F. Scott Fitzgerald was a veteran of WWI, and was part of the Lost Generation, and that colors his beliefs about the American dream and society. He portrays rich Jay Gatsby who is pursuing American Dream as desiring to reclaim the past: “‘I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,’ he said, nodding determinedly. ‘She’ll see.’”(Fitzgerald, 118) Tom Buchanan, another person pursuing the American Dream frequently and blatantly cheats on his wife: “‘You mean to say you don’t know?’ said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. ‘I thought everybody knew.’ ‘I don’t.’ ‘Why——’ she said hesitantly, ‘Tom’s got some woman in New York.’”(18) In The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests, through his portrayal of Jay Gatsby and the people in his life, that pursuing the American dream will often leave you empty and unfulfilled. For example, Jay Gatsby, a man pursuing the American Dream, is obsessed with repeating his past with Daisy Buchanan, even though she is currently married. He pines for her and buys the house across from hers ‘...so that Daisy would be just across the bay.’(85) When Gatsby first fell in love with Daisy: “...he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe … that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact he had … no comfortable family standing behind him and he was liable... to be blown anywhere about the world.”(159) He was pursuing the unattainable, and would end up devoting his life to reclaim it. So he attempts to change the circumstances. Gatsby works hard to become as rich as Daisy, and buys a mansion and other possessions in order to impress her. Gatsby throws large parties in an attempt to meet her, but is unsuccessful. He ends up needing the help of the narrator, Nick Carraway, in order to get re-introduced. He attempts to force her to say she never loved her husband, and to say that she loved him always, however, this ends fruitlessly. Gatsby
