When we think of the American Dream—an ethos that promises opportunity, reinvention, and the manifestation of all one’s material desires through hard work—we often paint the picture of upward momentum. It starts with a new house, then a new car, some luxury clothes, an awe-inducing status, and overall a better life. Sounds too good to be true, right? Whether this ethos is attainable today remains a controversial debate among Americans. Although, some Americans hold onto it in hopes of climbing out of an unsatisfactory life with almost no regard of what it truly means or what it takes to bask in wealthy materialism.
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald takes this dream and turns it inside out, revealing what lies beneath its glitz and glamorous face. In the context of his novel, looming behind the mysticism of the American Dream is Daisy Buchanan: a woman who is a beautiful gem, elusive, and hollow. Her role in the story is not just a love interest or a passive character caught between two controlling men. She is the dream Gatsby longs for throughout the story and his entire character arc; she functions as an ideal that drove him to reshape his entire identity. To him, Daisy represents the American Dream: intoxicatingly beautiful, wealth to no end, prestige, and emotional fulfillment. But Fitzgerald rips off the veil of this fantasy by showing us that Daisy is not a dream fulfilled but rather a dream fabricated. She is more a symbol instead of a person; it is akin to a mirage created from the shimmering of a horizon.
Ultimately, to Gatsby, Daisy is the dream. She is the trophy that symbolizes his years of ambition, discipline, and transformation. Gatsby reinvented himself, creates wealth (by criminal means), and buys a mansion that sits across the bay from her all of which are products of his hopeless pursuit of a love that he believes still exists and is up for reclamation. He believes that it still exists. It doesn’t. Fitzgerald makes it clear; the dream he is after is nothing more than an illusion, and Daisy, despite all of her charm and beauty, is not the ideal he imagines and sees her as.
Let’s examine one of the novel’s most famous lines of dialogue.
“I can’t say anything in his house, old sport.”
“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of—” I hesitated.
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.
That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it… High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…
This scene is jarring, not only because of its poetic sharpness, but for its truth. Gatsby’s sudden remark, “Her voice is full of money,” is more than a romantic observation. It’s a realization. It’s a revelation. In that moment, Gatsby has recognized what Daisy means to him and what she represents. It’s not love, it’s not longing, and it’s not even emotional fulfillment. It’s wealth, it’s status, and it’s privilege. It’s alluring. It’s intoxicating. Her voice being described with imagery like “the jingle of it” and “the cymbals’ song” does not just serve to be something poetically beautiful, it serves to exhibit a capitalized beauty. They’re the sounds of unattainable luxury wrapped in Daisy’s femininity.
From this, we as the readers can now see that Gatsby doesn’t just love Daisy. While by no doubt he loves her, he appears to be more in love with what she represents. She’s a dream; dreams can alter and manipulate an individual’s conscious will. Dreams are a one-sided relationship between itself and the dreamer. There is no sense of human connection; dreams are projections of our wants, shaped not by truth by our desires. In a metaphorical sense that strays away from the continuous usage of “dream,” Daisy is similar to a canvas to which Gatsby has smeared the colors and strokes of his life on. She is still an object either way regardless of what analogy you would like to use. Daisy does not exist as Daisy in The Great Gatsby; she exists as a personification of an ethos in the context of a man.
Daisy Buchanan isn’t just the woman Gatsby loves; she’s the embodiment of everything he worked for. She’s a representation of his character arc. (Note: I wonder if The Great Gatsby passes the Bechdel Test…) Daisy is wealth, status, beauty, femininity, and not real in a figurative sense. She’s an illusion. The closest thing she is when it comes to offering any kind of fulfillment is the stale echo of it. It’s a lie, and lies are nothing more than stale sentiments. Is that her fault? Not necessarily. After all, she’s a dream invented by Gatsby. It’s through this way that Daisy becomes a symbol of the American Dream: captivating, glittering, and hollow.
In the end, Gatsby’s downfall and tragic conclusion was not solely due to lost love; it’s about paying the price of chasing a fantasy. Through Daisy, Fitzgerald makes a powerful reverberating statement: the American Dream may look satisfying, but more often than not, it is nothing more than a front to cover up its unstable foundation built upon tragedy, lies, and illusions.
Bibliography
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.