In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald shows the corruption of the America Dream in 1920s America. With reference to appropriately selected parts of the novel, and relevant external contextual information on the nature of the American Dream, give your response to the above view.

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In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald shows the corruption of the America Dream in 1920s America. With reference to appropriately selected parts of the novel, and relevant external contextual information on the nature of the American Dream, give your response to the above view.

The American Dream was aptly summarised by James Truslow Adams: “a better, richer and happier life for all our citizens of every rank, which is the greatest contribution we have made to the thought and welfare of the world.” The American Dream promised fresh new beginnings, a classless society and a land of wealth and opportunity for all. This was the ideal behind the affluent society of 1920s America. However, in The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald clearly presents a thorough corruption of the American Dream. To quote Bernie Sanders, “For many, the American Dream has become a nightmare.” In examining the corruption of the dream, a good place to start is the class divide.

Fitzgerald paints a clear picture of a society that is deeply divided by class. Even the upper class is divided amongst itself; Nick inhabits West Egg along with ‘new-money’ people such as Gatsby, whereas East Egg is inhabited by those with ‘old money’ such as the Buchanans. Nick describes a, “bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.”  However, the greatest example of a class divide stems from the intense poverty of the Valley of Ashes. Fitzgerald deliberately places this after the extravagance of chapter one in order to have maximum impact on the reader. We are presented with an area that bears closer resemblance to the slums of the third world rather than an economically thriving western nation such as America. It is described as, “a certain desolate area of land,” and, “the solemn dumping ground.” The American Dream was supposed to guarantee equality for all, yet these divides suggest the dream has been thoroughly corrupted.

Fitzgerald presents what is one of the major drawbacks of capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth. In the 1920s, prior to the Great Depression, the distribution of wealth was uneven due to most of the money going to America's rich and not being evenly distributed to everyone in the United States. This type of distribution meant a gradual decline in the people's spending power. The top 1 percent of Americans each had a wealth equal to the bottom 42 percent combined. That same 1 percent controlled 34 percent of all savings. Mary Elizabeth Lease wrote, “Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.” We see this through characters such as George Wilson, who struggles to make a living in a world of rampant capitalism. This is not a society that promises its people wealth and equality. Instead, it is a brutal society where the number of figures on your salary defines your worth as a human being, a true corruption of the American dream.

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Further support for the proposition that Fitzgerald presents a corrupted vision of the American dream can be found through the clear abandonment of traditional morality from most of the characters. There is a myriad of extra-marital affairs and rampant dishonesty, such as Jordan: "She was incurably dishonest."  Nick describes a time when they went to a party together and "she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied about it." Traditional religious values have been disregarded and replaced by the god of materialism, as illustrated by George: “he was looking at the eyes ...

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