Imperfect Dream

Money alone doesn’t solve all problems. It doesn’t bring infinite happiness. It doesn’t bring togetherness with friends and family. It just gets you material wealth and a reputation for having money. The American Dream is not solely to gain loads of money with your new opportunities, it’s to be able to have a family and strong social network that you then have the ability to support without worrying about the next paycheck. The Great Gatsby portrays an American Dream that has become distorted and unrealistic. While Gatsby himself has forgotten the important parts of the dream. 

Gatsby has not fulfilled the American Dream in its entirety. He may have succeeded in obtaining massive amounts of wealth through his devious bootlegging business, but he ended up all alone. The only people to show up to his funeral were his father, who Gatsby hadn’t talked to in years, a random man who had shown up to a previous party, and, a friend he had just met that summer. That friend, Nick, recalls memories that portray a much more perfect success with the American Dream. “One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and late from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or- That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: ‘are you going to the Ordways’? The Herseys’? The Schultzes’? And the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.” (Fitzgerald 175). Nick’s recollection of his time traveling home in the West showcases an American Dream that had been much more successful and led to his success. You can feel the vivid joy in Nick as he’s going home with his descriptions of the ‘murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate’ as well as the cheerful goodbyes and invitations. His family had succeeded in achieving wealth and so there was no worry about the next meal in Nick which left him free to enjoy his surroundings and time with his friends. It brings me back to my own memories of farewells followed by Christmas memories while roasting next to the fire with my family. In our story, however, we see the perspective of two characters who were lucky enough to have the wealth associated with the American Dream, allowing them to have their own special times.

Is the American Dream always possible? Can you truly “pull yourself up from your bootstraps”? It may depend on your background as it appears some groups start out at a disadvantage. “Prior research has shown that immigrants who start out earning less than their US-born peers are unlikely to catch up in their lifetimes.” (Narea 2019). On top of this, it has been shown that your family’s socioeconomic status tends to decrease your chances of financial success. This means that your chances of achieving the financial aspect of the American Dream are significantly lower if you do not come from wealth. However, it does appear that the chances of your children achieving financial success and perhaps enough money to be considered as having new money are not out the window. “But the new study shows that even if immigrants start out with low-income levels, most are not only catching up eventually but surpassing their US-born peers – even if it takes a generation.” (Narea 2019). The focus on wealth in The Great Gatsby has an effect on the American Dream.

The Great Gatsby has twisted the goal of the American Dream. Rather than a focus on building a family and enjoying life, it has taken on a materialistic view. “He presents all this as a perversion of the American Dream, which traditionally has had to do with freedom, opportunity, space to build a life, but which has been replaced by grasping win-at-all costs materialism.” (Foster 146). The characters in The Great Gatsby have gained a vast amount of wealth however not one of them seems satisfied with their life. Daisy is abused by Tom and now loves him more for the money and status, Gatsby’s only purpose has just become the goal of getting Daisy who he has fantasized about, Tom cheats on his wife, and Nick is disgusted by most of his friends in New York. The boom in money at the time had affected everyone, even Fitzgerald, especially in cities like New York. If your only goal is to greedily obtain wealth, you lose your purpose once you’ve obtained it. “I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.” (Fitzgerald 176). The transformed idea of the American Dream in this novel has changed the personalities of its characters and has left the idea of the American Dream disfigured. 

The Great Gatsby provides a modified form of the American Dream that reflects the lust for money at the time. Nick’s recollection of his time in the West provides a much more accurate view of the American Dream from its original sense, that Gatsby did not manage to achieve. While we saw Gatsby with his new money because of the characters in the book, it is easy to forget that the American Dream from this book’s perspective of achieving wealth is often not possible and many people start from a severe disadvantage. Just like the book has twisted the goal of the American Dream, the American Dream as seen in The Great Gatsby has twisted the personality of its characters into something less palatable by our morals. 

Citations:

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner, 2004. 

Foster, Thomas. Twenty-five Books That Shaped America, 2011

Narea, N. (2019, November 1). A new study shows that even the poorest immigrants lift themselves up within a generation. Vox. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/1/20942642/study-paper-american-dream-economic-mobility-immigrant-income-boustan-abramitzky-jacome-perez