It becomes apparent that Gatsby had been trying to obtain his dream for a long time. When Nick meets Gatsby’s father Mr Gatz, he shows him a ‘schedule’ that Gatsby had made ‘when he was just a boy’ at the back of one of his books. Gatsby’s timetable mirrors that of Benjamin Franklin’s, who is a self-made and self-sufficient man who embodies the American Dream. However, there is a contrast, as Franklin’s timetable is about accepting oneself, but bettering, as at the end of everyday he would reflect ‘what good’ he has done. Whereas Gatsby’s is about re-inventing himself as he sets time to ‘practice elocution, poise and how to attain it’. He never takes time to reflect, perhaps because of a fear that he has achieved nothing. However, Gatsby’s timetable does show his aspirations and desires and the fact that he idolised one of America’s ‘founding fathers’. When Nick reads this time table, Gatsby is certainly a self-made man. He has literally made himself out of ‘his platonic conception of himself’. However, Fitzgerald seems to suggest in the novel that to achieve the dream is an impossibility as too many people have already got there. It seems hard work is not enough – you have to be corrupt as well. In chapter 6, Nick reveals more about Gatsby’s past, his humble origins and his time with Dan Cody. It becomes apparent that Gatsby transformed himself from a humble Midwestern boy to an East Coast celebrity. James Gatz ‘was really, or at least legally, his name’. He had changed it when he was seventeen to the more glamorous Jay Gatsby. His parents ‘were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people’. His real brake came when Dan Cody moored his yacht in the shallows of Lake Superior, and young James Gatz warned him of possible danger from high wind. It was at this point that the new name came into being, to match the beauty and glamour which Cody’s yacht represented to him. Gatsby was rewarded with an education in the ways of the world from this opportunist millionaire, ‘a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five’. However, it was not until he met Daisy Fay that his desire for high status and wealth became stronger than ever before. She had a ‘voice full of money’ and although they were in love, they could not be together due to there different social status’s, for, Daisy was a wealthy Southern girl and Gatsby was a struggling soldier.
Gatsby does achieve the wealth he dreamed about as a youngster, although not totally legitimately as the theme of boot-legging, which was the illegal making and selling of alcohol, comes up several times in the novel. However Gatsby did not completely get the dream. Perhaps Fitzgerald is suggesting that it is impracticable to get the whole dream. In chapter 6, when Gatsby is talking to Nick, Gatsby seems convinced that he can ‘fix everything just the way it was before’. He is talking about simpler times when he and Daisy were young lovers, when he was in love with the dream and when it seemed exciting. Gatsby believed that he would get Daisy when he got the lifestyle she would have wanted. However, when he gets it, it seems disappointing as he got the standard of living he dreamed about, but not the girl, who represented the wealth and status he craved. At this point it seems the only ‘Great’ thing about Gatsby is the ambition and the dream. It seems that Gatsby’s dream was bound to fail as it was not only a dream, but a longing for the past, and for things to be exactly as they are. Although this sounds completely ludicrous to Nick who is much grounded, it seems totally attainable to the fantasist, Gatsby. Further failure of Gatsby’s dream is shown through the lack of people who attend his funeral. This shows that Gatsby was isolated not only after his death, but even at those parties, where he stood apart, simultaneously the host and a detached onlooker.
It is not only Gatsby who possesses a dream in the novel. Myrtle Wilson wants to escape from her mundane life at the garage, whereas Daisy Buchannan shows an absence of a dream. The Wilson’s live at their place of work. This indicates that they have lower social standing than the very rich in the novel that do not seem to work at all, and can live where they choose. Fitzgerald is emphasising that America, despite claims to democratic equality, is a society divided into a number of social classes. In chapter 2, Tom introduces Nick to his mistress, Myrtle Wilson and they go to an apartment in New York where a small party takes place. On this trip to the city Myrtle buys various items, which makes it seem as though she is, in a sense, being bought by Tom Buchannan. He buys her gifts including a dog as a pet, but Tom views his relationship to Myrtle as a physical affair rather than an emotional commitment. It is at this party, we see Myrtle’s eagerness to have the same social status as Daisy. Daisy seems to have an lack of dream, the first time Nick sees her she seems to be a dream-like figure, with her dress ‘rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house’. It appears that the point of Daisy’s existence is to ‘flutter’ around and she seems perfectly content with the lifestyle that Tom has provided her with.
Tennessee Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ main theme is that of desire. The theme dominates the play and s contained in its arresting and memorable title. Blanche Dubois’s, dream can be compared to Gatsby’s as she is living in the past and desperate to hold in to what she had. This came be see in the first scene, when her appearance is described as ‘incongruous’ to the setting. She seems unable to accept that that wealth her family once had has been lost. Both Gatsby and Blanche do not realise that it is impossible to retrieve the past and have everything as it once was.
In John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’, George and Lenny’s dream is to be able to ‘live off the fatta the land’, this is the most important dream of the character’s in the novel. Having their own land would enable them to have protection from an inhospitable world; this dream represents a prototypical American ideal. Their journey, which awakens George to the impossibility of this dream, sadly proves that Crooks is right that ‘such paradises of freedom, contentment, and safety are not to be found in this world’.
Fitzgerald said that ‘America’s greatest promise is that something is going to happen, and after a while you get tired because nothing happens to people except they grow old’. Although it seems that authors of American literature are anti the American Dream, it is probable that they are not pessimistic at all, except they are stating the importance of knowing the difference between truth and illusion that the past is impossible to retrieve, that in fact there is nothing wrong with having dreams and aspirations, but as Boorstin said, ‘the dream is to be reached for and not to be lived in’.
