The American dream is to work hard and achieve your dreams, or to get rich and live comfortably. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby was very poor and wanted to be with Daisy. Daisy and Gatsby were in love but Daisy could not be with him. Gatsby was poor and Daisy was rich and in that time period it was not acceptable to the parents to marry lower than your class. Gatsby worked hard to achieve his dream.
just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had. "(Fitzgerald 1) Gatsby didn’t have help from others growing up, and learned his way through life. Once he managed to succeed in life, he intended on getting back the attention he once had from Daisy, the great love of his life. He carries hope throughout the entire book for their split to come back together. Tom Buchanan on the other hand, Daisy’s husband is a very wealthy man but selfish indeed.
He originally came from North Dakota, where he lacked money, connections, and most importantly, education. When Gatsby moves to New York, he “reinvents” himself according to what he thinks will win the love of his life, Daisy, back. Although Gatsby is able to gain the wealth in which the society demands, he still has innocence about him. To Gatsby, the money and social status is just a façade. Gatsby ‘s entire fortune, and his entire life, are created around his hopes in gaining back Daisy’s love.
‘I did not know where I stood on so many issues of consequence; I lacked a stable core. I was not certain where I belonged… my own identity is so fragile’ During his time at Princeton changez adopted a persona which he believed would make him fit in, but there is still something that actually set him apart from the Princeton peers. In pretending to be a young prince while surreptitiously supporting himself with three jobs he had begun the process of transforming himself. He admitted he was well liked an ‘exotic acquaintance’ but in his desire to makes a life for himself in America he did not recognize the danger in subjugating his true self. Moreover the readers cannot be convinced that he had acceptance he believe he fit in.
Gatsby: Did He Work Towards the Right Goals? “Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us.” ― Louisa May Alcott, Little Men. This quote begs the question of why Daisy Buchannan’s love wasn’t enough for Jay Gatsby. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald connects his characters to how American business works and makes his readers question what they find important.
Charles Foster Kane, publisher of the New York inquirer and numerous other papers, and one of the richest men in the world, influenced America’s thinking for half a century. However, Kane is flawed, self-serving, destructive opportunist, a classic tragic figure doomed to fall. Because he had lots of money, Kane believed he could buy anything including the friendship and love. Message is simple: success, power, riches cannot replace love and tranquility. Many people walked out on Kane’s life: first wife Emily, the best friend Leland, and second wife Susan.
Social mobility – it is the primary effect of the American Dream, which itself is an idea that seems simple, but is strangely hard to define. At the root of it, is the sense of a society’s greed for success obtained by hard work, honesty, and modesty. If in fact this Dream were in the reach of anybody, then society would exist as a community where "all men are created equal" and everyone would have the opportunity of social mobility by doing the best for themselves as they could. But the reality of American society is cruel. A once high, mighty, and pure ideal has become degraded and buried by the merciless greed for money.
Surviving Success To become an American success a person has to have the perfect life of money, luxury, family and work in the pre-civil war era; after the civil war people suddenly found that the people who had the best lives were the people who were the happiest. Not everyone looked upon happiness as being successful, but for most American’s happiness became more important than money or social standing like with Edna in The Awakening, the outcasts in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and even Rosicky in “Neighbor Rosicky,” though not all of them were successful in their attempts. The American success story has become mixed up in so many different representations that one definite success
The American dream has always been a driving force in the lives of Americans. The need for a better life through hard work and perseverance, something no one but the hard working American understood. The dream also embodies the idea of a self-sufficient man, an entrepreneur making it successful for himself through hard work. The characters in F.Scott Fitzgeralds novel The Great Gatsby do not follow the path of righteousness and honest labour to achieve the dream. Instead they inherited, cheated and participated in illegal dealings to achieve the wealth they now have and a false sense of achievement of the American dream.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald The American Dream before World War 1 was about moral values and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, the War led to an economic boom in which people bought materialistic items they would have never bought before. This caused the dream to decay and people started to believe that worldly pleasures, money and ultimately, greed was above everything else. With this economic boom, any person of any social class could become wealthy. Jay Gatsby’s need to climb the social ladder and become the romantic hero for his lost lover shows the need of wealth for people in this era.