The Great Gatsby by Matt Fitzgerald is turing out to be a really good novel. I noticed a lot of aspects of the novel suggesting toward the theme of American Dream. I am currently still reading the novel and almost done with it so Im just going to have to take a stab at what the theme and the plot of the novel must be. The plot of the novel so far is about the main character, Nick, moving to New York from Minnesota in order to learn. He is a graduate from Yale and first visits his college friend in New York named Tom. Later in the novel Nick gets invited to numerous parties in his neighbors Gatsby’s house throughout the summer. Gatsby claims that he is also a WWI veteran just as Nick. Later on In the novel Gatsby takes Nick to lunch to tell him something however once Nick runs into Tom, Gatsby disappears. Nick later learns that Gatsby had set the summer parties in order for Daisy to stop so he can impress her, but she never.
Based on how far I have read so far I noticed that the theme of the Great Gatsby could be the ending of the American Dream in America. There are several clues that the author provided to help me just to the conclusion. The main part was how crime made people rich in the 1920’s era which indicates that the American Dream is starting to fall apart due to individuals coming to America in order to make a make lots of money. The American Dream was devoted to people living a good peaceful life where they can become whoever they want to be, instead Fitzgerald suggests highlights how many people that came stated getting involved in crime, such as the man Nick and Gatsby meet who had fixed the world series, in order capitalize on the opportunity to become rich. Overall the felling that Fitzegerald hints at the decline of American Dream was emphasized how the people focused on being wealthy with material things and having a good time, while they lost the values that have made America in the first place a land of opportunity.
A part of the novel that I thought may have hinted on how we a nation of many nationalities was when Nick described the summer parties he had at Gatsby’s house where he stated all the people that came to the parties. Fitzgerald took up several pages of the novel where he named the people who had came to the parties and which part of New York they had come from. This indicated to me that the author tried to highlight the diversity in America. Another aspect that I gathered from the novel so far was how New York in a way represents the decline of American Dream and formation of new values such as pleasure and money while the West seems to be connected to the traditional American values. Overall I am looking forward to completing this book tonight and so far it is turning out to be an intriguing novel.
Pasha,
ReplyDeleteI’m glad you made it thru the rest of Gatsby Saturday morning! I’d like to comment on your initial assessment of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby as it relates to the American Dream. I think you’re right on the money (pun intended) in noticing this major theme of the novel. When I first read Gatsby, for some reason I was thinking the book was written after the Great Depression. I thought Fitzgerald’s commentary on our nation’s period of overconsumption and greed was written with the benefit of hindsight. It’s fascinating to think that it was published in 1925, several years prior to the stock market crash. The more I think about the novel, the more impressed I become with Fitzgerald.
The real American Dream, in its purest from - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, was still alive and well in 1925, and I believe, is still alive and well in 2009. However, shortly after we, as a nation transformed our geographical boundaries, there was also a transformation, or better yet, an annexation of the Dream. The liberties we enjoyed were no longer enough. We wanted more. The American Dream suddenly included a life of luxury and social status. Fitzgerald obviously takes this watered down version of the Dream to task. Myrtle Wilson became a consumer of the new Dream, and eventually a victim of it. She was married to a man that loved her, who wanted to save her. Myrtle wanted more, and was run over literally and symbolically by the Dream she chased.
There will always be varying degrees of wealth in American society. Some (see Bill Gates) will accumulate wealth thru the type of innovation that made our country great, and will be responsible and charitable. Some (see Paris Hilton) will inherit wealth and never do anything particularly great with it. For the rest of us, the real American Dream needs to be enough.
Matt
Wow, Pasha! Awesome post. Matt has a really great response too. I'll try to get up to the same caliber.
ReplyDeleteWhile I definitely understand how one could read The Great Gatsby as an anecdote for the end of the America Dream, it came across to me more as a harsh critique on a then thriving American Dream. I contribute this largely to the timeframe in which the novel was written. For Fitzgerald to scold 1920s' high society only five years into the decade shows me that he had a lot to say on current events.
Here is an article in The Wasington Post wherein a Fitzgerald critic and scholar is interviewed about many of F. Scott's works, including The Great Gatsby (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/08/26/DI2005082601396.html). Something I find fascinating is that this scholar believes many of the characters in The Great Gatsby were based off of people Fitzgerald knew in real life;
"Daisy was based on both Ginevra King (FSF's first real love) and on Zelda Sayre, his wife. Jordan Baker was based on Edith Cummings, a golf champion and a friend of Ginevra's. Nick was based on FSF himself, or on a part of him, though Gatsby resembles FSF as well."
with this in mind, The Great Gatsby takes on a much more personal tone. Perhaps the satirical take on the wealthy and shallow was such because he had personal experience with these types of people. From there, the events in the book can be seen in an entirely different light. If Gatsby were really, in some way, a represation of F. Scott himself then what meaning does Jay Gatsby's death take on? Or Nick's outsider perspective on all of these people F. Scott potentially knew in real life?
It is impossible to measure exactly how far F. Scott was propelled by real-life inspiration versus the shape the novel was taking, but I believe it does provide the reader with a new angle from which to view the American Dream as described in The Great Gatsby. Perhaps the novel wasn't necessarily the critique on a poisonous dream afflicting the whole country, but instead Gatsby's hollow rise to wealth and abrupt withdrawl was more intimately a recollection of F. Scott's own personal brush with high society and his disdain for it thereafter.