英语论文

I. Introduction

In 1925, The Great Gatsby was published and hailed as an artistic and material success for its young author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is considered a vastly more mature and artistically masterful treatment of Fitzgerald's themes than his earlier fiction. When I first know this book in one of American literature classes, I become interested in it.

This book mainly told us as a story that the hero-Jay Gatsby fell in love with girl called Daisy in order to gain acceptance into the sophisticated, money world of the women he loves, he tried all means to get money. Fitzgerald‘s dominant theme in the Great Gatsby focuses on the corruption of the American Dream had the assumption that each person could succeed in his life if he can try all means to get money, and also if getting enough money, then he can live happily. This novel examined the results of the Jazz age generation‘s adherence to false material values. In my paper, I illustrate the American Dream which revealed through the life of the main characters. Through learning this book, I firm the correct conception of wealth, especially in today‘s china, the development of market economy and modernization construction misleads some people‘s attitude towards money, I hope my paper can make people know further that wealth is not the name of happiness.

II. American Dream and The Great Gatsby

A. The connotation of the American Dream

The American Dream, arose in the Colonial period and developed in the nineteenth century, had the assumption that each person could succeed in his life if he can try all means to get money, and also if getting enough money, then he can live happily.

The Great Gatsby is a novel about what happened to the American dream in the 1920s. In this period, everybody had the dream to change their own life, but what a

pity that all their dreams, for example, to achieve fame, success, glamour, and excitement, had been crushed by the vulgar pursuit of wealth as the result.

This book is a primary example of American culture. Who wish to succeed in everything we do, and get caught up in a life with little substance; it becomes plain, like the white dresses Daisy likes to wear. We look far ahead without seeing what should be cherished. The Great Gatsby has fully demonstrated the effects of the \"American Dream,\" and drives home the reality that life is not something that can be bought, but made through lasting relationships and the love of extraordinary human beings .The Great Gatsby mirrors our culture in such a way that not reading it would be misunderstanding the very themes that characterize us as human beings. By looking at each character in The Great Gatsby, we can easily found in that period American Dream was nation wide phenomenon.

In Fitzgerald‘s The Great Gatsby, all the characters were, in one way or another, attempting to achieve a state of success and happiness in their lives. The main characters were divided into two groups: the rich upper class and the poorer lower class, which struggled to attain a higher position. Though the major players sought only to change their lives for the better, the idealism and spiritualism of the American Dream was eventually crushed beneath the harsh reality of life, leaving their lives without any meaning or purpose. B. The Great Gatsby

1.The author of the Great Gatsby

As the protagonist Jay Gatsby‘s story in some aspects are based on the writer‘s own experience, here I will give a brief introduction about the author.

F.S Fitzgerald—the writer of the Great Gatsby , played an important role in the American literature during the 1920s and 1930s. He was the representative writer in the ―Lost generation‖ and also the most successful poet in the ―Jazz Age‖! He was born in St.Paul, Minnesota. His family was considered socially prominent and genteelly poor. With the financial aid of relatives he was sent to prep school and to Princeton. In 1917, in his senior year, he left Princeton to serve in World War I. In Alabama, where he was sent for military training, he fell hopelessly in love with Zelda

Sayre, an embodiment of his romantic notions of a Southern Belle. Discharged from the army to win success, fame, and Zelda. He took a job with an advertising agency and worked on short stories and a novel at night. Eventually his first novel, This Side of Paradise, was accepted for publication. The book appeared in March 1920. A week later Fitzgerald and Zelda were married. From then on, he published The Beautiful and Damned(1922),Tales of the Jazz Age(1922) ,The vegetable(1923),The Great Gatsby(1925) and Tender Is Night(1934) etc. The Great Gatsby is one of his famous novels. Many of the characters in his novels are based on people from his life. Within the characters of Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby we can see the dueling parts of Fitzgerald's own personality. ―Gatsby and Fitzgerald are alike by both being self-made men who have achieved financial success. Similarly, they both achieved their financial success for the love of a woman‖(Wu Weiren,215). Gatsby felt that he needed wealth to win the hand of Daisy, and Fitzgerald felt the same about Zelda. The love of a woman was the motivating factor behind virtually all of Gatsby's actions, and many of the young Fitzgerald's. Fitzgerald would spend the majority of his career struggling to earn as much money as possible to maintain the privileged lifestyle that Zelda desired. 2.The protagonist: Jay Gatsby

