The Great American Dream - Essay Example

The dream has limits and has its own laws which is something Jay Gatsby learns to his unfortunate detriment at the end of the story. America is known as the new world, a land of immigrants. So many people came to America, leaving their poor old lives behind. They came from countries with few economic opportunities, with little freedom. Some came with only five dollars in their pocket. In America, because of capitalism, they could become almost anything if they worked hard and had a good idea. In one generation a family could change from peasants or paupers to a rich and well-heeled family.

There was enough money for almost everyone. This was all part of the good side of the American dream: that if you worked hard you could achieve anything for yourself and your family. However, there is also a sadder, darker side to the dream. Some people fall in love with the dream itself rather than the self-improvement and hard work that are the foundation of the dream. Gatsby is one of these people. He is very charming and suave but he holds a big secret. He is living a life only on the surface.

Gatsby may be rich, but in a way he is living a dream. He thinks he can go back in the past and make the wrong things right again, he thinks he can make Daisy love him again. One of the most famous scenes in the novel unfolds like this: In a way Gatsby is delusional. He has bought into a dream that financially rewarded him, but the substance of the dream is gone—all that is left is the material husk, shiny and rich, but with nothing real inside it. He has bought the shape of the dream, but not the American dream itself.

This is especially brought home at the end of the novel when Nick tries to piece together Gatsby’s life from what he has learned. Gatsby is now dead, and Nick is sympathetic. He imagines the young Gatsby for whom the world once