The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Essay

Francis Scot Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896. His father, Edward Fitzgerand, an aristocratic, was furniture manufacture, and his mother Mollie McQuillan Fitzgerand, was from an Irish-Catholic family that had made a small fortune in Minnesota through their business as Wholesale grocers. Scot was their only son. He was a known among the American writers for being a Jazz Age novelist and short story writer. Scot attended both St. Paul Academy (1908-10) and Newman School. The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald based in America. This novel was first published on 10th April 1925. The setting lies in North Shore on the Long Island and in New York during the 1922 summer. The novel is a critique of the American Dream of happiness and individualism. This is depicted in Gatsby, one of the characters whose dream of a girl named Daisy was corrupted by dishonesty and money (Fitzgerald, 149).

In Webster’s New World Dictionary, a dream can be defined as an imaginative vision of a conscious mind that looks at aspiration or hope for something that is lovely. In Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, the main character is Jay Gatsby. By the use of Gatsby, Fitzgerald defines the American Dream as: all people irrespective of their beginning or background can rise to success (74).
In the first chapter, Nick Carraway who is the narrator gives us a short overview of Gatsby’s idealistic dream. Gatsby is able to live in a world of fantasy which he has created for himself. The dream that he has is the one that elicit the qualities that he possesses. The qualities made up by the dream make him a shining star among the people whom he lives with. This is because they are also of his type. However, the same dream traits and qualities lead him to a tragic end (Bruccoli 59).

Fitzgerald depicts Gatsby as immoral in many respects (82). First, he is a bootlegger, a crook who has dealings with the greatest swindlers of the moment. An example is Meyer Wolfshime. Gatsby is also depicted as dishonest. One point where he proves this is when he tells lies about himself to people that he lives with. This is the greatest reason as to why the people around him have puzzles to fill about his life. He lied that he was a son of people who were rich and lived in the Middle West. He also affirmed that these people had died a long time ago.

Consequently, it is not clear whether the wealth that he owns came from those people. When it turns out to be false, questions on the source of his wealth come up. The wealth is manifested in the great parties that he holds often at his house which is another mansion that people wondered about (Fitzgerald, 149). The environment in which the actor lived was disgusting. This is why Nick moved back to Midwest. The life around the Wealthy of the Coast was depicted as being empty with a lot of moral decay. It is ironical that the swimming pool that he owns is not used till his death at the pool. The story that surrounds this life that Gatsby lives is because of the innocent romantic dream that he had. He lived trying to fulfill an idealistic dream in a world that is realistic. Gatsby’s dream is put to an end when he is short by Wilson (Fitzgerald, 149).

All this happened following the First World War. The society of America used to enjoy unprecedented prosperity levels. As the economy soared in the roaring 1920s, prohibition of the manufacture and sell of alcohol was mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment. It made millionaires from a group of bootleggers at that time. Everything in America now turned out to be a money making pursuit. Just as Gatsby’s dream to have an innocent romance with Daisy, America had the dream for individualism and happiness. Gatsby’s dream ended through dishonesty and money while America’s dream was disintegrated to the pursuit of wealth (Eble 35).

Fitzgerald depicts the 1920s as a period of rotted social and good values, prove in its overall pessimism, avarice, and vacant quest for joy. The careless jubilance that prompted wanton gatherings and wild jazz music—exemplified in The Great Gatsby by the extravagant gatherings that Gatsby tosses each Saturday night—came about eventually in the defilement of the American dream, as the excessive yearning for cash and joy surpassed more honorable objectives (Gross 167). At the point when World War I finished in 1918, the era of adolescent Americans who had battled the war got to be strongly baffled, as the ruthless butchery that they had barely confronted made the Victorian social profound quality of promptly twentieth-century America appear as though stuffy, vacant lip service. The confounding ascent of the stock exchange in the result of the war prompted a sudden, managed build in the national fortune and a freshly discovered realism, as individuals started to use and expend at uncommon levels. An individual from any social foundation could, possibly, make a fortune; however the American nobility families with old riches despised the recently rich industrialists and theorists. Also, the section of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the offer of liquor, made a flourishing underworld intended to fulfill the gigantic interest for contraband alcohol around rich and poor indistinguishable (Eble 42).

Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as seals of these social patterns. Scratch and Gatsby, both of whom battled in World War I, display the recently discovered cosmopolitanism and skepticism that came about because of the war. The different social climbers and aspiring examiners who go to Gatsbys gatherings prove the voracious scramble for riches. The great Gatsby as discussed above influenced the way Fitzgerald viewed the American government and its future as a world superpower given the fact that it was undergoing tough economic times.

Works Cited

Bruccoli Mathew. F. Scott Fitzgeralds the Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2000. Print.
Eble, Kenneth. “The Great Gatsby”. College Literature 1 (1), 1974: 37-56.
Fitzgerald, Scott F. The Great Gatsby. New York: NuVision Publications, LLC, 2008. Print.
Gross, Dalton. Understanding the Great Gatsby: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and
Historical Documents. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998. p. 167.