The Great Gatsby : The American Dream :: essays research papers

In The Great Gatsby, one of the predominant themes is the death of thee American dream. In this, F. Scott Fitzgerald is showing how the American dream has become corrupt and that the dream is dead.. The Great Gatsby took place in the roaring twenties. A time when man no longer found happiness in simple pleasures like he did once such as life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is when the first breakdown in the American dream occurred. The idealization of the American dream was over, people took what they were born with for granted and did not miss what the never had. Things that the dream stood for such, as life was not an issue that people talked about. There was an unspoken silence of live and let live even though there was vast amounts of discrimination. Liberty, a thing taken for granted since all born on American soil are free men and women, thus no one cherishes that part of the dream either. The pursuit of happiness is befuddling. Daisy makes this clear by saying 'Your revolting'; to tom. Obviously she's unhappy with tom yet she wont leave him for Gatsby. Daisy made this clear when Gatsby gave her the ring and she wouldn't ware it. And she said 'be my friend, be my lover'; meaning she wanted him yet she wanted her life of flirting with the in crowd more then she loved Gatsby. However this is a generation that is comparable to our generation x children in how lazy they were. The roaring twenties was an era off sophistication, technology and leisure. People had what they had ant what they didn't the lived with out. The American dream itself is idealized. It was first thought of during the American Revolution as a way to keep spirits up. The motto, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not by any means a dream but an aspect of a way to make a certain reality for oneself. Then as time went on, the time period to actually make this dream a reality was passed over, people no longer lived a hard life or struggled for freedom. So the dream itself got left behind. We idealized it and later in the roaring twenties, that idealization was recognized by F Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby was Fitzgerald's cry out to the American people. A metaphor intended to make people aware that they had forgotten about the true pleasures in life and that they were wrapped up in the material world.