The death of the american dream in the great gatsby by f scott fitzgerald

Historical context[ edit ] Set on the prosperous Long Island ofThe Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of America during the Roaring Twenties within its fictional narrative. That era, known for widespread economic prosperity, the development of jazz music, flapper culture, new technologies in communication motion pictures, broadcast radio, recorded music forging a genuine mass culture, and bootleggingalong with other criminal activity, is plausibly depicted in Fitzgerald's novel.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

Scott Fitzgerald manages to define, praise, and condemn what is known as the American Dream in his most successful novel, The Great Gatsby.

The novel is set inand it depicts the American Dream--and its demise--through the use of literary devices and symbols. One literary device he uses to depict the American Dream is motif; one motif is geography as represented by East and West Egg. West Egg is where the "new rich" live, those who have made a lot of money by being entrepreneurial or criminal in the years after World War I ended.

It is as if they do not quite know what to do with their newly earned riches and therefore try to "copy" what they perceive to be the possessions and manners of the rich.

This is a clear condemnation of the excessive materialism which was the result of pursuing the American Dream. On the other hand, East Egg is filled with those who have always had money. While they do look like they have class, dignity, and manners things lacking in West-Eggersthey are no better in their excesses than their newly rich neighbors.

The clear message seems to be that the result of the American Dream--wealth--causes destruction. This is a highly symbolic novel, and Fitzgerald uses symbols to represent various aspects of the American Dream.

The first is the Valley of Ashes, a place which depicts the consequences of the self-absorption of the rich. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

One of the results of this representative carelessness is the Valley of Ashes. The rich have made their money on industry and carelessly tossed the waste, resulting in this gray, poverty-stricken stretch of land.

The people and the place matter not at all to those who selfishly left their waste for others to live in and deal with, another consequence of the American Dream, according to Fitzgerald.

When he was poor, Daisy could not marry him, so he worked hard and achieved the epitome of the American Dream. He literally recreated himself from virtually nothing, he made a lot of money through illegal means, though no one seems to care much about thatand he surrounded himself with the material possessions which he thinks will entice Daisy to be with him.

Nick philosophically compares the green light to the Pilgrims seeing America for the first time. The dream soon dies, however.

But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.The Great Gatsby and the American Dream - Introduction F.

Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby”, is one of the few novels he wrote in lausannecongress2018.com presents F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of 'The Great Gatsby,' who is as famous for his turbulent personal life as his brilliant novels and stories. Modern Classics the Great Gatsby (Penguin F.

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Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything.

The Great American Story has no end. What Fitzgerald wrote about lives today as fake and meretricious as it did in the time he recognized it. Only the industry of the culprits has changed into the platonic images of the American Dream; our time is . Early Years. September 24, marks the birth date of F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the foremost twentieth century American writers. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, young Scott was christened Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, in honor of his second cousin three times removed, Francis Scott Key, the author of the National Anthem. At a Glance. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicles the death of the American lausannecongress2018.com main character, Jay Gatsby, personifies the American dream, being a self-made man who pulled.

Everybody who is anybody is seen at his . A summary of Chapter 9 in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of The Great Gatsby and what it means.

Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans. Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman are both American men in pursuit of the American Dream .

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the spirited main character, Jay Gatsby is corrupted in his pursuit of the ‘American Dream’. The Great Gatsby is set to illustrate the roaring 20s, a period in which young men and women pursued a freer lifestyle.