THE DREAM

As F. saw it, the American Dream was originally Just like Nick, F. saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part
about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of of him longed for the absent moral centre. In many ways The Great Gatsby represents F’s attempt to confront his
happiness. In the 1920s, however, easy money and conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like G, F. was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized
relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, everything he wanted, even as she led him towards everything he despised.
especially on the East Coast. The main plot of the
novel reflects this assessment, as G’s dream of loving G had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the
Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective tone of society.
social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough …….
money to impress her, and the rampant materialism
that characterizes her lifestyle. The chaos and violence of WWI left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to
wild and extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and time-worn values of the previous decade
Just as Americans have given America meaning were forgotten, as money, opulence and exuberance became the order of the day.
through their dreams for their own lives, so G ……
endows Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection
that she neither deserves nor possesses. The novel is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared,
bringing extremely high levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of
Situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and alcohol mandated by the 18th Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and the underground culture of
barely visible from G’s West Egg lawn, there is a revelry sprang up.
green light, which represents G’s hopes and dreams
for the future. He associates it with Daisy, and at the
beginning of the novel he reaches towards it in the
darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal.
Because G’s quest for Daisy is closely linked with
the American Dream, the green light also symbolizes
that more general ideal. Nick compares the green
light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must
have looked to the early settlers of the lands.

G’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its

object, just as the American Dream in the 1920s is
ruined by the unworthiness of its object – money
and pleasure. Like the 1920s Americans in general,
fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their
dreams had value, G longs to recreate a vanished past
– his time in Louisville with Daisy – but is incapable
of doing that. When his dream crumbles, all that is
left for G to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to
Minnesota, where American values have not yet
decayed.