Great Gatsby Essay

The Great Gatsby Essay

The American Dream is the idea that one can rise to success regardless of where they start. There are many people in the world who live the expensive, luxurious life. Meaning they own big mansions, drive fancy cars and simple live in high class life. Many believe that following their dreams and working hard will lead to that success. When one is chasing The American Dream, they may run into situations that will destroy their lives and their dreams instead. In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the characters is able to reveal that working hard to rise to the top will not guarantee success. The characters that are used by Fitzgerald shows that trying to rise to the top will not improve their lives but instead ruin it, these characters include Nick Carraway, George Wilson and James Gatsby. Each one of these characters chase a dream but fail and destroy their lives in the process.

This novel is able to illustrate the idea of a false dream where attempting to rise to the top will lead to failure instead. This idea is first represented by Nick Carraway, he moves from the Mid West to New York City, he attends an ivy league university and he becomes very close to Gatsby. The first example is that Nick moves to New York City in pursuit of a new lifestyle and money. Nick decided to move to a more urban area and he would try to work hard in order to find success. “Instead of being the warm centre of the world, The Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe - so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support on more single man” (Fitzgerald, 9). Nick was tired of the life he had in the West and sought out something better in New York City. The American Dream had a lot of people immigrate to a better place in order to find success. Nick basically did the same thing but it did not turn out the way he wanted to. “Why, I thought - why, look...