The Great Gatsby: The Demise of Two Dreams Essay -- essays research p

mend there are numerous themes throughout the text of F. Scott Fitzgeralds The swell Gatsby, the most prominent is that of the American Dream. The American Dream is the idea that either person, no matter what he or she is, or from where he or she has come, can become successful in life by his or her hard work it is the idea that a self-sufficient person, an entrepreneur, can be a success. In this novel, however, it is the quest for this dream (along with the pursuit of a amorous dream) that causes the ultimate spill of Jay Gatsby.Throughout the book, Gatsby avoids the reality of his simple, difficult childhood in efforts to avoid the embarrassment of having lived in poverty during his youth. At the age of seventeen, Jay Gatsby changed his predict from James Gatz, marking the beginning of his translation of the American Dream. His parents were shiftless and attempted farm people and his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all the truth was that Jay G atsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic universe of himself when he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old male child would (104). And although masked for most of the story, Gatsbys childhood provides a key spring of determination in his endeavor of achieving the American Dream.During Gatsbys early adulthood, he joined the army (where he depression met Daisy). He initially love her because of her extraordinary house and because many other men had already love her. One evening in October, Gatsby fell in love with Daisy Fay, and in turn she fell in love with Gatsby. Daisy was the first nice little girl that he had ever known (155). Their love was uneasy at first but this uneasiness was lifted when he and Daisy fell in love, and he found that she thought he knew a lot because he knew different things from her (157). While their month of love was physically ended when Gatsby went abroad, their emotional love was not and Daisy, in her artif icial world, could not understand why Gatsby could not come dental plate she wanted her love to be with her, she needed some assurance that she was doing the good thing. It was not long however, before Daisy fell in love with a wealthy, former All-American college football player named Tom Buchanan. Gatsbys heart was br... ...s amative dream was dead, his American Dream remained alive and beaming. He still had everything release for him he had his youth, money, and personality. He was morally superior to his fellow East Eggers and slit acknowledged this when he told Gatsby that he was worth the whole damn mountain put together (162). To have it all taken away for something he had not done was the greatest misfortune of the entire novel and his termination became even more disheartening at his funeral when, despite Nicks efforts to make it respectable, only he, Gatsbys father and servants, and one of Gatsbys acquaintances attended. no(prenominal) of his friends, nor did the love of his life come. Nick truly cared about Jay Gatsby as no one else did he exemplified what a true friend is and did what only a friend would do for another. Daisy, however, did not seem to feel even a shred of sadness, or guilt, over Gatsbys death which is apparent in her not attending his funeral and instead going away on a vacation with Tom. In the end, it was Gatsbys strong desire for wealth and Daisy, his version of the American Dream, which proved to be the greatest reason for his grave downfall at the hands of a ruthless society.