he said nodding determinately she'll see

here we have Gatsby almost panicking in denial when he meet meets with the idea that his American dream may be out of reach the very ethos of Gatsby cracks he cries that he can repeat the past though Gatsby's defining trait hither to has been his outright rejection of his own past at this point it is starting to become clear to Gatsby that there is some piece of the puzzle which he does not have which he may never have he has bought into the American dream and is now discovering it may have been a propaganda Fitzgerald

notes Gatsby is looking around searching for something in the shadows of his own house the author then doubles down on this idea just lines later he talked a lot about the past and I gathered he wanted to recover something some idea of himself perhaps that had gone into loving Daisy his life has been confused and disordered since then but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly could find out what that thing was that thing which was lurking in the shadows of his house which he seeks to

recover is true truth the truth about his American dream that it is in fact a lie all through the book The Closer Gatsby gets to Daisy the more unraveled his American Dream becomes when he moves into his Mansion across from Daisy and Tom's we are told about a Mist hovering over the bay which blocks Gatsby's view of the Buchanan home he is right on the precipice but suddenly unable to see his dream Gatsby famously spends evenings staring at a green light which is perched on the end of Tom and Daisy's dock this light is often

at the center of Gatsby analysis and for good reason it is the entire book boiled down into one piece of Machinery green is the color of life itself it is too the color of money greed jealousy and Wall Street the light is the American dream Gatsby and Fitzgerald's all at once so we are presented with this damning passage Daisy put her arm through his abruptly but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said possibly it had occurred to him that the Colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever compared to the great distance

that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her almost touching her it had seemed as close as a star to the moon now it was again a green light on a dock his count of Enchanted objects had diminished by one again the closer gats becomes to Daisy the more fraudulent everything is revealed to be this is brought to its ultimate not by Gatsby's own faculties but by another character Daisy's husband Tom Buchanan the destruction of Gatsby and his illusion occurs at Tom's hands the main character spend an afternoon in The Plaza

Hotel in New York City Tom calls Gatsby out on the entirety of his artifice his false past his bootlegging operation his standing as an eternal Outsider saying that Gatsby should only see Daisy if he's bringing groceries to her door Gatsby implores Daisy to tell Tom she never loved him and she does so in the most non-committal way she is trembling and immediately regretful Daisy quickly backtracks and declares that she loved both men in this scene Tom commits many murders he murders Gatsby's American Dream Gatsby's romance with Daisy and the entirety of Gatsby's life's Ambitions Gatsby

cannot be truly in Elite Society he cannot be with Daisy despite all of his money he will never gain access to his dream the titular character realizes he will never be he will always be almost that missing piece which he searched for in his home it is revealed to him by Tom it is all of the truths and all of the lies Tom also commits murder in the more real sense of the word in short Tom frames Gatsby for the death of his mistress Myrtle her widowed husband shoots Gatsby in his swimming pool and Gatsby

dies the swimming pool is entirely emblematic of Fitzgerald's false American dream it is opulent and beautiful and useless the book tells us Gatsby never once swam in the pool so when he finally does when he literally dives into his illusion becomes his grave Jay Gatsby is just one cast member in Fitzgerald's American Nightmare so to fully understand the book we must investigate its other actors among interpretations and Analysis of The Great Gatsby it is popular to chastise Daisy Buchanan as a particularly venomous character the following phrases have all been used to describe Daisy vicious emptiness

monstrous moral indifference criminally amoral vulgar and inhuman dark destroyer a purveyor of corruption and death and one even more verbose an early critic called Daisy the quote First notable anti- Virgin of our fiction the Prototype of the Blasphemous portraits of the fair goddess as in which our 20th century fiction abounds clearly Daisy is not looked upon favorably nor should she be none of the characters in The Great Gatsby can really be described as good people but Fitzgerald was a masterful author and so his characters should not be uced to Clumsy categorizations of bad or good

