The American Dream In The Great Gatsby Analysis

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F. Scott Fitzgerald immortalised in his works the spirit of the Jazz Age and the fading away of the Victorian nineteenth century culture. His depiction of the 1920s as a time of decadence, crumbling of old certainties and economy shifting towards the late-capitalism is exuberant and compelling. As a social commentator, he tried to capture this passing moment, the mood of frivolity, hedonism, turning away from the grimness of the war and the hope for a new consumer paradise of 1920s. In Fitzgerald’s stories the ‘American dream’ and the ‘pursuit of happiness’ are intrinsically connected with romantic love and filtered through the consumerist culture of the time. His reputation for some time was that of a chronicler of the lives and frivolous…show more content…
It inspired a kind of American novel that “might not only capture the moment, but also understand a new experience in American history, the replacement of Victorian public conscience by modern subjectivity” (Berman 2002: 81). His plots explore the idealism, illusions concerning the American dream and the inevitable disappointment of the characters’ expectations. Fitzgerald (1925, as cited in Wilkinson 1950) once wrote about The Great Gatsby in a letter to Myra Mannes: “America's great promise is that something is going to happen, and after a while you get tired of waiting because nothing happens to people except that they grow old and nothing happens to American art because America is the story of the moon that never rose.” This is illustrated by several of his stories and novels where an ambitious protagonist, full of romantic illusions and grand dreams for the future, enters a new sphere, usually an upper-class enclave dominated by the hedonistic pursuit of new experiences. He initially is taken in by the magical, dream-like atmosphere created by wealth remote from the dullness and harshness of everyday life. He then meets a girl or a woman that corresponds with his ideal and tries to win her affections. The desire energises and motivates him to strive for economic success, since she is inaccessible for

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