Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
"Deconstruction of the American Dream"
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's literary classic The Great Gatsby, the theme of the illusive
American Dream is not one pleasant and replete with success; rather, Fitzgerald's
dazzling and dashing character of Gatsby finds it forever beyond his grasp, much like the
beguiling and ever present green light on Daisy's dock.
The tempting glimpses of elite social society and circles of cliques of cultured
disenchanted debutantes and angry, drunken elitists hints that all the American Dream
embodies is not all that one may dream it to be. Despite Gatsby's financial rise in power,
his attempt to transcend caste and establish himself within the exclusive and cynical lives
of the "old money," he finds himself tragically unable to obtain what he wants most-
wealth, power, security, and love.
Fitzgerald asserts throughout his eloquent writing that the American Dream has
become corrupt and distinctly unreachable, altered perceptively and irrevocably by the
insecurities and cursory hungering for power by the old rich. Although Gatsby is
prosperous in his business dealings, living in an opulent mansion and throwing lavish and
gaudy parties every weekend, he essentially lacks the background and influence that
seems required by the snobby uppercrust society he so longs to belong to. In essence, the
American Dream has been betrayed by the very idea that one who has worked so hard in
what is considered the "land of opportunity" cannot achieve the success they so richly
deserve. Gatsby at one point tells Nick, the ever-present narrator and "unjudging"
spectator to the whirlwind romance between Gatsby and Daisy, a rich uppercrust onetime debutante, that "Her voice is full of money" (127), exhibiting the contrast between
working for financial security and inheriting it.
Daisy, to Gatsby, not only is one that he loves, but also the forever illusive ideal
and the key to Gatsby's final and complete advance into elite society. Conceivably,
Gatsby does not truly love Daisy, but rather sees her as the fulfillment of his dream, that
of reaching extravagant wealth and influence in a society that forever denies him
entrance...