Jay Gatsby, the title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication-he dropped out of St.Olaf‘s college after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy‘s aura of luxury, grace and charm, and lie to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but married Tom Buchanan in 1919.From that time on ,Gatsby dedicated himself to

winning Daisy back,and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg,and his lavish weekly parties are all merely means to the end. Fitzgerald delays the introduction of most of this information until fairly late in the novel. Gatsby‘s reputation precedes him—Gatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role until chapterIII. Fitzgerald initially presents Gatsby as athe aloof, enigmatic host of the unbelievably opulent parties thrown every week at his mansion. He appears surrounded by spectacular luxury, courted by powerful men and beautiful women. He is the subject of a whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is already a kind of legendary celebrity before he is ever introduce to the reader. Fitzgerald propels the novel forward through the early chapters by shrouding Gatsby‘s background and the source of his wealth in mystery. As a result, the reader‘s first, distant impression of Gatsby strike quite a different note from that of the lovesick, naïve young man who emerges during the later part of the novel. ―Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed character revelation to emphasize the theatrical quality of Gatsby‘s approach to life, which is an important part of his personality\"(Chang Yaoxin, 53). This talent self-invention is what gives Gatsby his quality of ―greatness‖: indeed, the title ―The Great Gatsby‖ is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville magicians as ―The Great Houdini‖ and ―The Great Blackstone,‖ suggesting that the person of Jay Gatsby is a masterful illusion.

III. American Dream of Tom and Daisy, Myrtle Wilson, Jay Gatsby

By describing the life of characters: Tom and Daisy, Myrtle Wilson, Jay Gatsby through the eyes of narrator Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald revealed that the American Dream had been transformed into a scheme of materialistic power.

―People in the 1920s, whether they felt the time to be liberating or frightening, very often found themselves flooded with a sense that theirs was a decade in which all was changing, all was new‖(Lutz Catherine, 6). A. Tom and Daisy’s American Dream

Tom and Daisy Buchanan, the rich socialite couple, seemed to have everything they could possibly desire; however, though their lives were full of material possessions,

they were unsatisfied and sought to change their circumstances. Tom Buchanan: An ex-football star from the same college Nick Carraway attended, Tom was described as \"a nation figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savours of anti-climax\" (F.Scott.Fitzgerald, 32). Now thirty, Tom had become enormously wealthy, yet remained physically powerful with his \"cruel body\"and \"arrogant eyes\" (F.Scott.Fitzgerald, 32). Tom, the arrogant ex-football player, drifted on ―forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game‖ (Fitzgerald, 34) and read ―deep books with long words in them‖ (Fitzgerald, 34) in order to have something to talk about. Though he appeared happily married to Daisy, Tom had an affair with Myrtle Wilson and kept an apartment with her in New York. Tom‘s basic nature of unrest prevented him from being satisfied with the life he lead, and so he created another life for himself with Myrtle. He did things that he wanted to do, he did not concern himself with the consequences of his action, and he had never had to. Because he was born in a family that was wealthy, this made him a spoiled man. He spend his whole life doing things like that because that he was a careless man who won‘t be bothered by the suffering he caused. He was extremely self-absorbed and an extremely careless man.

Why Tom can live such life? It‘s an easy thing to find that Tom's important value is wealth. He was very rich and thought that it made him superior to other people. He enjoyed showing off his possessions, \"I've got a nice place here. It belonged to the Demaine oil man\" (Fitzgerald, 16). In this case, Tom was showing Nick his house and obviously thought that because it belonged to the Demaine oil man that it made it a little more important. Tom thought that poor people were inferior to him and he was quite the snob. He was from old money and often referred to the newly rich as \"bootleggers\people who distributed alcohol during prohibition. Tom didn‘t think much of Gatsby, and claimed that he pegged him as a bootlegger the moment he saw him. When Daisy told Tom that she was leaving him for Gatsby he said, \"She's not leaving me! Certainly not for a common swindler who'd have to steal the ring to put on her finger!\" (Fitzgerald, 69). Later, Tom even sent Daisy home with Gatsby, obviously

