The American Dream.

        In contrast to Gatsby’s luxurious lifestyle to lack of taste, Daisy and Tom represent the old aristocracy.  “She was dressed to play golf and I remember thinking she looked like a good illustration”(185).  Nick’s description of Daisy’s attire helps to emphasize her ability to appear “naturally rich.”  Mr. Gatz is a contrast to the “old rich” as “His pride in his son and in his son’s possessions was continually increasing and now he had something to show me”(180).  His eagerness to show off his possessions is an example of his social status.  Mr. Gatz is not used to having the luxurious lifestyle, but he is now in company with Daisy and Tom who find annoyance in hearing about what he has.  “I think [Gatsby] revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes”(96, 97).  Gatsby's extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy.  Daisy is not impressed with material things, for she is also very wealthy and lives luxuriously.  Rather than having Daisy over to his mansion, Gatsby asks Nick if “he could ‘come over’ some afternoon to a stranger’s garden”(83).  Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection.  Through old-fashioned conversation and charm he wins her heart.

        Also, through the experiences of Nick Carraway, the disintegration of the American dream is revealed.  “That's my Middle West … the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark…. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all”(184).  The East is associated with a fast-paced lifestyle, decadent parties, crumbling moral values, and the pursuit of wealth, while the West and the Midwest are associated with more traditional moral values. “Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life”(184).  In this moment, Nick realizes for the first time that though his story is set on the East Coast, the western character of his acquaintances is the source of the story's tensions and attitudes.  Nick is also Daisy's cousin, which enables him to observe and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby.  Nick states that there is a “quality of distortion” to life in New York, and this lifestyle often makes him seem to lose his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsby's party.  Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by stronger and more traditional moral values.

        On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope.  It portrays the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.  As Fitzgerald sees it the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast.