MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

DIPLOMATIC ACADEMY OF VIETNAM

ENGLISH FACULTY

SUBJECT: AMERICAN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Through the studied chapters of the Great Gatsby, analyze the portrayals
of the upper-class and the pursuit of their American Dream.

Student’s name : Nguyễn Phương Mai

Class : TA46A
Student ID : TA46A-015-1923

HÀ NỘI – 2020

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction……………………………………………………….……...-1-

II. Author, era….……………………………………………………….………...-1-

The life of author F. Scott Fitzgerald…………………………….……...…...-1-

III. The portrayals of the upper-class in The Great Gatsby…….…….…………-2-

1. Tom and Daisy Buchanan……………………………………………………-4-

2. Nick Carraway……………………………………………………………….-4-

3. Jay Gatsby…………………………………………………………………….-5-

IV. The idea of American Dream…………………………………………...……...-5-

1. The formation of American Dream……………………………………..……-5-

2. The theme of American Dream in The Great Gatsby………………………...-7-

V. The corruption of American Dream…………………………..……………….-8-

1. The dream of Jay Gatsby………………………………………………………..…..-8-

1.1 From James Gatz to Jay Gatsby…………………………………………...…-8-

1.2 Jay Gatsby – the biggest representative of the American Dream…….……...-9-

1.3 The collapse of such a dream………………………………………….…….-11-

2. Myrtle Wilson’s American Dream shattered……………………………….……-

12-

3. American dream portrayed through symbolism……………………………..….-

14-

VI. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...-16-

REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………….……..-17-

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I. Introduction
The author F. Scott Fitzgerald is seen as the first modern novelist to deliver the tragic
realization by a close writing manner showing in writing theme and writing
techniques. It is uncomplicated to see that the character Gatsby in The Great Gatsby
(Scott, 1925) is the reflection of the author himself in order to express a desire to
become a true American with the conception that prosperity and social status can
solve every difficulty. However, from experiments and failure, readers witness partly
the reality and sum up the human’s bitterness in the era of loss and everything
collapses. Throughout the view of character Nick Carraway, people figure a fuller
visualization of the character Gatsby who chasing illusions of a glorious future and
determination to fulfill his wild dream. Fitzgerald discovered an obsessed world which
guaranteed by the thriving material value. It is not only a matter of one individual but
a common problem of the times.

The broken American dream was a famous and noticeable theme in American
literature in the 20th century. In some extent, in America there were people who
seeking for leisurely, lavish material life but also experiencing mental chaos and the
downgrade of moral values as exchanges. That being said, despite being a target, a
motivation for people to strive for, American dream was a tragedy of a broken,
helpless human being who found no destination for himself in the world. The
foundation of money or love that American dreamers previously used as a fulcrum to
survive and dominate society would then completely corrupted.

II. Author, era

1. The life of author F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 4, 1896,
to a furniture manufacturer and salesman. He began writing early, scribbling in the
margins of his textbooks and penning adventure stories for the school newspaper.
Though his grades were not good enough to grant him immediate admission into
Princeton, he managed to talk the administration into accepting him on probation.
(Hacht, 2007)

In 1917, however, he interrupted his education to join the army and wrote his first
novel, which the publisher Charles Scribner's Sons praised, but rejected. Fitzgerald
met debutante socialite Zelda Sayre when he was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama.
When the war ended, Fitzgerald, who had never been sent overseas, joined the
advertising business, hoping to make enough money to marry Zelda. Unfortunately,
Zelda called off their engagement, not wanting to settle for life on his meager salary.
A year later in 1919, Fitzgerald worked with an editor at Scribner to publish his first
novel This Side of Paradise (1920). Propelled by the momentum of his new

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 professional writing career, he also sold short stories to popular markets. (Hacht,
2007)

Inspired by Fitzgerald's newfound success, Zelda married Fitzgerald. They had a

tumultuous relationship that produced one daughter, Frances (whom they called
"Scottie"), in 1921. Fitzgerald became an icon of the 1920s, synonymous with both
the carefree wealth of the Jazz Age, personified by his masterpiece The Great Gatsby
(1925), as well as the disaffected American abroad of the Lost Generation, epitomized
by his earlier novel, This Side of Paradise. After Zelda was diagnosed with
schizophrenia in the 1930s, Fitzgerald's star dimmed a bit, and he found himself in
Hollywood writing screenplays to pay the bills. He died of a heart attack at the age of
forty-four on December 21, 1940, with heart, lung, and liver disease from years of
excessive drinking and smoking. (Hacht, 2007)

III. The portrayals of the upper-class in The Great Gatsby

Social class is a critical theme explored in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great

Gatsby. Stereotypes and themes are used along with rich details to portray the
characters of the novel and their differences in social class. The main characters of the
novel were mostly of the upper social classes, however there are significant
differences between them, particularly their behaviours. 
1. Tom and Daisy Buchanan
Tom Buchanan is seen as uppermost class due to his family name and large
inheritance. As a member of the upper-class, Fitzgerald has engaged some
stereotypes to describe this character. For example, Tom is described to possess a
hypocritical, snobbish, and specificially unlikable personality. He believes that he
can not be wrong; that everyone should settle with him, dedicated to him; and that
he should always get his way.
Daisy Buchanan was nurtured in a traditional manner for a daughter of an
exceptionally wealthy, upper class family in the early 1900s. She was taught to act
as though she was stupid, and to marry into a wealthy family to pursue her
American dream; the dream of not having a care in the world. With her marriage to
Tom Buchanan, she realized this dream and live carelessly. “They were careless
people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated
back into their money or their vast carelessness… and let other people clean up the
mess they had made.” (Fitzgerald, 170)

2. Nick Carraway
Likewise, from his family name, Nick inherited his upper-class wealth.  Nick
enjoyes his wealth just like Tom. He says, “I bought a dozen volumes … and they
stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to

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 unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew.”
(Fitzgerald, 10) Contrary to Tom, Nick does not take as much for granted from
possession of money. He says “the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at
eighty a month.” (Fitzgerald, 9) This indicates that, however similar the two men
may be, their difference in social class is shown clearly in their lives.

3. Gatsby
Jay Gatsby was formally James Gatz, born in North Dakota into a poor farming
family, aspired from a young age to take advantage of the American Dream, to
alter his name and advance his social status. He is presented as a rich man,
aspirational, and presumptuous in his early thirties. Despite throwing extravagant
weekly parties with many attendees, but has no friends besides him; no one knows
anything about him or how he became so rich, and he does not tend to share this
information with anyone. When Gatsby dies, at the end of the novel, there are just
two people attending his funeral, Nick Carraway and his father. This indicates the
shallowness that Fitzgerald found in people and how Gatsby was admired for his
wealth but the way that clearly no one cared about him sincerely. This presents the
idea that Gatsby was only accepted by the upper class because they enjoyed his
parties, but that he was never fully acknowledged by them.

Social class is a vital theme throughout the whole novel and is explained and
discovered in a variety of ways.  Even in the song sung by Klipspringer class
stereotypes are portrayed, “One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer; The rich get
richer and the poor get – children.” (Fitzgerald, 92) This demonstrates how wealth
and class are almost unperceivably tangled and how there are stereotypes about the
ability each class has to generate change and live the American dream.
IV. The idea of American Dream
1. The formation of American Dream

The book The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald is set in the context of the
Jazz Age of America in the 1920’s, where the end of the World War I brought a quite
long period of peace and prosperity. Fitzgerald was among one of the first to define
the concept "American dream" according to critic Jeffrey Louis Decker, who noticed
that the term "was not put into print until 1931." In that respect, The Great Gatsby's
underlying narrative marks the birth of a myth, one that shaped the definition of
success for future American society.

So, what is American Dream?

It was declared when the United States was born and became an independent nation
on July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence (US 1776) indicated that “We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
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their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.” The American Dream is actually not portrayed thoroughly
by this statement but a promise that only in the United States can this idea have a
chance to come true, for all those who have the courage to pursue it till the end and
only in America do people have equal opportunity. At the end of their national
anthem, Americans sing that their country is the land of the free and the home of the
brave. Everyone has the rights to make his or her own choice without the obstacles of
their class, caste, religion or even race ethnicity. That being said, life should be great,
richer and be enjoyed to the fullest by everyone according to their opportunities and
achievements.

