The Great Gatsby-The American Dream

The Great Gatsby

The American Dream

Like every pen has a writer, every novel has a theme. Arthur Miller, one of the most famous writer’s of America once stated, “The American dream is the largely acknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out. Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American dream as an ironic pole of his history. People tend to accept, to a far greater degree that the conditions of life are a hostile man’s pretension.” This proves to be very true for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby”. The novel is about Gatsby, but like any other novel, it also has themes. A theme is the main idea that a literature is based on. In this novel, the most important theme is based on dreams. In particular, the dream is the “American Dream.”

In “The Great Gatsby”, not only is the main character, Gatsby, a great dreamer but so are the other characters. This is understandable because as quoted by Arthur Miller, the “American Dream” is the “unacknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out.” According to the dream, everyone in American has the opportunity – if they work hard and are determined – to reach any goal they strive for. Gatsby rising from nothing to “greatness” embodies that dream. His dream and accomplishment of creating a new identity for himself and striving to make the world accommodate to his dream is an epitome of the greater American dream of becoming of a new person in the new world. The greater American dream is explicitly mentioned at the end of the book. “And as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailor’s eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last greatest of all human dreams…” (Fitzgerald, S. 171).

This is a preview of the whole essay

What Fitzgerald tries to tackles concerning the “American Dream” is that it has become corrupt and Fitzgerald uses Gatsby and other characters to show this corruption. The main characters, Gatsby, Daisy, Nick, and Tom, each work for their own Dream. For Gatsby, we read that dreaming is not an escape from life but a way to apprehend life and Nick associates Gatsby’s dream when he is younger with “a heightened sensitivity to the promise of life.” But the corruption of the “American Dream” has made Gatsby think money is the answer to his dream, specifically that he can win Daisy and become her ideal through money. Nick states that “…Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor” (Fitzgerald, S. 83). But Gatsby’s money and as a result his dream, was not acquired through honest and hard work; the original idea of how the “American Dream” should be reached. The “American Dream” now had an added belief that striving for one’s dream can be through illegal methods and that is what Gatsby ends up doing. Because the American Dream is corrupt when Gatsby eventually reaches his dream, the result leads only to disappointment and eventual death. Another main character Fitzgerald uses for the theme of dreams and the “American Dream” is Daisy. Daisy does have a dream. Daisy wants love but can’t get it and doesn’t choose it because she fears losing the wealth and popularity she loves and has with Tom. She knows that Tom has affairs and it makes her sad and insecure but she ignores it. She has her chance to acquire her dream when Gatsby comes along and gives her a chance to love and be loved, but her dream of keeping the rich lifestyle stops her from expressing her love for Gatsby openly and she leaves Gatsby who is tragically murdered because of her and her husband. Daisy is like her husband, Tom, but she has a meaningful dream and could’ve had it she but was too afraid to because of the corruptness of the “American Dream” that believed everything was about money.

Two other themes in “The Great Gatsby” are time and honesty and though they are the less important themes in the novel, they connect to the theme of the “American Dream”. Gatsby’s dream is in itself partially destroyed because Gatsby does not accept that the past is gone. He lives in the past when he goes to where he first met Daisy in Louisville, and searches for her and leaves feeling that if he had searched harder, he might have found her – that he was leaving her behind (Fitzgerald, S. 145). Nick tells him that he shouldn’t ask much of Daisy, who has been married for 5 years and has a kid, and he insists that one can’t repeat the past, especially in such a case. Gatsby’s response is, “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!…I’m going to fix everything just the way it were before. …She’ll see” (Fitzgerald, S. 106). The fact that Gatsby goes to the past and wants to recreate the past is not surprising because the “American Dream” does have this tendency to make those who strive for it to emphasis the past and project it into the present and future. In the end, Nick’s last comment on Gatsby’s dream relates to time again, by saying “…He (Gatsby) had come a long way… and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did now that it was already behind him…. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out arms further … and one fine morning -- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald, S. 171).

The other theme referred to in this novel is that of honesty. Honesty is something that has been referred to many times throughout the book including Nick’s claim to honesty, Jordan’s cheating habits, Daisy’ inventions of stories and the list goes on. However, it has specifically been referred to with Gatsby’s dream because Gatsby is honest. For Gatsby, honesty means being true to his dream and which he is throughout the book. Gatsby is so focused on being honest toward his dream that he doesn’t know or care that others see him as dishonest. He is engaged in illegal activities and lies shamelessly about his past but when it comes to his dream he is honest and it is the people and world around him that are corrupt. When Nick comments on Daisy and Tom who are responsible for his death, he says, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….” (Fitzgerald, S. 170). Considering that Nick sees the end conflict of the story he is telling being the, “incorruptible dream and the foul dust that flouted in its wake” and his last comment to Gatsby before his death, “They’re a rotten crowd. You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together” (Fitzgerald, S. 146), it makes perfect sense.

It is safe to conclude that in “The Great Gatsby”, the main theme is about dreams, particularly the “American Dream.” Even so, it proves to be more important than the theme of time and honesty, which are merely connections to the original and main theme. As mentioned and explained in the essay, the “American Dream” as the main theme is not a surprising decision as it accomplishes what was mentioned at the before: the “American Dream” once again became the “unacknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out.”