The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

The Death of the American Dream in the Great Gatsby
World War I brought out the deepest, darkest, most malignant tendencies of human nature. Young men died in the thousands on the battlefield, martyrs of a wanton cause. 1920’s American society mirrored the Great War’s atmosphere of excess. The newly wealthy class, in onslaught, threw lavish parties and indulged in sexual promiscuity as exorbitance became the new state religion. Traditional values, including that of the American Dream, seemed to crumble; no longer did hard work, ambition, and hope guarantee success, whether wealth or happiness. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the zeitgeist of this era, characterized by wealth and meaningless. In the novel, Midwesterner Nick
Carraway comes to New York where he meets Jay Gatsby, a Long Islander seeking to rekindle lost love with his paramour Daisy Buchanan, who lives carefree with her husband Tom and friend Jordan Baker. Tom meanwhile harbors a secret affair with the vivacious Myrtle Wilson, who lives meekly with her humble husband George. The deaths of Gatsby, Myrtle, and George contrast the survival of Tom, Daisy, and Jordan, symbolizing the moral death of the American Dream. Myrtle, George, and Gatsby, each of whom ultimately dies, attempt to realize the American Dream through their own determination and singularity of purpose.
On Nick's first journey to New York City by train with Tom, the two stop off at a shoddy repair garage to meet Tom's mistress, Myrtle Wilson. She lives with her humble husband George, owner of the garage, and successfully hides the affair from him. As she comes down the stairs, Nick awes at her appearance, "Her face...contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering" (30). Myrtle’s best trait, perhaps the trait Tom is most attracted to, is her vitality, her singular desire to live and rise to prominence. She determines to climb the social ladder and possesses the enthusiasm necessary to make the dream reality. The word “smouldering,” however, indirectly foreshadows the death of her dream, and its banishment to the Valley of Ashes, the graveyard for burnt up dreams. Displaying her superiority as the eminent Tom Buchanan’s mistress, Myrtle contrasts her vitality with the precariousness of her dream, its ability to extinguish her desires. George Wilson, Myrtle's husband, attempts to realize the American Dream in a different way. All he wants is for his wife to love him, but this dream is quite far from reality. When he learns of his wife's secret lover, he suffers a severe mental breakdown. His neighbor, Michaelis,
hears George's wife screaming upstairs, and George explains to him, "I've got my wife locked in up there...She's going to stay there till the day after tomorrow and then we're going to move away" (143). Disillusioned by his wife's revelation, George clings desperately to his American Dream. He believes that he can still realize his goals if he takes his wife west. This vision of western migration never sees fruition and dies along with Wilson. Gatsby also clings to his own interpretation of the American Dream. After his first visit to the Buchanan's, Nick arrives at his bungalow in West Egg, where he catches his first glimpse of his illusive neighbor, "He stretched out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way...I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a small green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock," (25-26). Initially, the meaning of this gesture is quite ambiguous, but Nick soon discovers that the green light belongs to Tom and Daisy’s boat dock. For Gatsby, the light symbolizes his wish to love and possess Daisy. Myrtle, George, and Gatsby each possess a fiery ambition to realize their dreams, and construct diverse interpretations based on their own sense of purpose.
Although Myrtle, George, and Gatsby acquire the tools necessary to achieve the traditional American Dream, none of them are ever able to realize this Dream, each becoming a martyr for his or her cause. While George is holding Myrtle prisoner after learning of her incognito lover, she breaks out of her chamber and runs on to the street in front of the garage. By devastating coincidence, Daisy runs Myrtle over while driving Gatsby’s yellow jalopy home from the city. Michaelis and George run to her body observing, “The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long” (145). While trying to break free of the restraints of her husband, Myrtle becomes a victim of her own cause. She sacrifices her life and unique vivacity, which appears to have been literally choked out of her. Following her death, George struggles to reinterpret his dream of loving and possessing Myrtle. In a tragic twist of fate, George is led to believe that Gatsby is responsible for her death and murders him. Nick, upon arriving at the scene, observes, "It was after we started with Gatsby towards the house that the gardener saw George’s body a little way off in the grass and the holocaust was complete," (170). George achieves his calling in a grotesque way, murdering Gatsby in a grand display of love for his wife. All he ever wanted was to be with her, so he kills himself as well. By referring to the scene as a “holocaust,” the deaths of George and Gatsby become a metaphor for the untimely demise of their dreams. Neither Gatsby nor George achieves his true aspirations, and both fail to realize the American Dream. Instead they are bestowed with crude facsimiles of their desires, whose values are fleeting at best. In the end, Myrtle, George, and Gatsby sacrifice themselves as a final attempt at realizing the Dream.
The people who survive never have to work for anything because they already have it all, and therefore are exempt from realizing the American Dream.
Several months after Gatsby's funeral, Nick decides to leave New York and goes to see Jordan, who explains how she felt when Nick rejected her, "I don't give a damn about you now but it was a new experience for me and I felt a little dizzy for a while" (186). It seems as though Jordan had once harbored feelings for Nick, but once he is out of her life, she instantly stops caring. She does not work at rekindling romance with Nick because she knows another handsome man will assuredly seek her love. Later, Nick runs into Tom in a jewelry store. They start talking, and Tom admits his part in Gatsby's death: "What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him" (187). Seeking revenge and attempting to humiliate Gatsby, Tom told George that Gatsby was the owner of the car that killed Myrtle. Through this act, Tom condemned an innocent man to death. However, Tom is detached from the whole affair and never has to suffer the consequences of his actions. Disgusted with the Buchanan's, Nick surmises, "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then returned back into their money...and let other people clean up the mess they had made," (188). Tom and Daisy never have to realize the American dream. Because of their vast wealth and good name, everything is handed to them and they never work for
anything. The Buchanan’s are free to destroy the lives of good people because their eminence saves them from their sins. Tom, Daisy, and Jordan’s recklessness ultimately negates Myrtle, George, and Gatsby’s herculean efforts to realize the American Dream.
The belief that determination and purpose can lead to a better life ironically lures Myrtle, George, and Gatsby to their untimely deaths. In seeking the American Dream, these poor souls die for their causes before realizing them. Daisy, Tom, and Jordan, living lives full of opulence and free of want, never attempt to realize the American Dream. Like Myrtle, George, and Gatsby, the Dream is sacrificed in the name of greed and corruption in The Great Gatsby, mirroring its death in the Jazz Age.

The Great Gatsby. Paperback ed. 1 vol. New York, NY: Scribner, 1925. 180. Print.