From the time of independence, America has been seen to become a land of
opportunity where good life can be accomplished no matter what social status but hard
work and straight shooting. Freedom of democracy is allowed thus everyone has a
right to express his or her religion and moral beliefs. The thought that equality was the
in-thing is widespread. American Dream ever since has been flourishing under the
principle of freedom but nowadays, many things have changed in America. It has been
born from a nation of freedom and then moved to a nation of materialism. From the
start, one accomplished his leaving by hard-working which was considered to be an
achievement of financial success but then people seem no longer look into the vision
of the future which includes time, sweat and ultimate success but instead they sit in
their comfort waiting for it to come true. Some even afraid that American values seem
to start to shaky.

Nonetheless, Michael Hout, Professor of Sociology at New York University once said
"A lot of Americans think the U.S. has more social mobility than other western
industrialized countries. This (study using medians instead of averages that
underestimate the range and show fewer stark distinctions between the top and bottom
tiers) makes it abundantly clear that we have less. Your circumstances at birth—
specifically, what your parents do for a living—are an even bigger factor in how far
you get in life than we had previously realized. Generations of Americans considered
the United States to be a land of opportunity." (Hout, 2018). Some people believe that
in the U.S. the degree to which one generation's success depends on their parents'
resources. This opinion seems quite right in The Great Gatsby. While the character
Gatsby didn’t have a prosperous background, he still managed to get rich but it was an
unreliable manner from the illegal business, unlike the stable rich of the “old money”
whose inheritance came from their parents.

In the era when the book was written (1925), the US economy entered the golden age
for the upper class. From 1922 to 1929, stock incomes increased by 108 percent,
corporate profits rose by 76 percent and wages rose by 33 percent. Technological

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 advances and increased productivity have reduced the cost of products, making the
economy grow rapidly.

But its implications are enormous. People are absorbed in enjoyment and forget their
spiritual values, which leads to moral degradation. All-night parties at Gatsby's place,
dancing-girl, wine, smoke, jazz music,… All of this created a colorful picture and the
sounds of a rich but suffocated view. Moreover, these were also the time when
American women thought they were liberated. They smoke, seek out instantaneous
relationships and even affair - all considered as "fashionable". Those things alone are
enough to show how much morality has been despised.

2. The theme of American Dream in The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a classic written by the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald in the
years 1918 - 1929 - the period when the US entered its flourishing development. The
author gave this era an ornate name: The Jazz age, because the jazz songs themselves
somewhat describe reality - seductive but full of confusion, catchy but selective. It
appears at most of the upper-class parties. However, the spirit that the author wants to
deliver is not the flashy before the eyes but the obsession or the dream of money, love,
fame and all of its downsides. After all, the only thing left is oblivion.

The American dream is viewed as idealism: a picture of a perfect life in which

everything one could ever dream of behind a white picket fence. Life behind the fence
is fulfilled, peaceful, and, above all, moral. Having that said, prosperity and success
could be accomplished through hard work and straight shooting. However, from the
characters in The Great Gatsby, we can indicate that in order to reach social and
financial success a person might have to sacrifice his ethics by telling lies, oppressing
others, or breaking laws.

Besides, the book illustrates the tragic cost for the American dream. In the end, both
Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson lose their lives in the pursuit of success, or at least the
appearance of success. For them, the American dream means being able to exchange
their impoverished pasts for the good life. Unfortunately for them, the good life is a
masquerade.

Jay Gatsby is a typical rich man who finds out the hard way that money and
materialistic things cannot fill an individual’s need for happiness. The author
described the corruption of an individual’s American Dream through their blindly
pursuit of wealth and materialistic belongings. While the rest of the world, including
Daisy, pursued overwhelming wealth, favoring the flashy and ephemeral delusions,
Gatsby instead sought the American dream to bring back to Daisy. Till the end, what
he has earned actually never belonged to him.

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V. The corruption of American Dream
1. The dream of Jay Gatsby

Gatsby’s American dream includes his past identity, his obsession about love and his
tragic death.

