preview

Great Gatsby Corruptness

Decent Essays

For the people who don’t live in America, but wish to migrate and create a new life in America, their main motivation is the American dream. People describe the dream as being all US citizens have an equal opportunity to gain success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the corruptness of the “American dream” through Jay Gatsby, a rich man with a more than shady background regarding how he came to be in the West Egg of New York. Consequently, the American dream during the 1920s, as Fitzgerald exemplifies, has turned into a competition among the people for status and wealth, with no such thought of gaining happiness in the process. Furthermore, Fitzgerald illustrates the corruptness of the …show more content…

Although, even at an early age, “his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all” (98), he disowned his own parents and truly believed he was worth more than working at the docks of Lake Superior and this was not going to be his life. As a result, wealth seems to be the solution to his problems and, “He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty…and to this conception he was faithful to the end” (98). What is key about Gatsby’s vision for his future is that he wants a meretricious life, one that might be appealing on the outside, yet is really lacking value and integrity in underneath the surface. Gatsby, coming from a poor background, does not fully understand the consuming power of wealth, and he simply forgets the idea of finding happiness and prosperity in his success, to only mask himself with this misleading idea of being

Get Access