to show he always looked down upon Jay Gatsby and he was a presumptuous man. Tom was not only a self-absorbed man but also a careless man. He wanted things to do according to his own mind. Controlling over other people was a common thing in Tom‘s life. Throughout the novel he had shown, time and time again that he was the type of person who liked to control others and what they did. He often talked to George Wilson, his mistress's husband about selling him his car, which he never actually intended to do. He was simply toying with the man, but become angry when Wilson tried to talk to him about it: \"Very well then, I won't sell you the car at all... I'm under no obligations to you at all...And as for your bothering me about it at lunch time I won't stand for that at all!\" (Fitzgerald, 76). Tom was being extremely cruel at that moment because Wilson needed the money that would come from the car and Tom didn't care. There were times when Tom lost his temper when people didn‘t obey him. When Myrtle Wilson started shouting Daisy's name (she said that she could say it whenever she wanted to), Tom broke her nose. Later in the novel Tom couldn't stand it when he realized that his wife and mistress were slipping from his control. He confronted Gatsby in the hotel and said, \"I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that's the idea then you can count me out\" (Fitzgerald, 103). Later, he ordered Daisy to go home with Tom. That was how he handled the situation.

Tom also valued aesthetics, which meant tasteful or sensitive to beauty. That is not to say that his actions were very tasteful, but that he acted like man of high class and good taste. He bought extravagant things such as a bunch of polo ponies or a $350 000 string of pearls for Daisy. He was concerned with what he saw as the loss of his own high status and was the perfect example of \"old money\". He was extremely pompous: he married the girl that everyone wanted and when he did that he came from Chicago\" with a hundred people in four private cars and hired a whole floor of the Seelbach Hotel\"( Hu Yintong, 47). Tom valued expensive things that were both beautiful and tasteful. But he didn‘t cherish them spiritually.

Tom also valued morality, but it didn‘t practice in fact. He condemned the affair between Daisy and Gatsby and even claimed that it was a step toward the eventual

collapse of society and inter-racial marriage: \"Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white\"(Ward.Affred C, 34). Tom was the ultimate hypocrite: he condemned his wife's affair but had no qualms about his own infidelity. He even admited, \"Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool out of myself, but I have always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time\"( Fitzgerald, 79) What kind of a person preached about the decline of society, using his wife's infidelity as proof and yet didn‘t blame his own actions.

Tom was a very wealthy person in that period. He had his own mind and life style. He wanted to do everything he liked to do, never consider other‘s feeling. His values were all shallow and in his own self interest.

Daisy Buchanan was Tom's 23-year-old wife, Nick's second cousin, and Gatsby's version of the Holy Grail. Daisy was an empty figure, a woman with neither strong desires nor beliefs. Even before her loyalty to either Tom or Gatsby was put to the test, Daisy did nothing but sat around all day and wondered what to do with herself. She knew that Tom had a mistress on the side, yet hesitated to leave him even when she learned of Gatsby‘s devotion to her. Daisy professed her love to Gatsby, yet cannot bring herself to tell Tom goodbye except at Gatsby‘s insistence. Even then, once Tom plead with her to stay. Daisy quickly changed her mind and ultimately left Gatsby for a life of comfort and security. She didn‘t know and didn‘t care what the real love was. She just wanted a shallow rich and comfortable life.

Daisy was a trapped woman. She was trapped in a marriage that she was unhappy in and trapped in a world where she had no chance to be free or independent. Nick commented repeatedly on Daisy's voice, first describing it as \"the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again,\" (Wu Ninkun, 43) and later calling it \"a deathless song\" (Guo Jide, 163). Yet, her voice become silenced as Gatsby and Tom's battle for her escalates -- rather than choosing one or the other outright she acted helpless, seeming to ultimately remain with Tom because it was the easiest thing to do.

Daisy‘s real image was different from Gatsby‘s mental image. Her rendering of the

American Dream was that she wanted to live comfortable life with money. Only this can let her feel secure and happy. To do this her marriage choices were limited to men with money, preferably with old inherited money, the type that prestige accompanied. Daisy was a superficial character who considered happiness more of a physical state than a mental state when she was talking about her daughter and what she said when she was born: \"that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool\"(Fitzgerald, 44), this showed how Daisy thought about life and how happiness can be bought by having money and being fooled with it. But the results of her dream and the methods she used to accomplish her dream led to the unhappiness of her marriage, when she again had the chance to capture happiness. When Jay Gatsby expressed his love for her, and wanted to help Daisy get rid of the trapped marriage, she hesitated and at the end she rejected. In fact, Daisy‘s dream can not lead her to happy life. If Daisy had indeed been concerned with happiness, as was implied throughout the novel, then she would not be as concerned with money as she obviously was - she would have waited for Gatsby to come back from the war and not have married Tom. The moral decadence and carelessness of the American dream was illustrates accurately in Daisy to be a love betrayer. The killing of Myrtle and her abandonment of Gatsby just before and after his death can further show her selfishness and carelessness. The fact that she ran over Myrtle without stopping and did not have the bravery to tell Tom showed how Daisy was always thinking of herself and never consider other‘s feelings. But the most hateful thing was that she never acknowledges that she, not Gatsby, was driving when Myrtle was killed. She had become very much wrapped up in herself. Part of this was due to the fact that she had been spoiled all her life. She was born into money and married with a man with lots of money. It is obvious that it was money that spoiled her.

