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Happiness In The Great Gatsby

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WITHERING OF THE AMERICAN DREAM The American Dream started out as “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”- From the declaration of independence. Meaning having freedom, living your own life, and staying happy. In the novel The Great Gatsby they have completely toppled the idea of the American Dream. The Great Gatsby completely changes the American dream, which is the reason its messed up to this day. One critic has written that “the theme of Gatsby is the withering of the American Dream”. He is completely correct because the theme shows laziness, as there is no pursuit, the characters are rich but never happy, and how wealth doesn’t bring happiness. In the novel The Great Gatsby, the theme is full of laziness. The characters never pursuit anything, except for Gatsby himself, he was going to pursue his dream with daisy but instead he was murdered before he could accomplish it. At the beginning of the novel, when Gatsby is throwing …show more content…

Gatsby has this huge, amazing mansion but isn’t happy with it without Daisy. Tom is this owner of this huge company but he is still concerned with the tinnier things in life. In the story it shows us that the characters are never happy with what they have. For example, when Gatsby was throwing his really nice, expensive, beautiful shirts and just throwing them down to Daisy. “They’re such beautiful shirts. She sobbed, her voice muffled in the tick folds. It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such nice shirts before” (Page 92). It shows how some people have it so nice that they don’t realize that not everybody has it that well. In the withering of the “American Dream” we find people who don’t treat what they have well, and are not thankful for what they have. Just the way Gatsby was throwing away his super expensive shirts and didn’t think twice about it. Daisy was literally shedding tears of the beauty of what he

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