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Everyone has dreams of being rich and owning a lavish house with maids, butlers, and chauffeurs. This happens to be the American Dream. The dream of making it in society and fitting in with a higher class of people has always been at least some Americans dream. F. Scott Fitzgeralds book, The Great Gatsby, describes the failure of this dream. The antagonist and / or protagonist, Jay Gatsby finds out that social discrimination and the divisions among classes cannot be overcome.
Gatsby's dream is just like every Americans dream only Gatsby turned his dream into reality. Gatsby isnt the only character that tries to overcome the class division. Myrtle, the weaker version of Gatsby, also tries to overcome the same class division. At the end of the novel, Nick recalls the Dutch sailors and compares their sense of wonder with Gatsby's hope: I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors eyes fresh, green breast of the new world. And, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. Both the sailor and Gatsby's wonder and hope deal with the color green as a sign of money and prosperity.
The failure of the American dream is due partially to the corruption of values and decline of spiritual life. For example, the lives of the Buchanan's are filled with material luxuries of an empty purpose. Fitzgeralds lament of Daisy proves the point of the decline of spiritual life when Daisy says, What we do with ourselves this afternoon? cried Daisy, and the day after that and thirty years?
Myrtles desire for the dream is from social ambitions. Taking advantage of her lively nature, she seeks to escape from her own class. She enters into an affair with Tom and takes on his way of living. She becomes vulgar and corrupt like the rich, but not rich. She scorns people from her own class and loses all sense of morality. And for all her social ambition, Myrtle never succeeds in her attempt to find a place for herself in Tom's class.
When it comes to a crisis, the rich stand together against all outsiders. Gatsby's struggle is based, unlike Myrtle, on idealism. His desire for achieving the dream is also influenced by social considerations; Daisy, who is wealthy and beautiful, represents a way of life, which is remote from Gatsby's and therefore more attractive because it is out of reach. Social consciousness is not a basic cause. It merely directs and increases Gatsby's belief in life's possibilities.
Like Myrtle, Gatsby struggles to fit himself into another social group, but his attempt is more urgent because his whole faith in life is involved in it. Failure is fatal for him. His whole career, his confidence in himself and in life is totally shattered when he fails to win Daisy. His death, when it comes, is almost insignificant compared with the collapse of his dream of winning Daisy over and being upper class. The American dream is based on greed and social standings. Fitzgerald communicates the American dream indirectly but he does base his characters on the American dream.
The American dream is basically the way by which man can feel a sense of involvement, a sense of his own identity by striving towards the impossible.
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Research essay sample on Dutch Sailors American Dream
