Corruption Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

Jay Gatsby’s American Dream
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has many intricate and deep characters, but none more so than the book’s titular character, James Gatz, who went by the alias Jay Gatsby. Gatsby’s story is one of a man who was so blinded by his dreams of a past love that he could not see his future careening toward his end. Above all, however, is his corruption of the American Dream which put him on his path of destruction.

To some extent, Gatsby did achieve the American Dream. Granted, the American Dream varies from person to person today, but in the 1920’s, it could be defined as having a spouse, owning a house and car, raising kids and a pet, and having a stable job or business. Gatsby did achieve most of the points on that list; the only shortcomings he had on the list were that he did not raise a family or successfully “get” the girl. The ways

Scott Fitzgerald uses The Great Gatsby to depict the American Dream as materialistic, fallible, and otherwise unlikely to work out for the average man. He writes that, while one can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work their way up to the upper echelon like Gatsby did, true happiness and success will always be out of reach because the American Dream is the constant drive to have and be better, proven in his writing when he says, “It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther” (180). Gatsby’s character in and of itself proves the corruption of the dream. He sets out with pure intentions but is warped by the 1920’s era obsession with materialism and as such misinterprets the American Dream as an accumulation of wealth and status. No cost seemed too high for Gatsby if it meant getting what he wanted, whether it be in money or morals. Such a fact rang true for almost every major character in the novel and parallels well with how, in the 1920s, people were similarly focused on living the dream and didn’t care how or if they got