1.1. From James Gatz to Jay Gatsby

The author F. Scott Fitzgerald joined the army from 1917 to 1919 following the
propaganda about the ideals, glory and fairness of the military uniform. His motive for
becoming a soldier was initially the eagerness to develop military career. However, it
was soon broken by the fact that from the European battlefield to the American
reality, there came major differences causing his faith collapse: the military did not
eliminate his background as well as social status and those who did not belong to the
upper-class were still be looked down on or despised. This frustration later motivated
him to create his most famous novel The Great Gatsby.

In the novel, originally named James Gatz, Jay Gatsby had an impoverished childhood
in rural North Dakota. At the age of 17, James Gatz changed his name to Jay Gatsby
and also during this time he met Dan Cody, a wealthy man who he saved from a
destructive storm and ended up being employed by. Cody directed him to reach his
potential, orientated his future by teaching him the manners of the rich on the yacht.
He was deeply ambitious and determined to be famed and successful. However,
although Dan Cody intended to leave his asset to Gatsby, it ended up being taken by
Cody's mistress Ella Kaye, leaving him with the knowledge and manners of the upper
class, but owned no money to implement and back them up. The past identity of
Gatsby plays an important role in the formation of his American Dream. In Chapter
six, the truth about Gatsby’s past is revealed, uncovering the fact that he has not been
the glorious and rich person we think he is now. “James Gatz of North Dakota” is the
true identity of Gatsby (Fitzgerald 98). With his “parents shiftless and unsuccessful”,
young Gatz’s “imagination [has] never really accepted them as his parents at all” (98).
Thus, “the Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, [springs] from his Platonic
conception of himself” accompanied by his belief of him being “a son of God” (98).

Although Gatsby’s ambition was to be rich, his main motivation in achieving his
property was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in
Louisville before leaving for battle in World War I in 1917. From the beginning,
Daisy’s aura of luxury, grace and charm made Gatsby immediately fell in love with
her, so he lied to her about his background in order to convince her that he was good
enough to take care of her as well as keeping up their romance. Daisy promised to
wait for him during the time he left for the war, but then married Tom Buchanan in

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 1919. Gatsby studied at Oxford after the war in an attempt to gain an education,
despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication but left after five months.

Gatsby gained his fortune through Meyer Wolfsheim, who helped him got into shady
business such as bootlegging and gambling. As a result, Gatsby accrued a large
amount of money in just 3 years. After reaching a level of prosperity, he moved to
West Egg, built an extravagant mansion and a Rolls Royce, and started throwing
luxurious parties and forming a reputation, all with the ambition of meeting Daisy
again. Thereafter, an aspiring bond salesman named Nick Carraway, Daisy's second
cousin, appeared as an element to help Gatsby come closer to his dream: Nick moved
in next door just as the novel begins. Through that connection Gatsby had chances to
reunite with Daisy and pursue the biggest dedication in his life: winning Daisy back.
His acquisition of money to join the elite group, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on
West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties are all merely means to that end.

At this point, readers can realize that the majority of what develop the character
Gatsby is deception. The name Jay Gatsby is portrayed as a means for Gatsby to get
rid of his impoverished background. Although the new name can also be viewed as an
ambition to reach a better life, join the upper-class or a new manner of expressing or
reinvention of himself, we cannot deny the fact that from the from the first time they
met, he lied to Daisy in order to maintain the romance with her. In order words, his
using camouflaged self with Daisy shown his insecurity, but also made him a liar from
the beginning. On the other hand, despite the moral values, Gatsby attended illegal
business so that his individual’s selfish desire is fulfill. He intended to win Daisy back
and ready to be involved in an affair with a married-woman.

1.2. Jay Gatsby – the biggest representative of the American Dream

Gatsby, first revealed to readers through the narrator Nick Carraway, is an extremely
prosperous gentleman living in an over-the-top mansion.

