Universität Konstanz, Fachbereich: Literaturwissenschaft/ Amerikanistik
Vorlesung: American Literature and Culture I
Sommersemester 2007, 3. Semester

The Great Gatsby and “the American Dream”

by: Sandra Kochan

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction  1

2. “The American Dream“  1

2.1 “The American Dream”: When Was the Phrase Born?  2
2.2 Francis Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream  2

3. Francis Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby  3

3.1 Characters  3

3.1.1 Jay Gatsby 3
3.1.2 Daisy Buchanan – A Promise of Fulfilment  4
3.1.3 The Buchanans´  5
3.1.4 Nick Carraway  6

3.2 The Structure of The Great Gatsby 7

3.2.1 Time  7
3.2.2 Narration  8
3.2.3 Style  9

3.3 An Unfulfilled (American) Dream 9

3.3.1 Gatsby’s Party 10
3.3.2 Shirts Scene  12

3.4 Long Island – The Promise of a Better Life  13

3.4.1 Fitzgerald’s Fable of East and West  13
3.4.1 The Green Light  14
3.4.2 The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg 16
3.4.3 Dutch Sailors 16

4. Conclusion  16

Bibliography

1. Introduction

Since the end of the Second World War the United States of America has been the most powerful country in the world. American power has included cultural power. Writing or talking about America means invoking the American Dream, which remains a major element of the national identity.

The American Dream encompasses the myth of America: a myth defined by another familiar phrase – the New World. In its origins, America was conceived of as a new world, a new beginning, a second chance. The contrast of course was with Europe – the Old World – characterized by tyranny, corruption, and social divisions.¹ The American Constitution guaranteed all Americans “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”² This is the heart of the American Dream. People believed that the American dream was, from the beginning, part and parcel of American history, culture and language, including the early colonial period. “America was born out of a dream.” ³

2. “The American Dream”

But the American Dream has come to mean at a popular level. It is to go to the West and become a millionaire. The American dream is conceived of in terms of success and of material success in particular: getting rich quick is what it is all about. But in its true sense it has never been limited to material success alone.⁴ So what do we actually understand under the term “American Dream” and what is the origin of this phrase? When did it first appear in the language? And how has the phrase itself evolved over time?

2.1 “The American Dream”: When Was the Phrase Born?

Only during the time of political and cultural upheaval could the concept of the American Dream enter the national lexicon. The true origin of the phrase was first mentioned in 1931, by a middlebrow historian James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America. In this book, the phrase appears for the first time in the Preface, when Adams refers to the “American dream of a better, richer, and happier life,” adding that “that dream or hope has been present from the start.”¹ In the Epilogue, which was probably written before the Preface, Adams goes into more detail and broadens the scope of the American Dream concept, explaining that the most distinctive gift that America has made to the world is “the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.”²

Coining this phrase took place in 1931, at a time in American history when the United States was already knee-deep in the Great Depression and in a calamitous economic and social condition.³ What was lost in the Depression was the old idea – and faith – that America was a land of infinite possibilities and honesty.

2.2 Francis Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream

All American literature – like all of American life – it often seems, is about the American Dream. And F. Scott Fitzgerald has been identified with the American Dream. It was his subject, his matter above all – and it was a subject that had come to fascinate readers everywhere.

Scott Fitzgerald’s novels have been based on a concept of class. He is the first American writer who seems to have discovered that such a thing as American class really existed. The Great Gatsby is not simply a chronicle of the Jazz Age but rather a dramatization of the betrayal of the naïve American Dream in a corrupt society. From the start, Fitzgerald’s personal dreams of romance contained the seeds of their own destruction. The Great Gatsby is an exploration of the American Dream as it exists in a corrupt period, and it is an attempt to determine that concealed boundary that divides the reality from the illusions. In Gatsby, the reality is a thing of the spirit. In Gatsby’s America, the reality is undefined to itself. It is frustrated. Nick Carraway says of Gatsby:

“Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was
reminded of something – an exclusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words,
that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried
to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as
though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air.
But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was
incommunicado forever.” (p. 118)

3. Francis Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

3.1 Characters

3.1.1 Jay Gatsby

[...]

1 Hook, Fitzgerald and the American Dream, 6

2 Hook, Fitzgerald and the American Dream, 7.

3 « Un double rêve, à la fois matériel et spirituel, est à l`origine de la colonisation des Amériques : l´os et l´évangélisation des ‘sauvages’. » B. Vincent, ed., Histoire des Etats-Unis (Nancy : Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1994 [Flammarion 2000]), 5.

4 Hook, Fitzgerald and the American Dream, 5.

1 James Truslow Adams: The Epic of America, New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1931, viii.

2 James Truslow Adams: The Epic of America, New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1931, p. 404.

3 Paul P. Reuben, „PAL: Appendix S: The American Dream. “ PAL: Perspectives in American Literature – A Research and Reference Guide. URL: http//www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/append/axs.html.