The Great Gatsby American Dream

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald presents all the characters and their individual American Dreams. The novel took place in the 1920s, post-World War I, where American pride, wealth, luxuries, and all other superficialities were glorified. During this time, the American people became ambitious, and economic success was made their main goal. The notion of “money can buy happiness” was prominent and people of all walks of life believed in it. While this may have seemed like a positive outlook, it resulted in Americans becoming “a restless, dissatisfied, a searching people” per John Steinbeck. This is showed effectively in The Great Gatsby, where Fitzgerald presents most of the characters had achieved their goals, yet they were dissatisfied
He was extremely rich and had all the luxuries he could ever want. Being a man of “new money”, Jay Gatsby was the epitome of the American Dream and its positives. All his life he was poor and from a lower-class family from the West, but he decided to reinvent himself and change his situation. Gatsby made it his goal and purpose to become rich. Inspired by Dan Cody and his early love with Daisy, he knew that being rich was the ultimate goal and success in life and that it could give him everything he ever wanted. However, throughout the story Jay Gatsby was discontent. Despite having all his wealth and luxuries, he wanted something more: Daisy. Gatsby’s need for Daisy was not a reason for love, but for completing his personal American Dream and more so making up for the past and his past dreams. He wanted to rekindle his love that he with her from the past to complete his “checklist” of all his goals. He bought a house right across from her and threw lavish weekly parties in hopes of luring her, yet in the end he didn’t get her, and in fact this endeavor lead to his demise. The problem with Gatsby in this novel was his mentality. He had everything superficially except for Daisy, and when he had the opportunity to grasp Daisy, he couldn’t because it didn’t follow his “checklist”. Gatsby didn’t want Daisy to love anyone in the past and he couldn’t accept that she loved Tom previously. Gatsby expected to
George Wilson owns an auto repair shop and is struggling to make ends meet. George cannot be described as a dissatisfied person, but more as an economically struggling individual. This doesn’t affect him as much as his wife, Myrtle. Born and living in the lower class, Myrtle is dissatisfied with her situation and wants to achieve a high-class lifestyle. By cheating on her husband with Tom she is given an opportunity to feel wealthy and temporarily achieve her American Dream. For Myrtle to achieve happiness, her mentality needs to be changed. She needs to understand that wealth is not the only factor to happiness. Someone who gave her wealth and made her feel rich also punched her in the nose, something her poor husband would never do. If wealth was a main goal, Myrtle could have helped her husband in his work and try to make their economic situation better. In general, Myrtle’s mentality needed to be changed and she needed to understand what would lead to true