The Great Gatsby Themes
(The American) Dream and Ambition
- The Great Gatsby presents the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented
prosperity and material excess.
o The novel critiques the American dream leaving readers questioning its attainability.
o Gatsby suffers the most from the promise of social mobility provided by the American dream. He
fails to achieve it, suggesting it is unachievable.
- Gatsby represents hopes and dreams.
o “some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life”
o “he stretched out his arms toward the dark water” where there was only “a single green light”.
o Yet he never appreciates all that he has - Gatsby: “You know, old sport, I’ve never used that
pool all summer?”
- Gatsby’s dream itself – Daisy
o Gatsby “falls in love with his projections onto Daisy” – Sarah Churchwell
o Daisy is alluring to Gatsby because the aura of wealth and luxury comes effortlessly to her and
she represents the lifestyle Gatsby desires.
“She was the first ‘nice’ girl he had ever known.”
o Jordan: “Gatsby brought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.”
o He is able to will “Jay Gatsby” into existence, prompting the question – why can’t he will Daisy
into loving him?
- Like the American Dream, Gatsby and his dreams are corrupted
o “Gatsby’s dream is the American Dream” – Pelzer
o “preyed on Gatsby” a “foul dust” which “floated in the wake of his dreams”
o He loves Daisy but becomes corrupted by the money he feels is necessary to win her love.
o “It’s become a defining document of the national psyche, a creation myth, the Rosetta Stone of
the American Dream” – Jay McInerney
o “The Great Gatsby is an exploration of the American dream as it exists in a corrupt period” –
Marius Brewley
- Gatsby can never reach his dream
o “No woman, no human being, could ever approximate the platonic ideal he has invented” –
Leland S Pearson
o "Fitzgerald appears to be suggesting that whilst wealth and all its trappings are attainable, status
and position are not." – Scott Locklear
o “Although he can make money, Gatsby can’t make destiny” – Sarah Churchwell
o “Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said.
Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished
forever.” – Thinking about idea of Daisy not real Daisy. (The one moment he achieves his
happiness, he fails to appreciate it – not wholly dissimilar from Tom who peaked at 21.)
o Possible to interpret, therefore, that dreams will never make you as happy as the idea of them.
Something in the way of you achieving your dream makes it more enjoyable:
“perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone.”
o “His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.”
o Gatsby’s dream achieved in the middle – unlike typical happy-ever-after ending -> suggests this
won’t be the typical rags-to-riches success story.
o About his dream of Daisy: “It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.”
o After seeing Pammy, Gatsby is surprised – “I don’t think he had ever really believed in its
existence before.” Despite thinking about Daisy this whole time, he never imagined her having a
life without him.
o “now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail.”
, - Gatsby’s wealth may allow him to enter the upper social circles but he is unprepared to function fully
in them.
o Gatsby to Nick: “you don’t make much money, do you?”
o When invited to dinner, “He wanted to go and he didn’t see that Mr Sloane had determined he
shouldn’t.”
- Gatsby’s dream is lost
o “only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no
longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly toward that lost voice across the room.”
o Tom: “’You two start on home, Daisy,’ said Tom. ‘In Mr Gatsby’s car.” Dream = dead
o Tom: “I think he realises that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.”
o After Gatsby’s death: “his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.
He did not know that it was already behind him”
- Cars represent a manifestation of this dream and success – ultimately Gatsby’s undoing.
o Owl Eyes’ Car Crash: “a bizarre and tumultuous scene” – foreshadowing/ symbolises the reckless
disregard of the Roaring Twenties and the inevitable plunge Fitzgerald sensed would end the
boom.
o Gatsby showing off his car: “It’s pretty, isn’t it, old sport?”
o Tom: “this circus wagon”
o “The ‘death car’ as the newspapers called it”
Manifestation of American materialism – Myrtle is killed by all she aspires to have.
Car doesn’t seem real – witnesses can’t even agree on colour – but Myrtle’s body is
described in gruesome detail. (“her left breast was swinging loose like a flap”
- Money has corrupted everything
o Tom is excited to see a wreck because, “Wilson’ll have a little business at last.” (Only upset when
he identifies the victim.)
- Other’s dreams
o Chapter 6 opens with a reporter displaying “laudable initiative” and investigating a story he
knows nothing about hoping for success.
o About Henry with a picture of the house – “He had shown it so often that I think it was more real
to him now than the house itself.”
- The American Dream of immigrants
o The American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness
but was corrupted by easy money and relaxed social values.
Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their statuses, his resorting to
crime to make enough money to impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterises
her lifestyle.
Nick compares green America to the green light; just as Americans have given America
meaning through dreams, Gatsby instils Daisy with undeserved idealised perfection.
o “I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes.”
Criminality and Immorality
- About Gatsby – “He is for most of the novel a force of corruption: a criminal, a bootlegger and an
adulterer.” – Barbara Will
- The brutal carnage of WW1 made the Victorian social morality seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy.
o Cynicism exhibited by Nick and Gatsby – both fought.
- Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolise the rise of organised crime and bootlegging.
- Nick enables other characters to act immorally.
o “It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms – but
apparently there were no such intentions in her head.” (But publicly allows it to happen.)
o He also arranges Gatsby’s affair – not just practicing tolerance, now actively complicit.
- Gatsby’s Parties as a vehicle for corruption.
o Characterised by their excess – use of “and”
