The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

Introduction

Like every pen has a writer, every novel has a theme. Arthur Miller, one of the most famous writer's of America once stated, The American dream is the largely acknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out. Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American dream as an ironic pole of his history (Bruccoli, 1992). People tend to accept, to a far greater degree that the conditions of life are a hostile man's pretension. This proves to be very true for F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby. The novel is about Gatsby, but like any other novel, it also has themes. A theme is the main idea that a literature is based on. In this novel, the most important theme is based on dreams. In particular, the dream is the American Dream.

Analysis

In The Great Gatsby, not only is the main character, Gatsby, a great dreamer but so are the other characters. This is understandable because as quoted by Arthur Miller, the American Dream is the unacknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out. According to the dream, everyone in American has the opportunity if they work hard and are determined - to reach any goal they strive for. Gatsby rising from nothing to greatness embodies that dream. His dream and accomplishment of creating a new identity for himself and striving to make the world accommodate to his dream is an epitome of the greater American dream of becoming of a new person in the new world. The greater American dream is explicitly mentioned at the end of the book (Fitzgerald, 1950). And as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailor's eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last greatest of all human dreams (Fitzgerald, 1950).

What Fitzgerald tries to tackles concerning the American Dream is that it has become corrupt and Fitzgerald uses Gatsby and other characters to show this corruption. The main characters, Gatsby, Daisy, Nick, and Tom, each work for their own Dream. For Gatsby, we read that dreaming is not an escape from life but a way to apprehend life and Nick associates Gatsby's dream when he is younger with a heightened sensitivity to the promise of life. But the corruption of the American Dream has made Gatsby think money is the answer to his dream, specifically that he can win Daisy and become her ideal through money(Fitzgerald, 1996). Nick states that Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor(Fitzgerald, 1950). But Gatsby's money and as a result his ...