Great Gatsby Rhetorical Analysis

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The Great Gatsby was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s way of communicating to us what his deliberation of the American dream was; he implied that the American dream was illusory and nonexistent, however the American dream is undeniably present. One of the first major examples of the American dream is Benjamin Franklin; he went from “rags to riches” [1]. After Benjamin Franklin set the trendy goal in the financial field, it all went uphill, everyone was trying to get rich. Fitzgerald’s suggestion that the American dream was unreal is incorrect because, human nature makes us jealous, which makes us want to work hard enough to get what other people have or more, and when somebody’s dream is meaningful enough to them, they will do almost anything to make …show more content…
Humans compete for everything; for example, the kid with the highest grade in the class will brag to their friends, and the person with the second highest score will work harder in hopes to get a higher grade than the other person. When a person yearns for something because they saw it with someone else they are most likely to be covetous and think about only that thing until they get it, in most cases people are yearning for money. However, in The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s jealousy isn’t money, it is a girl, he wanted the results of the American dream to make him look good enough for Daisy. “The most obvious indicator of the relentless competition to declare one’s status . . . came to the size and amenities of their homes” or the way to prove yourself to everyone else you should have the biggest house to make everyone jealous and show you have money [2]. Jealousy is one of the main motivations to competition within the human race, so it is no wonder it caused people to sacrifice what they little the people of the 1920s had to make it …show more content…
If the dream is not meaningful to its dreamer, it will not become a goal with motivation behind it; which disappointingly would mean that it does not actually become what you want. One example of a meaningful dream that became a goal is Martin Luther King’s dream, he had to share his dream. When he shared his dream it became meaningful to not just him, but, a group of people. For this dream, it is what it needed to become a goal; then it was not just a dream, but a goal with the motivation to actually be achieved. Martin Luther King “yearned for what he perceived as perfection”, since then students have “recognized widely varying conceptions of these quests for American excellence” [3]. Fitzgerald’s perception of the American dream is that it was just a dream without the meaningfulness to become a goal; however, the American dream is a shared dream, and for many people in the 1920s it was a meaningful dream that became a
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