The word ―careless‖ summed up the characters of Tom and Daisy. Tom was not worried about hurting Daisy so he flaunted his relationship with Myrtle, his mistress. Daisy, not only killed Myrtle and left her alone but also never acknowledged the fact that it was her to kill Myrtle. Daisy and Tom showed how people could use their position to look down upon others and lived their life carelessly. Nick referred to Tom, and Daisy as careless in one form or another. As Nick said about Daisy, ―in a moment

she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged‖(Fitzgerald, 112). In fact, Daisy and Tom need not worry about such things because they were superior to other people. Nick saw it as a kind of carelessness. ―They were careless people, Tom and Daisy----they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness…‖(Yang Renjing, 249). They can use their wealth and position to escape whatever they had done.

Tom and Daisy lived the decadent life of the roaring twenties. They were selfish people and did not worry about paying for their actions so they did as they please.

But in Fitzgerald‘s novel, did they live happy life? They lost their purpose in life as material achievements deleted all meaningful goals. The Buchanans were great characters to choose to represent this point. Their sheltered lives, filled with material possessions and luxuries, tended to lose sight on what was truly important in life. Daisy's lamentation was very characteristic of this: \"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?\" (Fitzgerald, 109) Nick realized that Tom and Daisy represented a class of heartless citizens who had attained success at the cost of dehumanization. ―Their vast wealth blocks out all inspiration and all true emotion, resulting in a void of apathy buttressed by status and power.‖ (Lehan Richard, 25) The Buchanans were the ultimate examples of wealth and prosperity, the embodiment of the rich life of the American Dream, yet their life were empty, unfulfilled, and without purpose. B. Myrtle Wilson’s American Dream

Myrtle Wilson was another woman wanted to change her own life. Myrtle was George Wilson's wife, and Tom Buchanan's secret lover. A woman in her mid-thirties, Myrtle was \"faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can\" (Fitzgerald, 233). Myrtle, as almost a coconspirator with Tom, was to blame for the unhappiness of her own marriage with George and Tom's marriage with Daisy. Her dream of riches and of belonging to the social elite led to her actions to be a lover of Tom. She betrayed her marriage with George and wanted to live a rich life, hence she can achieve happiness. In Myrtle‘s mind, it can be said that living with George was no

happiness at all. Thus, she fell in love with Tom, a man stood for money, power, and materialism.

She apparently detested her husband, but her lover, Tom, abused her, breaking her nose during their drunken escapade in New York City. Tom took liberties with her as he likes. After her infidelities were found out, she was locked in her room by George. Then she escaped into the night, only to be run over by Daisy driving Gatsby's yellow car. Her death prompted George Wilson to undertake his bloody \"holocaust\" (Danied, 73).

So how can Myrtle feel happy? Maybe the only comfort was that she had more money than before. She tried to join Tom‘s class by entering into an affair with him and taking on his way of living, but in doing so, she become vulgar and corrupt like the rich. She lost all sense of morality and was scornful of people of her own class. Her constant clothing changes signified her dissatisfaction with her life—she changed personalities every time she changed her dress: ―with the influence of the dress her whole personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality was converted into impressive hauteur‖ (Fitzgerald, 148). She treated the elevator boy in her apartment building with disdain: ―Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. ‗These people! You have to keep after them all the time.‘‖ (Fitzgerald, 150) In Myrtle Wilson‘s life, she made an attempt to escape her own class and pursued money and happiness.

Myrtle‘s dream of entering the high class can not be realized. The American ideals are different from the actual social conditions. For the American constitutions stands for the freedom and equality among people, but the truth of the matter is that social discrimination still exists and the grouping among the classes can never be overcome.

