The Great Gatsby Essay

The Great Gatsby is known to be a tragic love story at the surface but is also understood as a suspicious critic of the American dream. The American dream was what everyone worked towards but really from the reader’s point of view its just a myth, as everyone regardless of race, social status, gender etc can achieve success if they work hard enough. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald critiques the idea of The American Dream. This is because He critiques this idea of The American Dream by using literacy devices for example settings. There are four main settings of the novel West egg, East egg, The valley of ashes and New York. Despite the characters living in different places they are all chasing the same thing, The American Dream. Fitzgerald critiques the American dream by suggesting it is an unattainable lifestyle and even if these characters do go for the American dream they will never be fully satisfied as the dream entails always striving for something more than what we already have. West egg being a new wealth and east egg being the old money, their ways of achieving the American dream are drastically different. As for The valley of ashes, they are the plight of the poor and struggle the most. FitzGerald critiques this idea throughout the whole novel by giving the characters that live in different settings, different perspectives on the American dream.

Most West Eggers have their own illegal way to achieving this unattainable lifestyle also known as the American dream. they are the new wealth who cheated their way to the American dream and will never have the same status as the east Eggers. Nick states at the start of the novel “I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them”. Nick claims that west egg is the “least fashionable of the two” because everyone wants to a part of the elite ( east egg) because they have the American dream handed to them by there families, but the west eggers have to work for there money and fight for that American dream which was unfortunately done in an illegal way. Jay Gatsby happens to be the centre of it all in which he found his own way to become the rich, powerful man he is today. As Nick states “ Everyone in West egg is a bootlegger” The most prevalent rumour is that Gatsby got his money through bootlegging also known as an illegal sale of alcohol, which he did through his connections to the mob. Another rumour that circled was that Gatsby owned a chain of drug stores, and that is how he got rich. Unlike Nick, Gatsby is so engrossed with becoming a member of the elite group, but as he is part of the new money and wasn’t born into the social, elite group.

The East egg is known for being the social and moral decay in society and seems like people from East Egg don’t have a care in the world for the lower classes. They act as if they are better than them, only because they are a part of the ” old money”. People from the east have had the American dream handed to them from past generations from there family, which give them an advantage in fully completing the American dream. “Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans.”, Nick describes the east Eggers as the elites, they get everything handed to them from there families and don’t have to work to earn the lives they have. East egg is the place that everyone dreams to be as you don’t have to work and the American dream becomes easier to complete even though it’s almost impossible and would be an unattainable lifestyle.