Great Gatsby

Jake Ellis
Mr. Paul O’Hearn
Honors British Literature
May 5, 2013
The Great Gatsby: Corruption of the American Dream In The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald writes about the dominant theme of the corruption of the American Dream by materialism. The rise of materialism in the Roaring Twenties shows how people would involve themselves in illegal activities just to achieve their vision of the American Dream. Most of the time people’s view of the American Dream was a fantasy and never truly obtainable. The main character James Gatz, more commonly known as Jay Gatsby is a prime example of the corruption of the American Dream. He first starts out as young seventeen year old farm boy from North Dakota, and slowly grows in to a corrupt millionaire bootlegger. His journey to fame and fortune starts off when he meets copper tycoon Dan Cody. Here is when James “Jimmy” Gatz changes his name to Jay Gatsby to start a new and prosperous life. Jay Gatsby accompanied Cody on a ten year long voyage on his yacht to shadow Cody and learn how to live the wealthy lifestyle. However the trip only lasted five years because of the death of Cody. In that time he became close friends with Cody so much that he leaves Gatsby twenty five thousand dollars in his will. The next episode of Gatsby’s life tainted his perception of right and wrong and set him on a path to corruption and materialistic views. When Gatsby meets Daisy while training for combat in World War I he falls passionately in love with her and realizes to truly win her love he must become as rich and aristocratic as she is. Gatsby’s dream “is a naïve dream based on the fallacious assumption that material possessions are synonymous with happiness, harmony, and beauty” (Fahey 70). Upon returning home from the war he soon finds out that while gone Prohibition had changed the country entirely. Gatsby then figures out that if he wants to make enough money to impress Daisy he must do it illegally. He says that “Her voice is full of money.” (Fitzgerald 120) Meaning that just hearing the way she speaks the audience knows that she is from a wealthy background. Also Nick Caraway starts to ask Gatsby about where he obtained all of his fortune from he tells Nick that it came from “Drug Stores” he owned. Later in the story the reader finds out that the “Drug Stores” really sell bath tub gin and other kinds of alcohol under the table. After acquiring so much wealth Gatsby shows how materialistic he is in the ways he spends his money. His house resembles a European style mansion being overly extravagant and unnecessarily large. In his garage he has a brand new Rolls Royce painted bright yellow to show off his affluence. Gatsby flaunts his money around consistently. Not just him but all of West Egg and the “new money” burn through their money just as fast as they make it. In an attempt to try to attract Daisy Gatsby would throw extravagant parties with flappers, champagne, and live music. In one scene in the novel Gatsby takes Daisy up to his room to show her around. He shows her his colossal walk in closet full of silk shirts and colorful jackets in an attempt to win Daisy’s heart. The American people at the time were corrupted in to thinking that money could buy happiness, or even love in Gatsby’s case. It takes Gatsby almost the entire novel to figure out that even with his newly acquired fortune he will never be able to obtain his one true love Daisy. This is symbolized by the green light located across the Long Island Sound on the other end of the Buchanan’s pier. Gatsby makes Daisy out to be a model of perfection, but she can never live up to his expectations. In a critical work of The Great Gatsby Harold Bloom says “Not content merely to repeat the past, [Gatsby] must also eradicate the years in which his dream lost its reality.” (Bloom 78) At this point in the story Gatsby almost has nothing to live for anymore because everything he did in his life was for Daisy. Whether it was to obtain large sums of money to impress her or take her anywhere she wanted to go.
In chapter four Nick meets a very powerful and prosperous man named Meyer Wolfsheim. Wolfsheim was a man corrupted by materialism and the American Dream as well. At lunch when Nick and Wolfsheim first meet, Wolfsheim hints at his involvement in criminal activities. When Wolfsheim leaves Gatsby and Nick Gatsby explains to Nick that “He’s the man who fixed the World Series back in nineteen nineteen.”(Fitzgerald 73) The actual nineteen nineteen World Series was fixed between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds. “Some members of the Chicago White Sox conspired with professional gamblers to make the Black Sox Scandal.” (Carney) After being caught eight members of the White Sox were banned from baseball including legend “Shoeless Joe Jackson.” This shows that even people who were considered heroes of the day were corruptible.
