The+Unattainable+Reality+of+The+American+Dream

Jacob Weiss Kaplan E March 11, 2012 The Unattainable Reality of The American Dream

“Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men” (Fitzgerald, 2).

Jay Gatsby represents the American Dreamer; a man who believed that he could go from “rags to riches” and have the same privileges as someone coming from an upper class upbringing. His dream is suppressed and reduced not only by his actions, but also the society around him. He may be focused and determined to relive his past life with Daisy, but on top of that the men that surrounded him all but diminish his chances of living his dream. Gatsby was an all right guy; he just loved too much and surrounded himself with unpleasant, passionless people. It was these people that in the end Daisy associated herself with: the rich, passionless, upper class men who Gatsby was not genuinely like. For example, Daisy ran off with Tom Buchanan, a rich, white supremacist. The fairy-tale love story that Gatsby dreamed of represented the dream that we Americans sometimes create, dreams that seldom come true because society doesn’t allow them.

Gatsby goes from “rags to riches” financially, but he is far from being accepted socially. For example, no one shows up to his funeral. People can go from being poor to extremely rich, but here’s the catch: the upper class must accept you socially in order for that to matter at all. People adored his luxurious assets like his house, but few understood or cared for the man. All these people used his house as a meeting ground, a revolving door of social gatherings. His house was what made him special to most people, not his personal qualities. It wasn’t like Gatsby was a dull, boring and bad man, and yet, outside of Nick and Daisy, no one made an effort to understand him. People only speculated about him and failed to get to know him. People like Gatsby can dream all they want. They can dream that they can one day become rich and be accepted as an upper class individual. But, these are just dreams, for in reality money isn’t the only thing that separates the upper class from the rest, where you begin your life overshadows where you end; if you are born poor, good luck becoming an esteemed upper class individual.

In the upper class point of view, Gatsby is not the great man that he strives to be. Even though he is wealthy and popular, people like Tom Buchanan still don’t accept Gatsby into the upper class. To Tom, Gatsby is still “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” (Fitzgerald, 130). He may be the king of parties, the ultimate lover and beyond wealthy, but the path he took to obtain his money overshadows his present situation. He is still a poor boy who became rich through dirty money and isn’t accepted by upper class people like Tom. Tom sees newly rich people as “just big bootleggers” (Fitzgerald, 107). Tom makes the generalization that the only way a common man could equal Tom’s wealth is by breaking the law. This represents the upper class mentality. They struggle to accept “rags to riches” stories. The only person who is able to accept Gatsby is Nick. To Nick, Gatsby “turned out all right” (Fitzgerald, 2). Nick doesn’t think that Gatsby is a nobody. Gatsby is a genuine, loving man. To Nick, he is all right because unlike everyone else around him, Gatsby is driven by love. He became a wealthy man in order to appeal to Daisy. He even bought a house that was close to Daisy and put a green light on her dock so that he could always know where she was. He did all of this without her even knowing. All that he built in life his was for a woman that was already married. When he finally saw her “he literally glowed” (Fitzgerald, 89). It’s the people that surrounded Gatsby that overshadowed his genuine drive for love. Their actions are driven by money and social status. They plagued his genuine dream for Daisy.

It wasn’t Gatsby’s actions that stopped him from fulfilling his American Dream (Gatsby structured his whole life around fulfilling it); it was what worked on him that stopped Gatsby. In his case and most likely the case of many other aspiring American Dreamers, society stopped him from making his dream become a reality. The “foul dust” of reality preyed on Gatsby’s dream (Fitzgerald, 2). The “foul dust” was the people that surrounded him. Of no coincidence, those around him were all white, rich, and upper class people (Fitzgerald, 2). Nick saw all of this; he saw how genuine Gatsby was in his pursuit; he saw how people around Gatsby filled his world with “foul dust”; and all of this disgusted Nick to the point that he grew weary of the affairs of mankind (Fitzgerald, 2).

Gatsby represents the American Dreamer and his struggle to make his dream a reality. We Americans are always striving to progress, to be better people and to do better things. We are never satisfied because we are always dreaming. Our dreams are genuine, but we are never truly able to grasp them. We build them up and dwell on them. Our dream must be perfect; perfection alone makes dreams unattainable. In this sense, the American Dream has not changed in the last eighty-six years. It still holds the fairy-tale qualities that Gatsby’s dream has. People want to be the best they can be and do the best they can. They dream of a remarkable future, but in most cases the dream is so remarkable that it is unattainable. In the sense that society stops the American Dreamer, little has changed in the past eighty-six years. Upper class white individuals are still the most capable of making their dreams a reality. They are still the “dominant-dreamers”. There are still very few “rags to riches” stories; society is still more accustom to “riches to riches”. __Works Cited__ Fitzgerald, F. Scott. //The Great Gatsby//. New York: Scribner, 2004.