The Great Gatsby

Evaluate The Great Gatsby as a criticism of the corruption of the American Dream.

The Great Gatsby is popularly interpreted as a criticism of the American dream. In this criticism, F. Scott basically says that the American dream is shallow, unattainable, and over exaggerated. F. Scott’s, The Great Gatsby is certainly an interesting new perspective on wealth, the American dream, and what it does to people, but at the same time, his criticism seems to be a bit over exaggerated. It would seem that F. Scott Fitzgerald misinterpreted the American dream all together.
Daisy and Tom Buchanan are described as a lovely couple with a lovely house in East Egg, where most of the rich people in New York live. Tom Buchanan is married to beautiful Daisy, but is blatantly cheating on her with a poverty-stricken woman named Myrtle, whom he spoiled with his own money. This shows that money really doesn’t buy happiness. I can agree with that much, but I have a different idea of what the American dream is. The American dream is that people of all types, from all backgrounds are able to prosper in America, the land of opportunity. Is it possible that F. Scott is criticizing equal opportunity in America?
Not likely. Tom Buchanan is portrayed as a Caucasian jock who really doesn’t have much logic or smarts of his own, and is essentially made into one of the bad guys of the book. In the first chapter of The Great Gatsby, Tom says “it’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.” The characters around him then begin to taunt him a bit. Clearly F. Scott Fitzgerald was supportive of equality for everyone, since he was making the man that the audience was against say that line. F. Scott was writing in a satirical format to get his point across.
In The Great Gatsby, the American dream seems to be to be filthy rich with a happy family, and excitement around every corner. In F. Scotts sense of the American dream, Daisy and Tom achieved it by having so much money. But, as Nick Carraway our narrator points out, they still seem to come up short handed, and in fact still wanted more. Tom wanted another woman, most likely for the excitement of scandal, and Daisy just wanted more excitement in general, constantly trying to be on the run to new as well as familiar places. Then there was the oh-so-mysterious Gatsby. He came out of nowhere and bought a huge house, and had extravagant parties every weekend. As it turned out, he was formerly in an intimate relationship with Daisy years ago, and struggled to earn all this money to impress her. Money was the key to Daisy’s heart—at least that’s what Gatsby believed. According to our narrator, Nick Carraway, “he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from Daisy”. Everyone had some sort of fetish with money.
However, The Great Gatsby did seem to hold a few examples of the American dream within his story. Jay Gatsby himself came from a fairly poor background, and worked his way up. But his motivation was Daisy, rather than money. It just so happens that money was basically the only way to get Daisy’s attention. My interpretation of The Great Gatsby is that F. Scott is actually criticizing people who obsess with money, or people obsessing with getting rich. Almost every character in this book were focused on money, and none of them were anywhere near happy with their lives. These people who achieved the one goal of getting a ton of money didn’t really have anything else to do. What do you do after you’ve achieved your one goal? The people in this book simply got bored and tried to make their own excitement.
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
This quote of course leaves us with the question: what happens after the all the running? What do we get out of it? Does anyone even know? It is a common psychological conception that if we can just get this (whatever this may be), we’ll be happy, or life will be easier, or something else along those lines. If The Great Gatsby is a criticism of the American dream, then that would mean that F. Scott believes that money is the dream. And judging by this quote, it looks like F. Scott actually is saying that it is the actual struggle and perseverance to our goals that makes life worth living, even if we don’t really know the outcome of what happens when we get it.