Jay Gatsby and Meyer Wolfsheim show the illegal side of the Corruption of The American Dream but Daisy and Tom Buchanan demonstrate it as well. Daisy is a symbol of the corruption that occurs to people who cherish their wealth more than anything else. Daisy does not show remorse for any of her actions throughout the story. She does not own up to killing Myrtle Wilson, and when Gatsby is murdered because of this she shows no feelings or concern. Tom also is very self centered and conceited. When he first meets Nick he talks down to him like he is not even a human being. In the beginning of the novel Tom is said to be “one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty one that everything afterwards savors of anticlimax.” (Fitzgerald 6) Both Tom and Daisy lived out the best part of their lives before the age of twenty one and are now unhappy with each other. Even though they are bored with each other they will always stay together because their corruption unites them. The Buchanan’s marriage is full of lies and infidelities. They are definitely not a perfect couple in any way. Tom cheats on Daisy with Myrtle Wilson throughout the story until Daisy Unintentionally hits her while driving Gatsby’s car. Meanwhile Daisy is committing adultery with Gatsby. Both Tom and Daisy both know about each other’s infidelities but choose to ignore them. In the end you find out neither of them intended on leaving the other. “They instinctively seek out each other because each recognizes the other’s strength in the corrupt spiritual element they inhabit.” (Bewley 46)
Once Myrtle and Gatsby are both dead they both go back to living their normal lives like nothing at all had happened. Nick shows resentment of them in the end when he says “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” (Fitzgerald 179) Whenever one of the Buchanan’s does something wrong somewhere they just pack up and go on vacation or move entirely. They “drifted here and there wherever people played polo and were rich together.” (Fitzgerald 6) Besides just leaving Long Island the Buchanan’s do not even show a bit of remorse for the death of Gatsby or Myrtle.
The worst part of it all was that there were only two people who showed up to Jay Gatsby’s funeral. Nick and Gatsby’s father are the only ones who cared enough for him to pay their respects at his funeral. The reader would expect hundreds of people to attend such a popular mans funeral but this is not the case. Not a single person who showed up to his parties attended the funeral. “The only person who calls is Klipspringer but not to pay his condolences but to ask about a pair of shoes he is missing.” (Sparknotes)
The last words Nick says to Gatsby before he is killed is “They’re a rotten crowd…You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” (Fitzgerald 154) This being one of the more famous quotes of the book shows how even though Gatsby was a corrupt bootlegger he was not truly a crooked person. The only reason he got involved with criminal activity was to make enough money to achieve his dream, Daisy Fay Buchanan. Gatsby’s American Dream originally consists of marrying Daisy, but along the way this dream of his is corrupted and slanted by the unlawful society he lives in. People like Daisy and Tom ruined the moral values of society in the Roaring Twenties. The greed of these people eventually led them to be shattered whether it is through being killed for being involved in criminal activity or never being able to achieve true happiness because of them thinking when they acquire money they will achieve happiness.
In The Great Gatsby the reader sees that the people of the Roaring Twenties were corrupted by materialism and thought the American Dream was only obtainable through money. The corruption of the American Dream is shown through the characters lives and the society itself. Many people believed that happiness could only be acquired through financial success when some of the richest people in the novel are the most miserable. The last line of the novel sums up Gatsby’s life and the lives of many others trying to reach their fantasy of the American Dream. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (Fitzgerald 180)

Works Cited
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York:
Chelsea House Publishers, 1985. Web.
Carney, Eugene. Burying the Black Sox. Potomac Books Inc. 2007. Web.
Fahey, William. F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream. New York:
Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973. Web.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953. Print.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Great Gatsby.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 6 May 2013.
Wikipedia.com. Wikimedia Foundation Inc, 30 Apr. 2013. Web. 10 May 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandalhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal>.

Cited: Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985. Web. Carney, Eugene. Burying the Black Sox. Potomac Books Inc. 2007. Web. Fahey, William. F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973. Web. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Simon &amp; Schuster, 1953. Print. SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Great Gatsby.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 6 May 2013. Wikipedia.com. Wikimedia Foundation Inc, 30 Apr. 2013. Web. 10 May 2013. &lt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandalhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal&gt;.