Gatsby Symbolizes the American Dream and Its Flaws in the 1920’s


  • Submitted By: txball1
  • Date Submitted: 03/19/2011 8:35 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1555
  • Page: 7
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Gatsby symbolizes the American dream and its flaws in the 1920’s.

The 1920’s were a time of economic indulgences. The stock market was in a period of wild growth and Americans were enjoying their newfound prosperity. America just came off a triumphant success in the First World War and the 1920’s was its outlandish victory party. The New York Times said, “Gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession” of the 1920’s. The morality which the common citizen had previously upheld became corrupted, and the American Dream, which once meant making a living through integrity and hard work, became tainted, emphasizing the quick, not necessarily honest, acquisition of money and prodigal spending. The life, desires, and ultimate failure of Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald deprecates the metamorphosis of the American Dream from an honest pursuit driven by curiosity to a deplorable lust for the almighty dollar.

James Gatz was embarrassed to be the scion of poor farmers. He lived on the beach digging for clams to survive. He possessed no more than a “find smile quote”. But after spending a few years traveling the world with the wealthy Dan Cody aboard his yacht, the seventeen-year-old boy reinvents himself under the name Jay Gatsby. Jay epitomizes the American dream; he went from an underprivileged boy to a charming sophisticated man. Jay Gatsby was standing at the bottom of a staircase that led to infinite opportunities; everything that once seemed so distant was now tangible. And money was the least of his worries.
Jay was perusing the American Dream; the reason the United States is the most immigrated to country in the history of the world. He created a self-rebirth that gave him the ability to chase every aspiration he could fathom; he could do anything he wanted in a free and gay fashion. He had romanticized the quintessential way to live, but it was just an idea, something that had no material host. Then he met Daisy Fay.
Daisy was...

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