Daisy very much included for critics Daisy Buchanan was a punching bag and for the characters in The Great Gatspy she serves much the same purpose one of Daisy's first lines in the Nolla is a sort of confession she meets Nick and proclaims I'm paralyzed with happiness Daisy is too a victim of the American dream her paralysis is the chief SYM symptom Daisy's paralysis is large by marrying Tom her life has become Frozen by money and Status she comes from money and married into money her whole life has been dictated by convention and Circumstance Daisy is

the embodiment of the vulgar materialism which Fitzgerald saw in the American dream she was an Insider desperately and ruthlessly clean to her status and her riches Fitzgerald did not seek empathy for the daisies of the world these ruling class sour and so Daisy is not portrayed as a particularly likable woman she is lazy flighty and unconcerned with anything outside of her immediate strata but this was not really the fault of Daisy rather it was the impact of American materialism a sort of brainwashing see Daisy is something of a two-sided card on one side she is

presented as shallow and vaguely self-obsessed but this is how her world instructed her to be and Daisy is well aware of this so on the reverse side we have have an intelligent perhaps even cunning woman who is just as attached to her status as Gatsby himself also is when describing her infant daughter Daisy says I hope she'll be a fool that's the best thing a girl can be in this world a beautiful little fool this line alone speaks volumes for her character she is well aware of her Insider status and how one achieves it as

a woman so with this in mind while she does love Gatsby in her own perhaps shallow way da Daisy ultimately prioritizes her status over this love Daisy flirts with the idea of running away with Gatsby certainly we are told of an incident that occurred before the events of the book when Daisy received a letter from Gatsby on the eve of her wedding she ripped a $350,000 pearl necklace from her neck leaving the pearls to scatter onto the ground this necklace was a gift she'd received from Tom Daisy called The Wedding off but was immediately forced

by her friends and staff into an ice cold bath as she was forced into the bath Daisy was still clutching Gatsby's letter the water destroyed the letter and the wedding went on as planned this bath too can be seen as Fitzgerald's American dream it is a cold shock ultimately bringing the illusions of materialism into a paralyzing Truth for all parties involved Nick tells us all the time Gatsby was overseas something within her was crying for a decision she wanted her life shaped now immediately and the decision must be made by some force of Love of

Money of unquestionable practicality that was close at hand and so she married Tom Buchanan who was unfaithful abusive and brutish Daisy is not purely a victim though she is just as deplorable as her peers and Fitzgerald makes that quite clear throughout the story after all for whatever self-awareness she displays on the dangers of her life lifestyle she elects repeatedly to remain in her castle she shows no interest in the needs or wants of others with the possible exception of Gatsby but upon inspection even her feelings towards Gatsby seem fraudulent indeed the two have that distinctly

in common Daisy is basically Gatsby Jay Gatsby has constructed and lives in a fantasy land Daisy herself expresses this same desire she tells Gatsby I'd like to just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you around she has a romantic vision of her life with Gatsby an escape from the insistences of material Society a dreamlike land where reality need not exist she seeks the past she desires to relive the early stages of her romance with Gatsby prior to her marriage and prior to her insertion into the world of Tom

Buchanan Gatsby sees cracks in his vision for Daisy likewise but more severely Daisy finds Gatsby unable to meet her expectations Gatsby demands that she tells Tom she does not love him he demands Daisy fit perfectly into his vision for life which in turn does not fit into her vision this is made abundant as Gatsby ostentatiously shows off his collection of fine shirts when Gatsby shows the shirts to Daisy they are piled neatly in his closet but he begins to throw them onto the floor in a messy pile Daisy's reaction is to weep with the the

ideal of her and Gatsby her Dreamland also comes apart like the neat piles of shirts she realizes that Gatsby's world is an illusion as is her vision for their romance and so her desire can never be fulfilled when Tom reveals Gatsby's true nature to Daisy in the hotel she finally withdraws from Gatsby entirely Fitzgerald writes with every word she was drawing further and further into herself so he gave that up and Only The Dead dream fought on as the afternoon Slipped Away trying to touch what was no longer tangible struggling unhappily UND despairingly toward that

lost voice across the room Daisy's fantasy is truly dead Gatsby could not live up to her vision for him within Gatsby and Daisy we have a mutual disillusionment but the results of each are wildly Divergent Fitzgerald realizes that Daisy being of the privileged Elite has a safety net she can return to her life with Tom driving Gatsby's car with him in the passenger seat Daisy hits and kills Tom's mistress there's nothing to indicate that this was intentional but it allows Daisy to slip back into her previous life with Tom Buchanan uninterrupted she is damningly happy

to let Gatsby carry the blame legal or otherwise for the incident tellingly Daisy and Gatsby both have their hands on the wheel when they killed the woman indeed they both steered their own fantasies into death with no great stretch of the imagination we can read The Great Gatsby as a letter of hatred to the elites of American society and all they represent in such a case it would be Tom Buchanan's name on the envelope in a swarm of bad Tom Buchanan is perhaps the worst Tom is brutish he is a well-built man who in appearance

