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Examples Of Greed In The Great Gatsby

1649 Words7 Pages

In The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald shows how society gets corrupted trying to achieve the American Dream through the characterization of many characters like Gatsby. Jay Gatsby was a man who rose from nothing to being extremely wealthy, many would consider him as someone who has reached the American Dream. However after so much work he never really got the one thing that made him happy. Many critiques like Fussel argues that Gatsby is corrupted by the values and attitudes he holds in common with the society that destroys him. Others like Callahan and Gunn believe that the Great Gatsby tries to convince people that money and success is everything but they failed in the end by showing how miserable Gatsby is without Daisy. The American Dream can give off a false hope that if you have reached success and …show more content…

He seems to have everything a person could want from a lavish home, to many friends and grand parties. However, Fussel in his book “Fitzgerald’s Brave New World” explains that Americans view of the American Dream is corrupted and false. This is due to people’s ignorance towards the real reason for human happiness. Americans do not realize that money does not buy you happiness. For example Jay Gatsby influenced the way that Americans viewed the American Dream. He did this by doing everything he could to reach wealth and success in hopes of gaining Daisy back who he believes is with Tom because of his wealth and success. Fussel states that Gatsby is pathetic. He believes that Gatsby does not live life for himself. Gatsby not only tries to imitate the life of others but while doing so he does not realize that his image of a perfect life will never be reached because it’s an unrealistic one. This is shown in “The Great Gatsby” through Tom’s and Daisy’s life. This is the life that Gatsby envisioned living. He saw himself as being the winner and being married to Daisy and living in a

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The novel The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitz Gerald embodies many themes. A major in the story is the pursuit of can be labelled the American Dream. The American Dream is defined as someone starting low on the economic or social level, and working hard towards prosperity and or wealth and fame. By having money, a car, a big house, nice clothes and a happy family symbolizes the American dream. The Great Gatsby shows what happened to the American Dream in the 1920’s, which is a time period when the dreams became corrupted for many reasons.

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Throughout his career, F. Scott Fitzgerald was deemed one of the great chroniclers and satirist of the culture of wealth, extravagance and ambition that emerged during the affluent 1920s, which came to be known as the Jazz Age. One of the famous lines of the time came from Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald which stated “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, it was an age of satire” (Pakenham, 1998). It was during this time that he wrote his greatest novel titled “The Great Gatsby,” which is told from the point of view of the character Nick Carraway and follows his strange friendship with the mysterious Jay Gatsby. Throughout the story, Fitzgerald uses satire to depict American ideals during the time of the Jazz

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Allusions In The Great Gatsby

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The American Dream suggests that every American citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work. One of the major ways that Fitzgerald portrays this is by alluding to outside events or works of literature specifically from that time period. Another major relationship that develops in The Great Gatsby is between Tom and Daisy. F. Scott Fitzgerald alludes to things such as the World’s Fair and “The Love Nest” to display the eventual dismantling of Tom and Daisy’s relationship. Both of these separate plots consolidate under the idea of Gatsby trying to become the epitome of the American Dream, as seen through his strive for a “perfect life.”

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