At the end of story, Fitzgerald revealed the tragedy of Myrtle Wilson. Myrtle Wilson made an attempt to join Tom‘s class, but ultimately her efforts produced no results, and even her lover Tom, also had no responsibility at all. Her dream crushed completely.

C. Jay Gatsby’s American Dream

Well, Let‘s go to see the hero—Gatsby. Jay Gatsby: born the son of poor

middle-western farmers, Gatsby \"sprang from his Platonic conception of himself\" (Sheng Nin, 64). Gatsby's beginnings occurred when the 17-year-old Gatsby -- a clam digger and salmon fisher -- saw millionaire Dan Cody's yacht drop anchor on a dangerous stretch of Lake Superior. After rowing out to Cody on a borrowed row-boat and warning him that a coming wind might wreck his yacht, Cody employed Jay Gatsby in a \"vague personal capacity\" (Zhu hong, 113) for several years. Later, Gatsby said he worked in the drugstore and oil businesses, omitting the fact that he was involved in illegal bootlegging. Gatsby kept his criminal activities mysterious throughout the novel, preferring to play the role of perpetually gracious host. Gatsby bought his West Egg mansion with the sole intention of being across the bay from Daisy Buchanan's green light at the end of her dock, a fantasy which became Gatsby's personal version of the American Dream.

These were what Jay Gatsby wanted to do to show Daisy that he was rich. When Gatsby was in the army, he met an arrogant nurse named Daisy. He fell in love with her and she promised to marry him before he went for war. However, Daisy in a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful high classed, young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby and married Tom because Tom was wealthier. Leaving for war, Gatsby knew that he had to get wealthy to be together with Daisy again. In order to win Daisy back, he bought a mansion at the west egg, and hold parties to show his wealth and generosity.

Gatsby's primary ideological shortcoming was that he makes Daisy Buchanan his belief in \"the orgastic future\"( Zhu hong, 113). His previously varied aspirations (for example, by the book Gatsby's father showed Nick detailing his son's resolutions to improve himself) were sacrificed for Gatsby's single-minded obsession with Daisy's green light at the end of her dock. Even Gatsby realized the first time he kissed Daisy that once he \"forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God\" (Fitzgerald, 16).

In order to win Daisy back, like Myrtle did, Gatsby fought to fit himself into another social group, the one of old money, but that was doomed to fail. He was looked down upon by Tom, he was rejected by Daisy, and at last, he became the victim and

died. His American Dream was smashed completely.

To understand Jay Gatsby, we have to look at not only his true life, but the life that he tried to create for himself. Like Tom, Daisy, and Myrtle, he wanted to change his life. He wanted to possess Daisy and be happy by acquiring great wealth. He came from poor beginnings and created a fantasy world where he was rich and powerful. Even in his youth Gatsby was not content with what he had. He wanted money, so he managed to get it. He wanted Daisy, and she slipped through his fingers. Even when his wealth and stature were at their greatest, he was not content. He must have Daisy. Yes, there was love. But more than that there was a desire to possess her because that was what he wanted for all of those years. She was part of his image for the future and he had to have her. And although Gatsby seemed very kind, he was not afraid to be unscrupulous to get what he wanted. Gatsby seemed to think nothing of earning his money by illicit means.

Yes, Gatsby succeeded to be wealthy enough, but, was his dream valuable? His idealistic view of Daisy Buchanan was a conflict with the image of Daisy in the life of reality. Over the course of five years, Gatsby had built Daisy up in his mind to be the perfect woman, someone that the actual Daisy could never measure up to: ―no amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart‖ (Fitzgerald, 92).Daisy cannot help but fall short of Gatsby‘s dream, and so Gatsby was disappointed that the woman he loved did not exist as he imagines her to be. However, Gatsby‘s dream collapsed when he failed to win Daisy and was ultimately rejected by the higher social group. Wealth can not help him and through a bullet from George Wilson‘s gun he was killed physically. Gatsby died spiritually when Daisy chose Tom over him. His dream crushed completely. The failure of Gatsby‘s ideals was directly related to the failure of the American Dream in that it was destroyed by reality, in this case, by the reality of Daisy‘s rejection.

