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Essay on Gatsbys Corruptive Nature
| Date: |
01-12-00 6:52am |
| Subject: |
English |
| Word Count: |
1108 |
| Page Count: |
4.43 |
Gatsby's Corruptive Nature
Gatsby's Corruptive Nature
The Great Gatsby , written by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a
portrayal of the withering of the American Dream. The American
Dream promises prosperity and self-fulfillment as rewards for
hard work and self-reliance. A product of the frontier and the
west, the American Dream challenges people to have dreams
and strive to make them real. Historically, the Dream represents
the image of believing in the goodness of nature. However, the
American Dream can be interpreted in different ways. While
some may strive for spiritual goodness and excellence, others
take the dream to represent purely materialistic values. This is
the case of Jay Gatsby, and Fitzgerald shows through conflict
and symbolism that such a materialistic interpretation of the
American Dream is the very cause of Gatsby's downfall.
Gatsbys personal dream symbolizes the larger American dream
where all have the opportunity to get what they want.(Prasad
Paragraph 3)
This blured version of the American Dream is represented
primarily by the conflict between the newly rich and the
established rich, the East Eggers and the West Eggers. West
Egg is the home of Jay Gatsby and those like him who have
made huge fortunes but who lack the traditions that come with
inherited wealth. The West Eggers live in a crude world, coming
from the adoption of wealth as their only standard in achieving
the American Dream. The East Eggers, represented in The Great
Gatsby by the Buchanans, have the inherited traditions that
come with wealth and lack the crudeness of the West Eggers.
They have been corrupted by the purposelessness and ease that
their money has provided. Due to their inherited traditions, the
East Eggers naturally regard any change in the social hierarchy
as a threat to the entire structure of society. An example of this
is shown when Tom Buchanan makes a remark about the
seperation of the family and eventual intermarriage between
black and white. The idea is if we don't look out the white race
will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been
proved. It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or
these other races will have control of things.(17) Thus, the
wealth of the West Eggers and that of the East Eggers result in
similar human differences, though shown differently. That is why
West Egg and East Egg, apppear so dissimilar, are identical.
They are both withering away from the promise of the American
Dream.
Another example of the corrupt American Dream is the
automobile, a classic symbol of material wealth in America. In
The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is obsessed with a life of
materialism. He owns a remarkable automobile whose
appearance is envied by many. It was a rich cream color, bright
with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with
triumphant hat-boxes and super-boxes and tool-boxes, and
terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen
suns.(68) Gatsby's car is an overblown item created by
wealth to fulfill the American Dream of personal material
success. It is, however, Gatsby's car that kills Myrtle Wilson
when Daisy runs her over. This indirectly leads to Gatsby's own
death and portrays Fitzgerald's theme that basing the Dream on
materialism alone is ultimately destructive.
Along with the automobile, Jay Gatsby himself is a symbol
of the corruption of the American Dream. He is a romantic
dreamer who seeks to fulfill his life by earning his wealth as a
mobster. Gatsby does not change much in the course of the
novel because his whole life is devoted to the fulfillment of a
romantic dream created that is inconsistent with the realities of
society. At a very early age Gatsby vowed to love and to marry
Daisy Buchanan. His lack of wealth led Daisy into the arms of
another more prosperous man, Tom Buchanan. Gatsby believed
that he could win Daisy back with money, and that he could get
the life she wanted if he paid for it. He wanted to do away with
time in order to obliterate the four years Tom and Daisy had
together. Gatsby wanted to repeat the past, I'm going to fix
everything just the way it was before. She'll see . . ..(117)
Gatsby's romantic disregard for reality changes the American
Dream with his dream that love can be recaptured if one can
make enough money. The corruption of Gatsby's dream by
adopting materialism as its means and love, beauty and youth as
its goal is due to the corruption of the American Dream.
Gatsby is not really respected and has no real friends, although a lot of people attends his parties. The people attending his parties are basically using him for his food, and great hospitality. Gatsby throws his parties for the company, and in his way he is also trying to sort-of trying to buy friends, and force people to spend time with him. Finally, Gatsby literally throws his money away on these extravagant parties because his money is easily made, and therefore, it is easily spent. (Bell Paragraph 2)
Nevertheless, the corruption of Gatsby's dream lies in the
dream itself, because the vision of a vast, vulgar, meretricious
beauty (104) which a 17-year old Jay Gatz invented, was the
same as the dream of grown-up Gatsby. As Nick remarks,
Gatsby's identity was based on a promise that the rock of the
world is founded on a fairy's wing. (105) His ideal fails
because of his romanticism, in which he believes that material
success is itself an ideal. Gatsby's physical death is only a
completion of the death of his spirit, when he fails to understand
in his essential adolescence that material possessions can
never live up to an ideal, and that any ideal can never enable him
to repeat the past. On the other hand, we could imagine, that
had Gatsby's life been given a different purpose, a true spiritual
ideal without confusion, he could have been a great man.
Fitzgerald's presentation of symbolism and conflict
expresses clearly that a life based on materialism alone is a
corruption rather than a fulfillment of the American Dream.
Gatsby's destruction shows that those who try to maintain a
lifestyle based purely on materialistic values are doomed by
their self-delusion. Thus, by analyzing Fitzgerald's presentation
and analysis in The Great Gatsby to America as a whole, one can
say that peoples thoughts and values are often misplaced in the
pursuit of material wealth.
Jay Gatsby, the central figure of the story, is one character who longs for the past. Surprisingly he devotes most of his adult life trying to recapture and, finally, dies in its pursuit. (Prasad Paragraph 2)
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