The Great GatsbyThe American Dream

United States Declaration of IndependenceDrafted by Thomas Jefferson

The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, - that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

[An extract from the American Declaration of Independence, by Thomas Jefferson]

To dream the impossible dreamTo fight the unbeatable foe

To bear with unbearable sorrowTo run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrongTo be better far than you are

To try when your arms are too wearyTo reach the unreachable star

Frank Sinatra

This is my quest, to follow that starNo matter how hopeless, no matter how far

To be willing to give when there's no more to giveTo be willing to die so that honor and justice may live

And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest

That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for thisThat one man, scorned and covered with scars,

Still strove with his last ounce of courageTo reach the unreachable star

The American Dream is founded on these words. It is a dream of equality, of freedom, of achievement. It is the idea that anyone can rise to great heights if they wish to; anyone can be successful and happy – it is up to each person how well he or she does. In other words: if you are prepared to work hard enough at an honest job, you can make your fortune, you can win fame, you can have whatever you want.

Has Gatsby been successful in achieving the American Dream?He was a poor boy, self-educated, who became one of the richest men in the United States. But when we look closer, we see that Gatsby twists the dream and warps it.• Made his money illegally from selling liquor and

other swindles (bootlegging). Tom notes “He and his Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter … I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong.” (Chapter 7)

• Spent his money irresponsibly, with glamorous and excessive parties

• His reason for obtaining wealth (to win Daisy’s love) proved to be a worthless goal.

• He attempts to break up Daisy and Tom’s marriage.• He overstepped the mark in his own pursuit of

happiness.

Have Tom and Daisy been successful in achieving the American Dream?• They are even further from the

original concept of the American Dream.

• Their inherited wealth, which they did nothing to earn, has brought only selfishness and unhappiness. Their lives are wasted in excess, seeking new thrills at never-ending parties.

• They are unfaithful to each other.• They have no sense of responsibility for their

actions (e.g. Daisy’s hit-and-run accident)

• They use people and things (e.g. Chapter 9: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, ... and let other people clear up the mess they had made…”

Has Jordan been successful in achieving the American Dream?

• Like her friends, the Buchanans, she is careless of the lives and problems of other people.

• She is also “incurably dishonest”, cheating at golf and lying to evade responsibility. She is not a good sport, and thus also undermines the spirit of honesty in the American Dream.

Has Nick been successful in achieving the American Dream?

• Nick came East to seek his fortune returns disillusioned with the glamorous, but empty life of wealth.

• He finds the dream to be a sham (imitation)

Does the author (F. Scott Fitzgerald) believe in the America Dream?• Yes, he believed in the original

American Dream, the hopes for freedom, equality and happiness that the first settlers held – the dream of a new and better world that he describes in the final pages of the novel:

‘I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green, breast of the new world. Its vanished trees .. had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood or desired, face to face for the last time with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.’

• But this dream has been twisted into something else; instead of hard work and honesty and loyalty, there is pleasure, easy money, dishonesty and unfaithfulness. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald argues that the Dream is dead.