IV. Reasons for the disillusionment of the Great Gatsby’s American Dream A. The Great Gatsby and the corruption of society

In fact, during the 1920s, the acquisition of material had been equated with happiness in the country. The majority of Americans believed that wealth and

happiness were the same. ―The 20‘s was an age of a consumption ethic that was needed to provide markets for the new commodities that streamed from the production lines (Cowley, 53). While Michael Lerner said :―The problem is that the deprivation of meaning is a social problem, rooted in part in the dynamics of the competitive marketplace, in part in the materialism and selfishness that receive social sanction…many Americans hunger for a different kind of society—one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity…Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security.‖ (Lerner, 90)

Having lots of things is not what makes humans happy.

Tom and Daisy, belonged to the noble and wealthy society who possessed a lot of ―old money‖, but they were not satisfied with their life. They didn‘t pressure what they had, didn‘t respect and even hurt the people around them. Although they had wealth and power, they had no love. And of course, they can not be happy.

Myrtle Wilson was a woman who wanted to join Tom‘s society. She betrayed her husband and became the lover of Tom, because in her mind, this can help her be wealthy, thus she can live a happy life. But she was wrong; Tom could beat her whenever he wanted to. Even after her death, Tom wasn‘t very sad and didn‘t care.

Jay Gatsby had all the trappings of wealth: a huge mansion, fancy clothes, and expensive cars. His lavish, decadent parties were designed to impress Daisy. But why did Gatsby feel he needed to flaunt his material wealth to win Daisy‘s love? Why was he so materialistic? Are material possessions what human need to be happy? Gatsby were engrossed in the pursuit of private wealth. He flaunted his material possessions in order to impress Daisy, but was he happy? Even if he had lived and won Daisy back, true fulfillment would come to them both only when they realized ―the need to switch from an ethos of selfishness to an ethos of caring‖ (Lerner, 90). Material belongings are not what he needed to be truly happy.

The 1920‘s was an era of ―mindless materialism and consumption and the pursuit of private wealth over public purpose‖(Denton, 132). Literary critic Marius Bewley suggested that Jay Gatsby was ―the ‗mythic‘ embodiment of the American dream‖ (Bewley, 29) and that ―…the terrible deficiencies are not so much the private

deficiencies of Gatsby, but are deficiencies inherent in contemporary manifestations of the American vision itself…Gatsby‘s deficiencies of intelligence and judgment bring him to his tragic death----a death that is spiritual as well as physical. But the more important question that faces us through our sense of the immediate tragedy is where (these deficiencies) have brought America.‖ (Bewley, 29) The very definition of materialism implied unhappiness because without spiritual values there cannot be true and lasting fulfillment.

At the last, the death of a rich man and a poor man, both pushing themselves towards the same impossible goal, mirrored the death of the original dream on which America was founded. ―At the end of the novel, Nick returns to the Midwest with this disconcerting knowledge, reflecting on Gatsby‘s life as the struggle of the American people in a society losing its humanity.‖ (Magill, 59) ―So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past‖ (Fitzgerald, 105). The dream now utterly lost and can never be resurrected.

B. The Great Gatsby and the fall of the American Dream

The novel is an exploration of the American Dream as it exists in a corrupt period of history. The 1920's were a time of corruption and the degradation of moral values for the United States. The fall of the American Dream is the moral decadence of people. In essence, spiritual improvements are concomitant with material improvements. They are mutually complementary. However, with the material part too easily achieved (perhaps thanks to the emergence of a new concept called 'easy money' –the illegal bootleggings), people begin to lose their spiritual purpose as material achievements blindfold people's spiritual aspirations. As a consequence, the society shows a decline in spiritual life of its inhabitants, and their lives become lacking in meaning and ideal.

One sign of the fall of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby was the way Gatsby made his money. Gatsby got his fortune through the illegal sale of alcohol. The sale of alcohol was prohibited in the United States in the 1920s. Gatsby came from the western United States. There he met Dan Cody who taught him how to 'bootleg.' Gatsby acquired large amount of money but he had never felt guilty. It is

obvious to see in that period, getting money no matter what the means were was a behooving thing. Although Gatsby became wealthy, he lost his conscience.

