The Great Gatsby and the American Dream in the Jazz Age

The Great Gatsby is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald and was published in 1925. It tells a
tragic story about Jay Gatsby (a self-made millionaire) and his chase after Daisy Buchanan.
The book has often been called the Great American Novel. After I read the book there were
some things which concerned me. Is the American Dream a stable, livable thing? What the
illusion and what is the reality in the story? How does the Jazz Age effect on the novel?

Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and he was stationed at Camp Sheridan. He fell
in love with Zelda Sayre while he was in Montgomery. Zelda after a long time agreed to
marry him, but her eagerness for wealth made her delay their wedding until Fitzgerald could
prove his success. When the This Side of Paradise was published in 1920, Fitzgerald become
famous. With a celebrity made him to fell into a reckless life-style of parties, and he
desperately tried to please and convince Zelda to marry him.

Many of these events appear in The Great Gatsby. Nick Carraway is a young man
from Minnesota, who studied at Yale (in Fitzgerald case, Ivy League school), and then moves
to New York after the World War I. Jay Gatsby admires wealth and luxury and falls in love
with a pretty, young woman, through the time he was stationed at a military camp in the South
(similar like Fitzgerald). Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle attractive (like Nick in the book)
and, like Gatsby, he idolized the rich class. The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s endeavor
to confront his opposing feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by
his love for a young, beautiful woman.

The Great Gatsby was written during of prohibition, a period of moral decay and
chaos. The novel deals with the American Dream and identifies it as an illusion (also this is
why Gatsby, Myrtle and George Wilson died). As Fitzgerald saw it, the American dream was
about discovery, individualism, and the chase of happiness. He symbolizes Gatsby as a
representation of the American Dream however, as the book progresses, we learn that Gatsby
himself comes from a corrupted background and in this case his ‘dream’ is winning Daisy.
Gatsby, Myrtle and George Wilson were trying to live in an illusional life which is why they
died when they were not suit in the reality. The various social climbers and ambitious
speculators who showed up at Gatsby’s parties is the evidence of the rapacious struggle for
wealth. The clash between “old money” and “new money” express itself in the novel’s
symbolic geography: East Egg represents the aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. People
like Daisy and Tom continued living because they could make difference between dreams and
reality. For example; Daisy chooses Tom over Gatsby during their debate in New York as she
knows “you can't repeat the past,”. Fitzgerald aims to emphasize on how distant the American
Dream is and with the tragic ending of Gatsby’s death, he predicts the death of the American
dream. My first question at the end of the story was “Was Gatsby’s worth it with all the effort
he put in?”. Well in my opinion no, it was not worth it. The main thing which shows us that is
the end of the novel (including the deaths of Myrtle, Gatsby and George) and how all Gatsby's
achievements are for nothing, as evidenced by the number of attendants of his funeral. After
all, the characters who dreamed about a better life end up dead, and the ones who were born
into a wealthier life with money and privilege get to keep live their life without any
consequence. So, is there any chance that the less-privileged people can work their way up?

The decade of the 1920s is often called the Jazz Age. Jelly Roll Morton, Count Basie,
and Louis Armstrong brought jazz music close to the audience and made popular. These
musicians were almost always black, and their popularity made a complex political problem
(in these ages in America was still highly segregated). The Great Gatsby reflects on these
racist attitudes of the 1920s. The white, rich characters listen to jazz music but do not
socialize with the black musicians/citizens. Fitzgerald shows conflicting ideas about the
possibility of social change in America. Gatsby’s success shows that the people gain
independence, rights. Daisy and Tom, born into the wealthy elite, and suffer no losses at the
end of the story. Only Gatsby, Myrtle, and George Wilson (the characters born into poverty)
who suffer.

At last I would like end my paper with a quote from the book; “So we beat on, boats
against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,”.

There were 2 adaptations about the book, one in 1974 and the other in 2013.
 Sources

https://medium.com/@sashinirodrigo/the-great-gatsby-a-tale-of-modernist-mourning-
a466f342b716

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gatsby/point-of-view/

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gatsby/themes/page/2/

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gatsby/movie-adaptations/