The major theme of F. Scott FitzgeraldÆs 1925 novel The Great Gatsby is the American Dream, but FitzgeraldÆs concept of the American Dream is not success, riches and social status achieved through hard work, courage and determination û the Horatio Alger myth û 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 oneÆs 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 GatsbyÆs situation) and a lack of morals in those already possessing riches and social status (Tom and Daisy Buchanan). FitzgeraldÆs American Dream is an empty one, a Dream that destroys.
Critic Marius Bewley contends, ôthe theme of Gatsby is the withering of the American dreamö (11). The American Dream, according to Bewley is ôlife on a level at which the material and the spiritual have become inextricably confusedö (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 GatsbyÆs 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 creativity and spiritual values, the dream creates ôan American world that denies the soulö (Bewley 26).
Fitzgerald uses the character of Gatsby to comment on the false values of the society in which he lives. On the one hand, Gatsby strives to belong to the upper class society of East Egg, while on the other hand, he is alienated from that society. He is a romantic illusion of the American Dream, a dream corrupted by the materialism of the 1920s....