Theme of The Great Gatsby

The major theme of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby is the American Dream, but Fitzgerald's concept of the American Dream is not success, riches and social status achieved through hard work, courage and determination - the Horatio Alger myth - but the dark side of the Dream. Although the protagonist, Jay Gatsby, does rise from poverty to riches to achieve the American Dream of improving one's station in life, he also serves as an example of the corruption and decay of the American Dream. Fitzgerald views the hope and optimism of the early American Dream disintegrating during the 1920s Jazz Age because of a lack of morals in pursuing riches (Jay Gatsby's situation) and a lack of morals in those already possessing riches and social status (Tom and Daisy Buchanan). Fitzgerald's American Dream is an empty one, a Dream that destroys.

Critic Marius Bewley contends, "the theme of Gatsby is the withering of the American dream" (11). The American Dream, according to Bewley is "life on a level at which the material and the spiritual have become inextricably confused" (27). In the time period Fitzgerald wrote the novel success had become defined by materialism and consumerism; the American Dream was promoted through advertisements forgoing morality for consumption. Jay Gatsby's quest for materialism and the woman of his dreams, Daisy, is ultimately an empty journey because material objects are impermanent, consumed and short-lived. Lacking the balance provided by cr

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