This character is directly affected by the disillusionment of an American dream, but as

an insider, he did not aware of his tragedy. Fitzgerald allowed his character to become
wealthy, but pursuing that rich and the passionate love by all means. Gatsby's
disillusionment was brought about by the society in which full of people Nick called:
"a rotten crowd” and that Gatsby is “worth the whole damn bunch put together."
Gatsby rushed to get rich to look forward to recognition by the upper class. However,
he would never be accepted because at that time, "new money" is considered
ingloriously by the upper class. The money they just have made is just an approach
they use too merch into the upper class so as a consequence, they are despised.
Despite his great efforts, Gatsby still faced loneliness as well as helplessness in
society. In Gatsby's mansion in New York, he organized hundreds of high-class

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parties but most of his guests were tasteless and empty. Gatsby was obsessed with the
love in the past with Daisy, but then she married the billionaire Tom Buchanan.
Gatsby tried to get rich, entered the elite group and shown off his properties only to
regain Daisy but in the end, he couldn’t. However, his ambition was to return to that
delightful moment when he put all of his hopes and dreams on Daisy back in
Louisville, and also to make that past moment his present. It contemporarily means
putting everything to its right direction, what he couldn't accomplish the first time by
winning Daisy over.

Gatsby's obsession with the past was made of the wish of taking control over his own
life and over Daisy, as much as it was about his ideal love. This search for control
could be an expression of being born into a working-class family in America, with a
lack of control over the direction of his own life. Even after managing to get access to
a great amount of money, Gatsby still searched for control over his life one way or
another. Perhaps he assumed that by winning over Daisy, he can finally achieve each
of the dreams he ever imagined at as a young man. His faith for his American Dream
drove him to chase after glory as well as making him obsessed with his insatiable
desire towards the future.

As his relentless desire demonstrated, Gatsby had an incredible ability to transform his
wishes and dreams into reality; at the beginning of the novel, his appearing to the
reader made us thought that he just desired to appear to the world. This talent for self-
invention is what gives Gatsby his quality of “greatness”: indeed, the title “The Great
Gatsby” is resemble to such vaudeville magicians as “The Great Houdini” and “The
Great Blackstone,” suggesting that the persona of Jay Gatsby is a masterful illusion
(Auger, 2015).

Readers can indicate that all of Gatsby acts were to achieve just one purpose: he
determined by all means that getting rich is a must to win his dream girl back. Gatsby
continued to throw lavish parties with the hope of getting attention from Daisy but
failed. It was not accomplished until he met Nick Carraway that he made a plan to ask
Nick to invite Daisy to Nick's house for a small tea party without exposing to anyone
about Gatsby’s attending. As expected, Gatsby was reunited with his dream girl. He
then showed Daisy his huge possession, and after a moment of surprise, the two
quickly cultivated affection.

There’s a fact that Jay Gatsby’s American Dream is not typical wanting of wealth and
success as so many others, instead it is a dream of reclaiming a lost love. Gatsby
surrounded himself by luxurious parties and strangers so-called friends who took
advantage of his wealth and fame. He did all of this with a purpose of not for himself
but for a foolish love formed in the past with Daisy. He did not make money through
honest work but by shady backdoor deals that he made with other criminals. However,

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 through all of this, Gatsby still managed to be a good person at heart as can be seen by
the last time Nick sees Gatsby alive, Nick tells him that “They’re a rotten crowd.
You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together” (Fitzgerald 162).

The American Dream is associated with all other aspects of Gatsby’s life. Gatsby and
Daisy first met when he was just a penniless guy with low social status; low self-
esteem and thought that Daisy would tire to wait for him. He considered his social
position as the main obstacle standing between the two of them. Following up, Gatsby
came up with the ideas on money that it was the only way to win back love and
achieve his dream. He finally managed to achieve the wealth segment but that did not
bring back Daisy. Not giving up, he tried all ways to win her heart, even making
ridiculous purchases like an extravagant mansion to try and show her that he had
climbed the social ladder. At the end of the story, Gatsby was ready to plead guilty to
protect Daisy, knowing that he would have to purchase his lavish life, social position
as well as all things he ever possessed.

1.3. The collapse of such a dream

Admittedly, Daisy was the Holy Grail of Gatsby life, she was his first motivation and
all of his acts from the beginning were to prove that he deserved her. Unfortunate for
Gatsby, his lover not only represented much more than just his dream girl but she was
also the embodiment of the corruption that was present in having all the wealth and
materialistic things that someone could want.