and in beliefs becomes a sort of Proto fascist he spews racist vitriol detests the lower class and is perfectly happy to leave destruction in his wake Tom's physical description is relevant to this theme of The American Dream he is described as having a cruel body which is capable of enormous leverage at one point he hits his impoverished mistress Myrtle and breaks her nose Tom bucanan is not only Tom he is the generations of wealthy American families who conquered the lower classes who are capable of a strange and leisurely sort of Oppression like Tom these people

would rather spend afternoons drinking and playing Polo but with the slightest whim the toms of the world can uproot and destroy those who are beneath them indeed Tom does just this it only takes a brief monologue for him to undo the lifelong work of Jay gadsby Tom and Daisy have many of their worst qualities in common while their relationship cannot be categorized as happy or even entirely functional the pair are intimately similar near the end of the book Nick concludes 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 indeed this sort of well financed carelessness is a tie which bonds Daisy and Tom together it is a unique trait which Fitzgerald notes exists preeminently in those who hold status like the Buchanan Tom Buchanan is enormously wealthy despite having no career and contributing nothing to society Tom further has no ambition other than to keep Invaders like Gatsby out of his castle Daisy likewise she is never portrayed as having any

particular motivation besides self-interest she is not as Direct in her oppression as Tom but she has a guilt by complacence her romance with Gatsby results in the deaths of two individuals nothing indicates that either of these bodies weigh on her conscience at all she does not attend Gatsby's funeral this makes for a very clear portrait of how Fitzgerald sees old money Elites at the end of the story Tom and Daisy perform one of the classically Imperial American Feats after engineering chaos and destruction they simply believe they just move on Unbound by consequence Tom's mistress Myrtle

is a supporting character in the story but in Reading The Great Gatsby within the context of the American dream she is remarkably significant Myrtle not only propels much of the action in the Nolla she provides Grand insight into the story's main characters like Gatsby Myrtle has her own American Dream hers is wealth and all of the lifestyle which comes with it Myrtle is married to a man named George who is a mechanic and owns a gas station by her actions and words it is clear that Myrtle despises her husband he is a poor man who

was forced to borrow his suit for their wedding remarking upon this Myrtle says the only crazy I was when I married him I knew right away I made a mistake he borrowed somebody's suit to get married in and never told me about it and the man came after it one day when he was out we do not learn much about George as a person but it is almost irrelevant Myrtle disdains George's status and so she disdains him in her American Dream Myrtle enters into an affair with Tom Buchanan she believes that this is a way

to enter into the aristocratic Society Myrtle is under the impression that Tom will leave Daisy for her although there is little to indicate this was ever Tom's intention as typical for Fitzgerald in the Nolla Myrtle's quest for her American Dream decays and eventually kills her Tom is m 's dream he abuses her lies to her and manipulates her in the end her relationship with Tom brings about her death she is killed by Daisy who is at the wheel of Gatsby's car of course Tom Buchanan simply continues with his days Nick caroway is the narrator of

the Nolla much has been debated about his reliability as a narrator but I believe that Nick is and must be reasonably reliable for the book to even function Fitzgerald exchanged a series of letters with his editor after finishing the Great Gatsby in which they discussed Nick carway as a narrator in these letters Fitzgerald does not say anything to indicate that Nick is unreliable furthermore The Great Gatsby is about the corruption and decline of the American dream this is not a Labyrinthian interpretation or abstract idea it is the central theme of the book as expressed by

Fitzgerald himself it is through Nick Caraway that Fitzgerald communicates his notion of this dream this notion is the whole point of the book so for the Great Gatsby to even function Nick must be reliable if Nick is untrustworthy then the Nolla becomes little more than a soap opera Nick is not an unreliable narrator in the traditional sense of the word but he is also not a truly objective narrator while it is tempting to categorize him in either Camp Nick is what I would call a biased narrator Nick has a background which is relevant to the

story and how we receive the story he is a person of means Nick graduated from Yale but he does not have the same laziness inducing status of the buchanans he fought in the War Nick made the decision to travel east to pursue the bond business though he seems to have rather mixed feelings about it he recounts having dinner at the Yale Yacht Club but notes it was an experience he did not enjoy Nick is something of an outsider in the story at least he is outside of the materialism and the American dreaming which propels virtually

all of the other characters Fitzgerald establishes this early in the Nolla when Nick States I lived at West Egg The Well less fashionable of the two though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little Sinister contrast between them Nick is put off by the division of East and West Egg describing this attitude as bizarre and Sinister throughout the story he is in awe of the materialism around him he remarks on the opulence of gadsby Daisy and Tom Nick ultimately leaves the East Coast describing the area as having a quality