The fall of the American Dream also represented in that Gatsby wanted to win love through money. As Gatsby became richer he moved to West Egg in New York. Gatsby's house was a rather artificial place, the house was originally built to impress Daisy with his so-called wealth, and this was a sign of a corrupt way of winning love through money and wealth. Gatsby's house was furnished well with old looking ornaments. Gatsby's house also had a library which was full of 'uncut' literature. The conversation between Jordan and an unnamed man at one of Gatsby's parties talked about the books: \"Absolutely real - have real pages and everything. I'd thought they'd be a nice durable cardboard.\" (Parker Peter, 63)These books and antiques were just Gatsby's way of showing off his wealth to others, however Gatsby didn‘t really care for materialism, we can tell this because his bedroom, the only room he really used, was empty compared to the rest of the house. Although Gatsby did all these things just for Daisy, he eventually failed. Gatsby‘s actions were so shallow that failed to win true love. Jay Gatsby believed he can buy Daisy; he was an excellent personification of someone trying to buy the American Dream. But it never works.

The fall of the American Dream was also evident in the position and treatment of children in the story, Daisy and Tom's daughter, Pammy, was treated as an object to show off rather than a child to love. \"The child, relinquished by the nurse, rushed across the room and rooted shyly into her mother's dress.\" (Fitzgerald, 107) The child did not know her mother very well and was still very shy to go near her. Gatsby had never really known of the existence of Daisy's child, as Daisy was probably afraid to tell him about her. \"Afterward he kept looking at the child in surprise. I don't think he had ever really believed it it's existence before.\" (Fitzgerald, 107) The word it instead of her also denoted the child's position as nil. Daisy used the child as a show item: \"I got dressed before luncheon\" (Fitzgerald, 108) said the child, turning eagerly towards Daisy. \"That's because your mother wanted to show you off\" (Fitzgerald,109) replied Daisy. When the child spoke to Daisy, Daisy never answered or replied to her. Daisy always changed the subject as if she didn‘t even notice the child was there. For

example, when the girl commented Jordan's dress, Daisy ignored her and asked her what she thought about her friends: \"Aunt Jordan's got on a white dress too\child. \"How do you like mother's friends?\" Replied Daisy. Also: \"Where's daddy?\Said the child. \"She doesn't look like her father\" explained Daisy. 'Daddy' (Tom) was also never around, he was not there when his child was born. Daisy thought that Tom was 'brutish' and she had never really liked him.

The fall of the American Dream was obviously illustrated by the ending of the story. Tom and Daisy escaped after the accident happened, leaving all the sufferings to others. They went on their wealthy yet meaningless life. Myrtle Wilson died without Tom‘s care. She can not image that her dream would crush so quickly and so meaninglessly. Jay Gatsby, the hero of this novel, died so undeserved that he was regarded as the murderer of Myrtle.

V. Conclusion

The final line of The Great Gatsby ―So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.‖ is one of the most famous in American literature, and serves as a sort of epitaph for both Gatsby and the novel as a whole. America, according to Fitzgerald, was founded on the ideals of progress and equality. The America envisioned by its founders was a land made for men like Gatsby: it was intended as a place where visionary dreamers could thrive. Instead, people like Tom and Daisy Buchanan have recreated the grotesqueries and excesses of the European aristocracy in the New World. Gatsby, for all his wealth and greatness, could not become a part of their world; his noble attempt to engineer his own destiny was sabotaged by their cruelty and by the stunted quality of their imaginations. Fitzgerald's America is emphatically not a place where anything is possible: just as America has failed to transcend its European origins, Gatsby, too, cannot overcome the circumstances of his upbringing. It is important to note that the Buchanans lived in East Egg, and Gatsby in West Egg; therefore, in gazing at the green light on Daisy's dock, Gatsby was looking East. The green light, like the green land of America itself, was once a symbol of hope; now, the original ideals of the American dream have

deteriorated into the crass pursuit of wealth. In committing his extraordinary capacity for dreaming to his love for Daisy, Gatsby, too, devoted himself to nothing more than material gain. In Fitzgerald's grim version of the Roaring Twenties, Gatsby's ruin both mirrors and prefigures the ruin of America itself.

The Great Gatsby is a great portrayal of the corruption of society and the fall of the American Dream. This book is a perfect example of the American Dream in the 1920s. In it, all the characters seek to change their lives for the better, they each have their own aspirations for their own life but they revolve around money and the effects that wealth has on their style of life. And then Fitzgerald shows the collapse of dreams, whether they are dreams of money, status, or simply of happiness. The biggest collapse, however, is of the American Dream. The failure of the American Dream is unavoidable. It is eventually crushed beneath the harsh reality of life. The corruption of the American Dream itself, is inescapable, not only because reality is never the same as the greatness of ideals, but because, the ideals are too perfect to become a reality. The American Dream is just that, a dream.

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