Daisy was aware that she was a beautiful charming creation so she used it to the best
of her ability to secure her lavish lifestyle: “Her voice was “full of money-that was the
inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals” song in it”
(Fitzgerald 127). It can be seen that Daisy was a very cold person with the lack of
compassion for others just as cold hard cash lacks the same (Wulick, 2020). Despite
all of this Gatsby did not let her go with the fact that she is married to another man.
Letting Daisy go would mean giving up his dream and by that his whole life would
have been wasted and meaningless in his eyes. Furthering details that shown Daisy’s
heart of cold and selfish is the event of when daisy hit Myrtle with Gatsby’s car. She
was willing to flee so far as to let Gatsby take the blame for the death of a person. In
addition, this insult when Daisy finds out about Gatsby’s organized crime, she
immediately came back to her cheating corrupted husband. Gatsby didn’t give up on
her all the way up to the point when he was shot and killed in his swimming pool.

On the other hand, Tom and Daisy’s marriage is also telling us about the corruption of
the American Dream. Despite the fact that they have everything they could possibly
want or imagine of but still, they are unhappy. They keep searching for something
more in different places they have traveled to France and drifted “here and there

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 unrestfully wherever people were rich and played polo together” (Fitzgerald 11). Tom
seemed very uninterested in his own life. He missed his old college football days with
all the excitement and praise so he coped with this boredom by cheating on his wife
with Myrtle. Tom is lost to his above-average life because of his obsessive behavior
towards always having more than anyone else. He was described as someone who was
so successful so young that anything else that he did throughout his life would just not
measure up.

Gatsby died with his version of the American Dream, he has lived a life of ambition
and at some points he had already reached success but the one time he tried to get the
one thing that still eluded him. Daisy represents something that the Gatsby lost in the
hand of the destiny. In his mind, all that is left for him to complete his version of the
American Dream is to win the heart of a girl who he loved from the past. He lost her
when he went to the war and despite her families’ reservations to their relationship;
they still managed to enjoy something that was beautiful and strong. When he lost her
to Tom, he restructured his dream into what Tom offered her that he didn’t have. To
that end, everything fell down when Gatsby’s dream vanishes forever into George
Wilson’s gun shot, resonating his death. Nick has said that “Gatsby has paid a high
price for living too long with a single dream”, indicating that Gatsby’s grand vision of
Daisy and his future with her has fallen apart and eventually costs Gatsby his own life.

Like the majority of American, Jay Gatsby had the faith in American Dream. It has
become somewhat of a confused concept and the tricky part is that it means many of
different things to different people. In the most general sense, the American Dream is
about opportunity. People have their own goals and visions, and the American Dream
is about allowing for those desires to appear then come true. When Gatsby finally met
Daisy again, it seems that prosperity could indeed gain anything, but unfortunately,
the promise of American Dream has deserted him once again. Despite all his effort to
win Daisy over, she still refused to leave her husband. Thus, it is the obsession
towards the American Dream that leads to the tragic end of Gatsby.

However, it would seem that Nick Carraway, our narrator, is the only person that was
not corrupted in the story. His concept of the American Dream was that of family and
home. Nick portrayed the opposite of Gatsby in their visions of the American Dream
although that was not always the case seeing as though they both came from similar
backgrounds. Nick moved to the east after World War I and soon found out that the
people there were heartless and cruel. Nick is also a good prospect of what Gatsby
could have become if he had not been destroyed by his hopeless love for Daisy. To
sum up, The Great Gatsby is a perfect illustration of the corruptive nature of money
and humanity on individuals American Dream.

2. Myrtle Wilson’s American Dream shattered

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One could argue that Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a study in the struggle to
achieve the American Dream.

Myrtle found her life with her husband George too common and humble. She believed
that similar to Gatsby, the possessing of a large amount of money will give her a new
identity and, subsequently, a new status in society. She felt powerless when being
Mrs. George Wilson, as if her life was in need of repairing just like the cars in her
husband's shop. But as Tom Buchanan's lover in the city, she saw endless possibility
in the material things; she can dispose a dress easily and acquired another without a
second thought. She can change whenever she liked, traveling from George's rags to
Tom's prosperity on an afternoon train. Their craving for money and social status was
due to the believe that happiness would follow; misery and destruction, however, were
all their wishes achieve. In effect, Gatsby's and Myrtle's deaths show a dark side to
striving to achieve the American dream.