of distortion and laments his journey as him visiting the wrong house the buchanans especially Tom are quick to judge and excommunicate those of the lower classes Nick is generally welcomed around them throughout the whole story but regards the group with an amount of distaste it is clear that Nick has no particular love for for the lifestyles of the other characters Nick notes that he is from a family of quote prominent well-to-do people in this middle western City for three generations so clearly someone in Nick's family did accomplish the American dream perhaps Fitzgerald's more pure authentic

version of it which produced a reasonable individual like Nick one could make the case that Nick is a bad person he did after all Stand By and witness the world burning and lethal drama of his peers unfold but I think it is more accurate to call Nick shallow he is a shallow person who wants shallow relationships we can see this when he writes I like to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives and no one would

ever know or disapprove sometimes in my mind I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm Darkness even Nick's most romantic intimate fantasies conclude in anonymity Nick also declares that quote life is best viewed through a single window he has no interest in Grand perspectives his view of the world is intentionally limited Nick does not intervene or save anyone simply because he is not interested perhaps that makes him a bad person or perhaps not that is for

the reader to decide but Nick speaks to his inaction in the book he has a very cynical opinion on the prospect of saving these people from anything Nick states that the entire group was distorted Beyond his eyes power of Correction to Nick the American dream is sour he views the things which characterize it as corrupt and bizarre so he functions as something of a proxy for Fitzgerald himself embodying a sense of disillusionment Nick ultimately washes his hands of the entire Gatsby Affair concluding that all is in fact lost we can perhaps see this in the

following passage I was reminded of something an elusive Rhythm a fragment of lost words that I heard somewhere a long time ago for a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air but they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was incommunicado forever there is to one minor character who is emblematic of Fitzgerald's American dream that is eing clip Springer who is a piano player and something of a squatter at

Gatsby's residence indeed he gets the nickname The Border although clip Springer has relatively little space in the book his existence is a pointed warning of American materialism clip Springer often plays piano at Gatsby's party serving as an Entertainer but he lingers around the home throughout the week and even still Gatsby seems to have only disinterested ambivalence for the man clip Springer is almost a caricature of the American materialist he wanders around Gatsby's home unkempt taking advantage of his host's Blas generosity clip Springer is a wholly disrespectful and disinterested man who enjoys only the rampant debauchery

and material possessions which Gatsby provides he attends Gatsby's funeral not out of respect but instead to request a pair of shoes sent to his house for Fitzgerald this is the impact that the American dream and surrounding culture has on the individual it transmutes people into leeches who care not for one another but instead suck away at their peers for the material luxuries of life in Fitzgerald's eyes the American Experience can be separated into two distinct Parts there exist the material physical functional realities of our American life on the other hand there are the more profound

and Universal the spiritual wants and needs of the human within Fitzgerald's American dream it is incredibly difficult to see where one of these ends and the other begins does the American dream in so far as it is represented by the gatses and buchanans fulfill our spiritual needs does it take the place of them perhaps Gatsby represents the spiritual the idea that things can always infinitely become better this is a sort of Blind Faith which requires some degree of youthful optimism but can produce incredible results meanwhile the buchanans are the material realities the idea that becoming

better has suddenly become synonymous with accumulating money as well as the functional hierarchies that have simultaneously made this both true and absurd unfortunately Gatsby is never able to see through his illusion it is gats before whom the lines have become impossibly blurred he is unable to discern that he is great in a way which the buchanans will never be and so he becomes terrible in the way the buchanans are the realities of American society meant Gatsby could never fulfill his dream he is the spiritual which is confused with the material The Great Gatsby takes place

in a fictional version of Long Island New York in the book this residential area is divided into West W egg and East egg West Egg is considered the new money side it is where cadsby lives the houses in West Egg are often aspirationally modeled after famous mansions in Europe the East egg is a more desirable fashionable part of town that is inhabited mostly by old money types and of course it is where the buchanans live it is plainly obvious to see how these two places fit into Fitzgerald's vision of the American dream these two neighborhoods

seem to represent the division between the American dream and its more real counterpart there are the dreamers and there are those who already sit at the top and these two groups are linked by their love of material Goods this allegory is made even more clear when we investigate what lies between East and West Egg the Valley of the ashes is a bleak industrial Wasteland between the two eggs unlike the egg neighborhoods the valley is inhabited by the very poor the valley is also occupied by factories and smoke stacks which put a gray dusty bleakness over

