The Significance Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

In the Book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, there is a topic that always seems to come up, that topic is the American dream. This book makes you wonder whether this dream is actually realistic and achievable, or if it is just some made up thing that most are not able to achieve. It soon becomes clear that F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the American dream as something that is unreal and it is pretty much impossible to accomplish. Fitzgerald uses many things to represent the corruption of the American dream, these things include the green light, and the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleberg, and the geography in general. To start off, what exactly is the American dream? There are many interpretations of what people believe it is, for the most
Eckleberg. “The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic- their retinas one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles”(Fitzgerald 23). These eyes are used to represent God, and how as George says “you may fool me, but you can’t fool God”(Fitzgerald 159). He says this to Myrtle and what this means is that God is looking down on them, and he knows what she is doing even though he may not know everything. He later goes on to say “God sees everything”(Fitzgerald 160) This is said when George Wilson is looking out the window at the sign of T.J. Eckleburg. When he says this it represents what the sign means and how God is pretty much judging them for how hard they are working to achieve their dream or the American dream. Also another thing that describes the desperate need of people trying to achieve the American dream is all of the animal names that are used in the book, for example, there is Wolfsheim and Owl eyes that are barely talked about in this book. Using the eyes on the sign of Doctor T.J. Eckleberg Fitzgerald again tells us that the American dream is