The social criticism embedded in the depiction of the vibrant Myrtle become clearer in
the Callahan’s exploration in his paper “F. Scott Fitzgerald's Evolving American
Dream: The ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ in Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and The Last
Tycoon”. He asks: “What if we were to read Gatsby […] as projections of that
sometime struggle, sometime alliance between property and the pursuit of happiness?”
(Callahan, 1996). This question is related to the character Myrtle that allows us to
consider her accumulation, such as the apartment in the downtown, where “…
crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it, so that
to move about was to stumble continuously over scenes of ladies swinging in the
gardens of Versailles” (Fitzgerald 35) and reflect the conception that, for Myrtle, a
poor working-class man’s wife, happiness may be in the possession of material things.
The affair with Tom allows her to escape the presumably gloomy life with George.
The critique of the consumer hysteria at the time is heightened by the fact that she
lives in the Valley of Ashes, inhabited by “… ash-grey men, who move dimly and
already crumbling through the powdery air” (Fitzgerald 29), and thus knows the cost
of extravagant living. Myrtle’s belief that the material world she is allowed a taste of
through Tom’s company equals happiness, and that this happiness stems not
necessarily from personal fulfilment but rather the accumulation of goods is in many
ways’ representative of the era (Lindberg, 2014).

Myrtle Wilson died because of her dream of a more materialistic and sophisticated
existence. This ending was foreshadowed early in the novel when Myrtle had gone
with Tom and Nick to New York. When she arrives in the city, Myrtle's physical
change reflects her social aspirations: “She had changed her dress to a brown figured
muslin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips…. At the news-stand she
bought a copy of Town Tattle and a moving picture magazine, and in the station drug
store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs in the solemn echoing
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 drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored
with grey upholstery.” Later, in the apartment that Tom and Myrtle use for their trysts,
Nick notes: “Mrs. Wilson … was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of
cream-colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room.
With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The
intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into
impressive hauteur.” Even though she is not one of the main characters in novel, her
attendance is a key factor in the general flow of the plot and in the understanding the
society of consumerism in 1920s and, the most important, for her continuous pursue
of the American Dream (Hodo, 2017).

Myrtle American Dream is to achieve material wealth that would be enough to satisfy
the needs which cannot be completed by her husband’s ability. In order to fulfil that
dream she did whatever it took without thinking about how much she damaged other
people’s lives, especially George’s, her husband. She married him not because she
loved him but her only driving force in life is money and wealth. She looked down on
him when realizing that he did not rich. George was not a rich man; in order to marry
Myrtle, he borrowed his wedding suit to a friend. In the book, she said “The only
crazy I was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed
somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never told me about it, and the man came
after it one says when he was out…” She called herself crazy for involving in a
marriage with a person that could not even afford his wedding costume and viewed it
as a big mistake. It is understandable that her only purpose in life is the material world
and she did not appreciate the struggles of George to be with her. Myrtle involved
herself into immoral actions in order to achieve her biggest dream because she held a
great desire to have a luxury life. It is this dream of becoming rich or taking the taste
of the wealthy material world and luxurious lifestyle that pushed her to start an affair
with Tom due to the fact that Tom was a representative of the society that she wants to
be a part of. Even though being mistreated by Tom, Myrtle still compromised.
Therefore, her American Dream of having a better life and being financially
successful brings the decay of her character. George and Myrtle Wilson passed their
lives on attempts to escape from the struggles of the low class to the comfort of the
upper class. They tried a lot and used the “few” chances life gave to them up to death.
Nevertheless, they could be neither like Buchanans nor like Gatsby.

3. American dream portrayed through symbolism

F. Scott Fitzgerald is recognized for his symbolic writing as he uses symbolism in The
Great Gatsby to represents an accurate reflection of the American life in the 1920’s.
The characters of his book namely Jay Gatsby, Myrtle and George Wilson are the best
symbols that pursuing the dream until the end of their life and failed in its success
because they overvalued materialism and money instead of its pure ideals. Thus, the
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novel is focused on the existence and death of the American dream (Hindus, 1968). It
represents characters that are interested in materialistic life and never get interested in
working hard. It also reflects the contribution and involvement of the characters in the
novel to the failure and downfall of the American Dream. Despite the depiction of the
socio-cultural and economic conditions of 1920s and the same conditions that push
and provoke his characters, he provides the reader with an insight on the psychology
of each of them and “the interior motives which they use to justify their behavior and
actions.” The Dream that everyone seeks in Great Gatsby is being corrupted by his or
her immoral lives and actions.

