The Great Gatsby And Destruction Of The American Dream

26 Pages 6564 Words

1. Introduction

The Great Gatsby was first published in April 1925 in New York. It took F. Scott Fitzgerald several years to finish this work, but that was worth it. This novel was the third one he wrote. As the other two previous novels it was very successful. It was even performed on stage. Today are existing various translations of the it and even some movies, which are known all over the world.
My interest for this book was aroused when somebody in school presented the book and included the American Dream in this presentation.
While reading the novel I recognised a lot of tension in it, which probably is caused by how the language is used but also by what is happening and what kind of characters are acting. It is easy to read, probably because of the straight way it is written in. On the other hand, when I read more closed, I discovered various meanings in it. Fitzgerald used experiences from his own life and included them in general topics like the extravagantly life in the “golden twenties”, the fragility of dreams as a result of conformity, the relationship between man and woman, the failure of the American Dream and others I do not want to mention now because this paper mainly deals with the most interesting one for me, the issue of the American Dream and what happened to it in the 1920s, a period when the old values that gave substance to the dream had been corrupted by the vulgar pursuit of life.
The characters in this novel interpret the American Dream in different ways. Which ways that are, shall be shown in this essay. First of all I give a general overview of the development of the American Dream until the 1920s and how the author included it in his novel. After that I go on with analysing the main character’s dream and examine how it is concerned with the changing of the American Dream. In my third step I do the same with other important characters to illustrate other attitudes towards the Am...