Destruction of Dreams, Failure of Dreamers in Fitzgerald’s...

Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, is used to contrast a real American dreamer against what had become of American society during the 1920s. By magnifying the tragic fate of dreamers, conveying that twenties America lacked the substance to fulfill dreams and exposing the shallowness of Jazz-Age Americans, Fitzgerald foreshadows the destruction of his own generation. The beauty and splendor of Gatsbys parties masked the innate corruption within the heart of the Roaring Twenties. Jazz-Age society was a bankrupt world, devoid of morality, and plagued by a crisis of character. Jay Gatsby is a misfit in this world. He tries, ironically, to fit into the picture: he fills his garage with status,†¦show more content†¦Yet, it is his fate to die alone, drunk, and betrayed. Through Dan Cody, Fitzgerald shows how twenties society treats their dreamers; it manipulates them, uses them for money, and then, forgets them. This pattern plays through again through Gatsby. A child growing up in a nameless town in the middle of Minnesota, Gatsby dreams the impossible and achieves it. He sets out methodically, with a list of General Resolves: Study electricity, baseball, practice elocution and how to attain it. . . And after less than two decades, he is one of the richest men in New York. Yet, Gatsby, too, was just another tool used for the fun of society. He was never truly a member of this society. At his own parties, . . . Girls were swooning backward playfully into mens arms, even into groups, knowing that someone would arrest their falls - - - but no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsbys shoulder, and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsbys head for a link. His home was full of the Leeches, Blackbucks, Ferets and Klipspringers, while the champagne was flowing. Yet, when he died, no one came. Gatsby, too, died alone. Dreamers in a healthy society are respected and enco uraged. Yet, in the twenties, they were used and mistreated. Fitzgerald uses the notion of destroyed dreams to exemplify his lost generation. Even moreShow MoreRelatedEssay about The Great Gatsby the American Dream4402 Words   |  18 PagesThe Great Gatsby and the American Dream The Great Gatsby is an interesting and thought-provoking novel by the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald that sets to explore important and complex social themes such as the hollowness of the upper class and the characteristics and decline of the American Dream during the prosperous years preceding the Great Depression. The Great Gatsby is presented at the surface as a thwarted love story between a man, Jay Gatsby, and a woman, Daisy Buchanan. However, theRead MoreJay Gatsby s American Dream2866 Words   |  12 PagesLauren Sizemore ENGL 204-1 Dr. Peterman October 15, 2014 Research Paper Draft #3 Jay Gatsby’s American Dream Ever since its publication in April 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel â€Å"The Great Gatsby† has become one of the most criticized, cited, and analytical pieces of fiction in American literature history. It is a great representation of an era known as the Jazz Age when anything and everything was possible, or at least that is what people thought. Fitzgerald provides the reader with an insightRead MoreThe Disillusionment of American Dream in Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night19485 Words   |  78 PagesThe disillusionment of American dream in the Great Gatsby and Tender is the night Chapter I Introduction F. Scott Fitzgerald is the spokesman of the Jazz Age and is also one of the greatest novelists in the 20th century. His novels mainly deal with the theme of the disillusionment of the American dream of the self-made young men in the 20th century. In this thesis, Fitzgerald’s two most important novels The Great Gatsby(2003) and Tender is the Night(2005) are analyzed. Both these two novelsRead MoreShort Summary of the Great Gatsby11203 Words   |  45 PagesStar-Spangled Banner (after whom Fitzgerald was named), his mothers family was, in Fitzgeralds own words, straight 1850 potato-famine Irish. As a result of this contrast, he was exceedingly ambivalent about the notion of the American dream: for him, it was at once vulgar and dazzlingly promising. It need scarcely be noted that such fascinated ambivalence is itself typically American. Like the central character of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald had an intensely romantic imagination; he once called it a heightened