One of the reasons why Gatsby loves Daisy may be her aristocracy origin. He was not
able to understand that money is not enough to win Daisy’s love. On the other hand,
Tom is as wealthy as Jay but he uses a careful and fine way to show off his fortune.
Gatsby tried to have everything for show such as: the big house, the beautiful
swimming pool and the generous parties. Donaldson (2001) comments upon this:
“The outsized house, together with the lavish parties and the garish clothing, the
automobiles and the aquaplane, represent his attempt to establish himself as
somebody, or at least not nobody.” The sizes of the houses described in the novel are
the main element that indicates the status of someone. The partygoers were striving
for the American dream but they couldn’t realize that Gatsby who had all this fortune
has not achieved yet the real American dream.

The lives of the characters, especially Gatsby, depict the culture of excessive
consumerism and extravagantly wealthy living. They, the people like Gatsby that had
come from the bottom part of the society, needed to settle their position and newly
gained status in the society. In addition, they attempted to gain the respect that the
“old rich” already had achieved that far and the necessary esteem that characterizes
the rich people through the means of displaying their wealth and fortunes and through
the purchases. Besides, the Buchanans family may be the best representation of the
American dream but they are people without dreams, social values and goals in their
life. Everyone is amazed by Tom’s life as far as he is “a national figure in a way, one
of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that
everything afterward savors of anti-climax; His family were enormously wealthy —
even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach — but now he’d
left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away”.

The representations of parties, automobiles and houses resulted in the failure of

Gatsby’s dream (Hodo, 2017). That being said, the sizes of the houses are the main
element that indicates the status of someone. The twenties were the years when the
cars, as a new technology, characterized the high-class Americans. They do not
consider the cars as a way of transportation but as a possibility to exhibit their fortune
to the society. The role of automobiles seems to be related with the failure of the
15
 American dream because of Gatsby’s ideas to prevail Daisy’s love through the luxury
life. The cars display their negative side in the culture of 1920 as well and so far, they
lead the characters toward the demise of the American dream, namely the death of
Myrtle Wilson besides George Wilson and Gatsby’s death which also associated with
the car.

VI. Conclusion

Through the story of Jay Gatsby, readers witness the fallacious nature of American
dream such as the past identity that one could discard, obsession about the joy that can
be reach (or cannot find) and the death or the tragedy that living the dream may bring.
The novel is set in the period that Fitzgerald called the "Jazz Age," emphasizing the
life of pure luxury and indulgence but also a dangerous, romantic myth. The impact of
American Dream on Gatsby’s life is depicted by Fitzgerald’s clever use of Gatsby’s
obsession towards his love in the past - Daisy and his tragic death in the twist.

The novel successfully demonstrates how the dream cannot be successful because of
the way it is misunderstood by the society and people’s materialism view of modern
life. However, it introduces hope and persistence as the most important characteristics
of the American dream. From experiments and failure, readers witness the reality and
sum up the human’s bitterness in the era of loss and everything collapses. Throughout
the view of character Nick Carraway, people figure a fuller visualization of the
character Gatsby who chasing illusions about a glorious future and determination to
fulfill his wild dream. Fitzgerald discovered an obsessed world which guaranteed by
the thriving material value. It is not only a matter of one individual but a common
problem of the times

To sum up, in America there were people who seeking for leisurely, lavish material
life but also experiencing mental chaos and the downgrade of moral values in
exchange: it was the illegal business of Jay Gatsby, adultery of Myrtle, Daisy, Tom
and Gatsby and the homicide of George Wilson. That having said, despite being a
target, a motivation for people to strive for, American dream was a tragedy of a
broken, helpless human being who found no destination for himself in the world. The
foundation of money or love that American dreamers previously used as a fulcrum to
survive and dominate society would then completely corrupted.

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