the area and its residents while the eggs are described in high shimmering language Fitzgerald paints a much Bleaker picture of The Valley Of Ashes he uses phrases like Ash Gray paintless days spasms of Bleak dust and calls it a solemn Dumping Ground even the name itself is invokes feelings of death within the book The Valley of the ashes is the only setting which is described as anything besides aesthetically magnificent for Fitzgerald the American dream in so far as it existed was built on the backs of the poor the Valley of the ashes represents this idea

wholly it is a place in which production happens on a very real level it is full of factories the novel's two poorest characters Myrtle and her husband also live in the Valley of the ashes the valley is where the opulence of the buchanans and the gatses is truly produced but it is also the place which suffers the most visibly from this production so here we have a vaguely apocalyptic worldview from Fitzgerald the Valley of the ashes is sort of the dirty secret the hidden ingredient of our American dream it is perhaps too the result produced

by a society of materialism while the valley features the story's most dismal atmosphere it is also the place where the the book's most tragic events occur it is where Tom is unfaithful to Daisy it is too where Tom physically abuses his mistress Myrtle Daisy kills Myrtle In The Valley Of Ashes this event also sets into motion the death of Gatsby himself Tom and Daisy ruthlessly abuse and exploit the people in The Valley Of Ashes so too we have the American dream in its materialism sucking the life from the lower classes in the Valley of the

ashes there is an old weathered billboard for an optometrist named Dr TJ eckleberg the billboard features a large pair of blue eyes rimmed by Golden spectacles this advertisement is often a well-deserved centerpiece in analysis of the great gadsby it is generally accepted that these eyes represent God himself this idea comes from two places first Scott Fitzgerald was a religious man despite his often indulgent lifestyle secondly one of the book's characters explicitly States this meaning when Mr Wilson confronts Myrtle about her Affair he takes her to their window and they gaze at the billboard Mr Wilson

declares God knows what you've been doing everything you've been doing you may fool me but you can't fool God the book's most tragic events occur under the watchful eyes of Dr eckleberg in this way we can perceive Fitzgerald appealing to the highest order even if we the people fail ourselves in our country we cannot go without punishment God is always watching The Great Gatsby is one of the finest American Works ever produced but by many people's opinions it is the only time F Scott Fitzgerald soared to such enormous Heights so to earnestly understand the work

we should understand Fitzgerald himself F Scott Fitzgerald spent most of his life writing about the rich but in his childhood he was decidedly middle class his father was a twice failed businessman and only through an inheritance on Fitzgerald's mother's side was the family able to live in middle class Comfort an aunt of Scott Fitzgerald paid for him to attend a private school where his results were mediocre the author eventually did attend Princeton but only to drop out and join the military during World War I without getting too far into the particulars of Fitzgerald's youth we

can say say he was distinctly not part of the Gatsby or Buchanan world but some part of him likely yearned for just that in 1918 the pennil Fitzgerald wrote to his friend I know I'll wake up some morning and find the debutants have made me famous overnight this happened precisely when he published the book this side of Paradise in 1920 the book was a smash success and suddenly Fitzgerald's status changed markedly he later wrote that the offices of New York were suddenly open to him quote I who knew less of New York than any reporter

of 6 months standing was pushed into the position of spokesman for the time and indeed Fitzgerald basked in this new lifestyle he was a full-on literary celebrity gallivanting around New York bars and high society he later wrote that he once wept because quote I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again this is all to say the issues of class mobility and even the American dream were once Fitzgerald knew intimately well he did seem to grow disillusioned with the glitz and Glam however Fitzgerald called that period of America the greatest

gaudiest spending period in history he would later write that even the snow wasn't real that if you didn't want it to snow you could just pay some money but this lifestyle eventually caught up with Fitzgerald in the early 20s F Scott was about $55,000 in debt around $39,000 in today's money he began working 12 hours per day writing 11 short stories and 5 months to climb out of debt by Fitzgerald's words this sum allowed him to rise from abject poverty back into the middle class this work was far from fulfilling though he wrote to a

friend that the writing was all trash and it nearly broke my heart so by the time Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby he had ascended to the Pinnacle of society craft and then begun to pick himself up again with the Great Gatsby though Fitzgerald abandoned lofty ideas about romantic High Society instead he returned to what he knew the titular character James gats was an impoverished midwesterner Gatsby's ability to move through the classes was partially based on Fitzgerald himself with the author noting he started out as one man I knew and then changed into myself the character

