Jay Gatsby American Dream Failure

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Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian, said, “The American Dream is the charm of anticipated success.” The “American Dream” Tocqueville refers to is the ideal that Americans are able to achieve social and economic prosperity. In the novel, Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is committed to obtaining wealth and prosperity to earn Daisy’s fruitful love. His rags-to-riches success story embodies the American Dream. The obstacles faced throughout his journey reveal that the American Dream is ceaseless, and Jay Gatsby is always striving for more opportunities to entice Daisy. Overall, Jay Gatsby appears to achieve his American Dream, but his failure to find true love deters his motives for success and begs the question: is the …show more content…
However, this is a misconception, since there is no correlation between more income and more happiness. The increases in wealth have negligible effects on personal happiness. According to Nick Carraway, “Gatsby puts his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil” (Fitzgerald 145). Nick Carraway gave a clear visualization that Gatsby’s wealth did not acquire Daisy’s love. She resides with Tom Buchanan at their house, while Gatsby stands outside alone in the dark. His money did not pave of life of happiness that he once sought in his imagination. Money negatively consumed the life of Gatsby and, as a result, he did not conquer Daisy’s love. In the novel, Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Great Gatsby, Ernest Lockridge, the author, states, “The Great Gatsby is an exploration of the American Dream as it exists in a corrupt period and it is an attempt to determine that concealed boundary that divides the reality from the illusions.” Jay Gatsby was a delusional character who believes economic prosperity is a source of means of happiness and will attract Daisy. Moreover, Gatsby did not comprehend that happiness is an emotion that is priceless. Gatsby views Daisy as his future and states, “I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before” (Fitzgerald 110). His simplistic view reveals how …show more content…
Gatsby had money and his life he wanted, but he was never happy with what he had. Fitzgerald uses money as a main symbol of tearing apart relationships. Money was the goal for Gatsby but happiness was never earned through it. Money blinded Jay Gatsby in his American Dream and took over who he truly was. According to Edwin Moseley, the author of A Critical Essay, he states, “If he invents even a fabulous Eastern past for himself, if he wants to become one with Daisy who is East for him, if he thinks that the East is all silk shirts and big parties and “old sports,” his values are already misplaced. As Moseley stated, not only did his values change, but also his entire identity transformed to a man that was worthy of Daisy’s love. Moreover, Nick Carraway knew from an early age that Jay Gatsby had to a forge a new person to become a successful person as he states, “I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” (Fitzgerald
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