Sejal Says, "The American Dream is Multi-Faceted"

On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story filled with complex relations. The main theme of the novel, however, covers a much larger, less romantic scope. The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic story of 1920s America as a whole, in particular, the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and materialism.

Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values and overwhelming greed. This behavior led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—as displayed in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulting in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at extremely high levels. A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—old money—scorned the newly rich citizens. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike. This specific example is shown by the alcohol at Gatsby's parties during prohibition. The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself further in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.

At the beginning of the novel, Gatsby is seen "stretching his arms toward the dark water" and Nick "distinguished nothing except a single green light ... at the end of the dock" (Fitzgerald 21). Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its greed.  When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.