Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Professor Crum
English 100
12/12/2018
The Great Gatsby has long been seen as one of the best pieces of literature written in a
long time. Today we use it in many schools and most use the theme “ The American Dream”.
Most people in our times picture the typical American dream a certain way but Fitzgerald
portrays it in a harsh way insinuating that people who don’t come from money rarely achieve
Take Gatsby as an example although he had money, he wasn’t able to achieve his dream
because his lack of social class made him susceptible to failure among those born rich. “ Gatsby
symbolizes both the corrupted Dream and the original uncorrupted Dream”. Gatsby was not born
rich and even when he was set to inherit money, he was cheated out of it so in order for him to
get money to try to win the love of his life back he had to do shady things to become rich. He
was considered “New” money. Even then it took him three years to save up to buy his dream
house when Daisy and Tom just bought it and began renovating it, they didn’t need to save up.
Tom and Daisy are known as “old” money, they come from a high social class family
where marrying someone else who is rich was the only acceptable thing. Although both Tom and
Daisy have had problems in their marriage, mostly from Tom cheating, they have still managed
to stay together. Tom is the definition of the “macho” man who works and takes care of his
family while his wife, in this case Daisy, stays at home taking care of the child. "They're such
beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've
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never seen such—such beautiful shirts before." Daisy is very materialistic which makes her
American dream about money and what other people think. She falls in love with Gatsby even
more because he’s rich which makes her want to be with him but when it came down to tell tom
about leaving him, she couldn’t because she was afraid about what people were going to think.
Tom is just like Daisy when it comes to what other people will think and he is also very
into money. Since they are rich, they have never learned to take responsibility for their
consequences therefore when Gatsby died, they just packed up, bought a new house somewhere
else and pretended nothing ever happened. This goes to show that people with money can live
their dream and if they encounter obstacles, they just flash some money around and make them
disappear.
Jordan also comes from “old” money, but she is not as rich as Daisy and Tom, that
doesn’t stop her from using her wealthy and social class to her advantage. She cheated in order to
win her tournament and she knows it helped her achieve her dreams, but she doesn’t mind even
though she cheated someone who was supposed to win fair and square. Fitzgerald uses Jordan to
portray the American dream as being able to be bought by people who have the money but also
social connections, social connections being something Gatsby was not born with therefore being
Nick, the humblest character, was in the middle. He was not poor, but he was not rich, he
came from “old” money but wasn’t raised like Tom, Jordan or Daisy. His American Dream was
to work and gain his own money. It is unclear whether or not he ever achieved his dream but the
little that was known is that since he had social connection and came from money he was most
likely to succeed.
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not come from money like Gatsby and for those who do, it will come easily to them. Although
Gatsby had money Fitzgerald is trying to also convey that money will not buy your dream, it
takes two things: Money and Social Class. Social class can’t be bought you have to be born into
Works Cited
Banach, Jennifer. "F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American Dream." Critical Insights: Fitzgerald, F. Scott,
Damon, William. "American dreams and visions." Hoover Digest, no. 2, 2014, p. 160+.
http://link.galegroup.com.cerritoscoll.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A373680595/OVIC?u=cerritos&sid
Marshall, Donald G. "Great Gatsby, The." World Book Advanced, World Book, 2018,
Roberts, Marilyn. "Scarface, The Great Gatsby, and the American Dream." Literature-Film
http://link.galegroup.com.cerritoscoll.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A143618074/GLS?u=cerritos&sid=
Stocks, Claire. "'All men are [not] created equal': F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Claire
Stocks illustrates how the narrator's bias towards this novel's hero is central to the critique of belief in the
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'American Dream'." The English Review, vol. 17, no. 3, 2007, p. 9+. Literature Resource Center,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A158832066/GLS?u=cerritos&sid=GLS&xid=b7f96bec. Accessed 3
Dec. 2018.