The American Dream is essentially a major illusion, as it is said to be the idea that everyone has equal opportunity to achieve success within the united states, but it is proven that privilege plays a a significant role.
Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a bitter indictment of the American Dream, that portrays it as an illusion rather than a reality. The novel traces the tale of Jay Gatsby, a person who goes from poverty to extreme wealth, with the hope that riches will win him the love of Daisy Buchanan, his old lover. Gatsby’s dream, nevertheless, is based on shaky foundations and material wealth as well as social status, and a past that can never be reciprocated.
Gatsby’s rich lifestyle and parties are representative of the excesses of the 1920s, and they are there to try and gain Daisy’s attention but they bring him no joy. His wealth is achieved through questionable means, highlighting how the acquisition of wealth is typically at the cost of other things like his morality. No matter how hard Gatsby tries, he is unable to change the past and go back to when he was with Daisy. Daisy chooses the security of her marriage to Tom Buchanan over Gatsby’s romanticized vision of the past, but this is slightly because she has a great material obsession.
The novel’s ending shows the idea that the American Dream is an illusion, an unrealistic dream that disappoints and empties those who seek it. Fitzgerald suggests that success, defined as wealth and status, does not guarantee satisfaction. Instead, The Great Gatsby illustrates the dark side of the dream, where ambition is met with corruption, heartbreak, and ultimately, failure. So Gatsby as ultimately achieved the American Dream, but his idea of it is way different.