of Daisy a Southern bell was largely inspired by it's Gerald's lover Zelda who like Daisy was an aloof wealthy Alabama born woman who changed romantic decisions at the drop of a hat Nick caraway's past mirrors much of Fitzgerald's Tom Buchanan is even imbued with some of the author in his schooling days just like Tom Fitzgerald was a prodigiously talented athlete all of Fitzgerald's experiences in American society equipped him with a sharp harsh perspective on our country country's culture Fitzgerald's thesis with the Great Gatsby was something like this the culture of American materialism has corrupted American

ideals and will continue to fracture the country indeed he was proven correct almost immediately in 1928 President Hoover proclaimed we in America today are nearer to the financial triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of our land the poor man is Vanishing from us under the Republican system our industrial output has increased as never before and our wages have grown steadily in buying power in a way Hoover was right the poor were Vanishing they were Vanishing from their jobs because of an increasingly unstable farming industry they were Vanishing from unions due to a

concerted effort to minimize the power of the worker African-American sharecroppers were Vanishing from the south due to mass layoffs forced to take low-paying jobs in segregated neighborhoods and live in squalor Mexican Americans were Vanishing too they lived in extreme poverty with an infant mortality rate five times higher than their white counterparts despite Hoover's declarations income inequality was on the rise like never before by 1929 the top 1% of the population owned 19 % of all personal wealth the top 5% owned 34% certainly today these numbers seem tame by comparison but in 1929 a family of

four required $2,000 per year for basic necessities 50% of American families in that same year did not reach this minimum threshold then in 1929 the stock market crashed Farms factories and mines collapsed decimating the lower classes first the automobile industry cratered this all rippled through the Upper Crust wiping out Investments and savings foreign trade stumbled by 66% and within 3 years personal income in America had dropped off by 50% the American dream Fitzgerald's or otherwise was by all counts dead in 1931 Fitzgerald wrote an essay called Echoes of the Jazz Age in which he practically

eulogizes for the highflying dreamers of the 20s it ended 2 years ago because the utter confidence which was its essential prop received an enormous jolt and it didn't take long for the flimsy structure to settle earthward and after 2 years the Jazz Age seems as far away as the days before the war it was borrowed time anyhow the whole upper tenth of a Nation living with the indifference of grand dukes and the casualness of chorus girls but the moralizing is easy now and it was pleasant to be in one's 20s in such a certain and

unworried time the American dream would be reborn in the ashes of World War II however the American economy grew by 37% in the 1950s and the American Family saw a 30% surge in spending power surely it is no coincidence that it was the ' 50s when the Great Gatsby was finally lauded as a masterpiece of American literature in the years since the American dream has died and been reborn over and over again I tend to think this essay need not leap into every Incarnation and failure instead for our conclusion we can simply look to the

man who invented the American dream itself Fitzgerald saw the potential for the American dream to Decay but he was not the first one to Envision this possibility in fact this dream was brought into phrase alongside exactly this type of warning James truso Adams coined the term the American dream in his 1931 book The Epic of America America he notes pointedly the materialistic Perils of our American Dream saying the American dream that has lured tens of millions of all Nations to our Shores in the past Century has not been a dream of merely material plenty though

that has doubtless counted heavily it has been much more than that it has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in older civilizations unrepressed by so social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class and that dream has been realized more fully in actual life here than anywhere else though very imperfectly even among ourselves our American Dream should not be predicated on larger houses or faster cars

we should not be gatsi and we should not aspire to be the buchanans we must create a fuller dream than these shimmering objects we must seek one which elevates and works for all Not Alone the privileged our American Dream must not be a guarded Tower in the East egg but a place which grants entry to those citizens of the world who seek Earnest fulfillment mechanically this requires more than the free hand of our markets it requires caution thought and indeed action as Adams noted if the American dream is to come true and to abide with

us it will at bottom depend on the people themselves if we are to achieve a richer and Fuller life for all they have got to know what such an achievement implies in a modern industrial State an economic base is essential for all we point to Pride to our national income but the nation is only an aggregate of individual men and women when we turn from the single figure of total income to the incomes of individuals we find a very Market Injustice in its distribution it has been said that those qualities you dislike in others are

the ones you see in yourself as we look at Fitzgerald's book and its actors The Great Gatsby proves this can also be true for an entire nation The Great Gatsby eviscerated the very soul of America and one century later it continues to do so