The great gatsby

F.Scott Fitzgerald the writer of the book "The Great Gatsby" takes the reader into the roaring 20s and criticizes the idea of what the American dream is. He does this by highlighting the corruption that exists with in American dream. such as the materialism, moral values, lost of one self and the utter feeling of emptiness. I believe Fitzgerald displays this criticism in a very accurate way.

Gatsby the character in the book has the good looks, the wealth,popularity, flashy parties. Hes the smooth guy that always knows what to do and what to say. He is the idea of the American dream. But what no one knows is that hes not really Gatsby hes gats the guy that dropped out of school and took the dirty way to achieve the idea of success.He was looking for away to easy money. Since he was not born into money he had to do something and I guess to live up to this alter ego Gatsby, he couldn't go to school and be a janitor that was beneath him. So to get to where he is in the book he had to do illegal things not something a smooth gentlemen would do and defiantly not something he wanted to do he was embarrassed by the fact that he dropped out of college and the fact that he wasn't born into money, he was embarrassed by what he had to do to get that money and he tries to hide it through out the book. to me this is not the idea of an American dream because you would want to be proud and happy with your accomplishments and success in life and this is something he was not.

Why did he do this? i asked my self this well reading the book. I found that he was doing this all for daisy. but love has nothing to do with money. so this lead me to believe everyone’s morals where thrown out the window. there were many times were I found this to be true. one being that daisy didn't want to be with Gatsby until he had money meaning she was a gold digger and when off and married tom who had plenty of money. but one of the charters that really took me by surprise when it came to morals was tom. tom was a rude and arrogant man who cheated on his wife. He i believe him to be racist and sexist because of the comments he made through out the book. The thing I found really interesting about him was when daisy started to have an affair he made a big deal but he found it OK for him to do so. But not only the rich peoples morals where thrown out the door but even the poor. Myrtle is married to the charter named George. she is the one that tom cheats on daisy with. Myrtles husband runs a rundown garage and trys to make money for myrtle. But myrtle wants to be rich it seems and she seems materialistic and almost like shes using tom just as he is using her. The idea of the American dream is filled with morals and respect for one and other and marriage with out affairs but as you see this is not true everyone wants something or someone else and it seems they have no problem breaking there bonds between one another to find what they are truly looking for.

This brings me to the emptiness that I believe each character exhibits. They never reach that one thing that they are all looking for and in search of all along. And in order to obtain this American dream you have to reach that feeling of happiness and I don’t believe any character actually did that at all seems like they were lost and had no idea what the American dream actually was or is and were masking there true feelings with materialism and some form of argent's and morl less actions. No one ended up happy if they didn’t get shot or ran over they were sad and lonely and all that they had left were the materialistic things that they thought made them happy but I think that after something like this they would begin to realize how empty they are. this is another aspect that leads me to believe that in "The Great Gatsby" it shows alot of areas that are corrupted based on the American dream.