The Great Gatsby—a title that is itself ironic. The tale of the dishonest, wasteful bootlegger known as Jay Gatsby and his obsessive dream to regain his past lover Daisy. Fitzgerald exemplifies many characteristics of the Jazz Age through themes, symbols, and motifs that depict the excess wealth, as well as the moral decay faced by a majority of Americans in the 1920s. One major theme Fitzgerald presents in The Great Gatsby is the corruption of the American Dream in the 1920s and the difficulty to achieve it.
Jay Gatsby rose from a boy in rural North Dakota to a very wealthy man in West Egg, New York. He believed that if he worked hard enough and gained maximum wealth, he could achieve any dream. Of course he was able to buy a lavish mansion and host luxurious parties, but he still didn’t fulfill his dream of winning Daisy’s love. Gatsby’s unfulfilled dream resembles the unattainable American Dream and its corruption through wealth and selfish desires. The American dream stood for values such as pursuit of happiness and individualism, but is adulterated in the 1920s into a paradox of endless desires that lead one to the next. Seekers of the American Dream will always be faced by disappointment, like Gatsby felt, when they are not able to totally fulfill their chain of unattainable dreams.
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