American Ideals In The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald wrote a story that comments on American Ideals. The story is very Ironic because Gatsby lives the life that every American dreams of having, except for love. This book was written as a satire that comments on American ideals in the 1920’s. In “The Great Gatsby” there are two themes. One is “the American Dream is unattainable because of the desire to be rich” and the other is “the search for the American Dream is more enjoyable than attaining it.”
Those themes are how it is clear the Great Gatsby is a satire about the American Ideals. The American Dream is something every American should strive for. However in the Great Gatsby Daisy is a symbol of the American Dream is Daisy. Gatsby says “her voice is full of money” (Fitzgerald 120.) The definition of a flapper is “(in the 1920s) a fashionable young woman intent on enjoying herself and flouting conventional standards of behavior.” This definition seems to represent Daisy since she ends up having an affair with Gatsby. Having an affair would qualify for questionable behavior. Her voice also puts Gatsby into a trance and makes him fall for her.
Although they belong to a high class community and despite extreme wealth, they are unhappy. Tom is described as “a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anticlimax” (Fitzgerald 6.) Tom and Daisy’s marriage is falling apart at the seams. They have tried going on trips, “They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.” They are bored and unsatisfied with their life and Tom chooses to try and recreate his college football years by cheating on Daisy with Myrtle. Fitzgerald tries to show that even with wealth and power, there is still