Weaver Zach Weaver Alyssa Dawson ENGL 287 April 21st, 2011 The American Nightmare Luscious green

lawns, a white picket fence, a happy family of four and a strong job to provide plenty of material wealth for you and your loved ones. Seemingly, this sounds perfect for any American hoping to live life to its fullest potential. This, apparently, is what allows an individual to be truly happy. This is the idea of The American Dream. It is always seen as such a fantastic life once you reach the summit of social hierarchy, yet the pathways that lead to that summit often are filled with a sickening lack of morals, tragic ignorance, as well as personality-changing temptations. Within F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby, there exists nothing but tragedy within the false-hoped struggles to achieve the American Dream. This tragedy is evident when looking at Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, and Nick Carraway and how they interact with and interpret the American Dream, how materialistic wealth plays such a

heavy role in symbolizing the idea of the American Dream, and how morals are carelessly tossed out the window to achieve the highest social status. The Great Gatsby clearly lays out a story full of crushed imaginings, which often are associated within the paths of the American Dream. Nick Carraway, the narrator, quickly establishes himself as the innocent and genuine character, ultimately trying to institute trust in his friends and readers. He makes this clear by saying, Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known (59). Despite his innocence, he still sucks himself into the dark tragic path towards the

Weaver American Dream by befriending such wild and dishonest individuals. Overall, however, he is the only character who seems to realize how flawed the American Dream really is. The individuals he surrounds himself with, mainly Jay Gatsby, allow him to examine how desperate people truly can be. Jay Gatsby grew up poor, and made it his one goal in life to become a millionaire in hopes to win over the woman he loved, Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby ignored normal

routes towards success (intense schooling and many years of hard work) by involving himself in illegal monetary activities. Ultimately, Gatsbys will to achieve the American Dream is solely for the purpose to fulfill Daisys dream. Daisy longs for the materialistic success, as in her own mind it is a boost to her own social stature based on the fancy items that surround her. Marrying Tom Buchanan solely for his money was a dead giveaway at how tragically flawed her idea of the American Dream is. All of these characters live a lie in hopes of achieving their own personal desires. In doing so, however, they adopt a large amount of jeopardy in finding true happiness, which is what is supposed to be the main desire of the American Dream. The American Dream was only an idea of materialistic wealth and objective pleasures in the 1920s, when Fitzgeralds book took place. The devotion to material wealth and possessions were often at the expense of spiritual or intellectual values, leading to the tragic demise of most characters within this novel. Within The Great Gatsby, Gatsby attempts to gather as many possessions as possible to increase his social appearance, and often we see Daisy Buchanan as being the ideal motivation behind most attempts to gain such social hierarchy. With the general idea of Gatsbys extravagant weekend parties, we can see by the way people flock to them, that Gatsbys apparent life is highly desired by many based off of his possessions rather than his own self. This is confirmed by the amount of people who attend his parties who have no idea who Gatsby even is, and how a saddening number of visitors came to pay their respects at his funeral.

Weaver How Gatsby places his own label on himself as an Oxford man, shows his attempted stimulation of the lesser minds surrounding him, as he is adaptive to a somewhat arrogant

personality. He adds to this persona by his unnecessary greed when concerning material objects. A perfect example of this unnecessary greed is when Gatsby requests that his pool-boy not close up the pool after it being open to whomever attends his fancy parties. Gatsby explains to Nick, You know, old sport, Ive never used that pool all summer? (153). On the public appearance, the swimming pool shows a level of wealth attainable by only the elite, but in the private compliance of Gatsby, he truly doesnt need or desire it for any other reason than to assist his physical appearance. One cannot truly argue Gatsby, however, as his true goal of winning over Daisy seems to work to perfection because of Daisys longing to be apart of this materialistic paradise. She shows this by shedding tears over Gatsbys fine clothing: Theyre such beautiful shirts, she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. It makes me sad because Ive never seen such beautiful shirts before (92). This shows Gatsby has finally made himself into what Daisy has always longed for him to be. She stumbles upon this realization not because of anything he says or does, but because of his valuables. Shallow personalities shine in instances like this, and can be directly related to the blind ambition of the characters to use materialism to achieve this sublime American Dream. While most things in life often do not come without some sort of consequence, it is rare to find a genuine individual who is willing to give up personal morals towards achieving a higher goal. In the case of the characters in The Great Gatsby, morals are often the first to disperse, and the American Dream is thus symbolized as an achievement that doesnt care to hold quality relationships. This is obviously a fatal flaw, due to the idea that quality relationships are needed for social stability, especially in times of need. An example of a loss of morals for the sake of an

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achievable goal is when Nick offers a funeral invitation towards supposedly Gatsbys best friend, Meyer Wolfsheim. It is evident that morals are not present within such fantasized relationships as Nick narrates Wolfsheims reaction by saying, The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears. I cant do itI cant get mixed up in it, he said (171). He goes on to read Wolfsheims later comment, Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is deadafter that, my own rule is to let everything alone (172). These quotes show how shallow and untrue relationships involving the American Dream can be. While an individual, in this case Gatsby, may appear as a valuable relationship to achieve ultimate social status, it is shown here that once that value is gone, there remains nothing left but a cold and motionless body. Another prime example of a blind loss of morals is the multiple pathetic love scandals that engulf all of the characters. As Daisy suffers from a loss of true love due to Toms affair, it leads her to change her personal morals. This is evident when she describes her sad hopes and dreams for her daughter, who is rarely seen at all throughout the novel. Daisy exclaims, I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool... You see, I think everything's terrible anyhow... And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything (17). Not allowing her love to show, Daisy limits her daughters overall potential based on her own poor experiences. When attempting to attain the American Dream, these two examples point directly to the sickening strategies of achieving the beloved social status. Aside from the examples given about Gatsby, Nick, and Daisy, it is interesting to examine Fitzgeralds possible views of the American Dream as well. Many similarities arise between the character of Nick and Fitzgerald himself. Further research reveals that Fitzgerald

Weaver was born in Minnesota, moved out to New York, then soon moved back into the Mid West,

similar to Nicks story. Possibly we could see through this novel, Fitzgeralds perspective of the American Dream, and notice how tragic it is indeed in the eyes of the author. It is difficult to resist the temptations and urges to attempt the American Dream lifestyle, as it runs a large risk of backfiring. However, for those that seem to make it and are truly happy, it is a precious gift in life. For this group of Midwesterners trapped in an Eastern mind, there existed a great amount of hostility, stemmed from the frustrations of personal lives. Through the characters blind view on the American Dream as a whole, the greedy materialistic dependencies, as well as the careless loss of morals from all characters involved in the story, it is evident that to reach the American Dream is not as desirable as socially portrayed. That is, unless one strives for a life full of infidelity, false riches and the ultimate destruction of human morals. Terrible as those may be, it could indeed make for one hell of a story.