The Great Gatsby People Are So Busy Dreaming The American Dream

Aaron Robbins
Ms. Wolf
English 3
28 November 2013
Great Gatsby Essay “People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have the right to be, that they’re all asleep at the switch. Consequently, we are living in the age of human error.” – Florence King. The American Dream is the legendary utopia of equality, democracy, and prosperity. F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, examines the question of whether or not the exuberance of material wealth and riches is really satisfactory in the seeking of the American Dream and the pursuit of happiness. The Great Gatsby is the story of an eccentric millionaire named Jay Gatsby as told by Nick Carroway, a Midwesterner who moves right into the
At the very start of the novel, Nick mentions an important lesson that he carries with him throughout his life. “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had”” (Fitzgerald 1). This outlook that Nick’s father passed down to him is important to how he treats people in the novel. With a leisure life full of money, wouldn’t it be much simpler to treat people with respect and a certain common decency? The wealthy folks that Nick encounters throughout The Great Gatsby should be much better people then they are. It is not a good thing for the American Dream when those who have gotten the closest to reaching it cannot even function in society with good intentions, or really any intentions in do anything other than for themselves. Towards the very end of the novel, as Nick is leaving Gatsby’s home while he is awaiting the call from Daisy, Nick narrates, “We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something and turned around. “They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together”” (Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald ingeniously built the characters of the novel around different trends and types of people that lived in the 1920’s. The original goals of the American Dream such as equality, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness were disintegrated all for the thirst of easy money and wealth. The members of the upper classes are some of the lowest class people in terms of character traits. This novel illustrates the decline of the American Dream, and American values too. In the end, Nick ends up moving away from the Egg’s and goes back to the Mid-West, a place where those morals that didn’t exist there, still