Great Gatsby Archetypal Quotes

American Dream is the idea that anyone can achieve financial success and happiness through hard work and determination. But author F. Scott Fitzgerald gives readers a twist in his novel, The Great Gatsby, when his hero loses everything he worked to achieve. The great American Dream is not always the best dream. Gatsby had become a great success and was close to achieving the great American dream. Gatsby was an Archetypal character because the typical archetypal character goes through searches of fulfillment. In the story Gatsby is trying to achieve the American dream (Fitzgerald, 173) “‘It just shows you, don’t it’ ‘Jimmy was bound to get ahead. …’” This quote shows that Gatsby always wanted to strive to be great from a young age. Gatsby from a young age had determination to succeed and sopiscated himself. But instead of coming on top Gatsby falls and does not get back up. How did Gatsby achieve his wealth ?(Fitzgerald, 133) “ ‘I found out what your ‘drug-stores’ were.’... ‘He and wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter…’ ” This just shows how the American dream unrealistic to achieve through just hard work and determination.

Tom is also a villain of the American Dream he is the barrier that people have to pass in order to achieve the Dream. Usually in Archetypal stories the hero always has some personification of evil that stands in the way of the hero and his goal. In this case Tom stands in the way of Gatsby's fulfillment of the great American dream(Fitzgerald, 130) “ ‘Your wife doesn’t love you’... ‘She Only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except me! ” Gatsby Journey of fulfillment of the great American dream involved marrying his temptress Daisy and the only way he could achieve that was by getting pass the villain of the story