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    Theme Analysis

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    Özlem Demiröz Akgün
    The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald examines Jay Gatsby's vision of the American Dream in 1920s America and serves as a bridge between World War I and the Great Depression. While Fitzgerald participated in the lavish lifestyle of the 1920s, the novel is a critique of society's failure to fulfill its potential at the time. It focuses on privileged young people between 20-30 years old and their excess and careless attitudes. Jay Gatsby believes firmly in the American Dream of self-made success but his sole focus on Daisy Buchanan proves his aspirations were ultimately unattainable, representing the loss of illusion that was prevalent in the time period.

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    Theme Analysis

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    Özlem Demiröz Akgün
    310 views2 pages
    The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald examines Jay Gatsby's vision of the American Dream in 1920s America and serves as a bridge between World War I and the Great Depression. While Fitzgerald participated in the lavish lifestyle of the 1920s, the novel is a critique of society's failure to fulfill its potential at the time. It focuses on privileged young people between 20-30 years old and their excess and careless attitudes. Jay Gatsby believes firmly in the American Dream of self-made success but his sole focus on Daisy Buchanan proves his aspirations were ultimately unattainable, representing the loss of illusion that was prevalent in the time period.

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    The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald examines Jay Gatsby's vision of the American Dream in 1920s America and serves as a bridge between World War I and the Great Depression. While Fitzgerald participated in the lavish lifestyle of the 1920s, the novel is a critique of society's failure to fulfill its potential at the time. It focuses on privileged young people between 20-30 years old and their excess and careless attitudes. Jay Gatsby believes firmly in the American Dream of self-made success but his sole focus on Daisy Buchanan proves his aspirations were ultimately unattainable, representing the loss of illusion that was prevalent in the time period.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    310 views2 pages

    Theme Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Özlem Demiröz Akgün
    The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald examines Jay Gatsby's vision of the American Dream in 1920s America and serves as a bridge between World War I and the Great Depression. While Fitzgerald participated in the lavish lifestyle of the 1920s, the novel is a critique of society's failure to fulfill its potential at the time. It focuses on privileged young people between 20-30 years old and their excess and careless attitudes. Jay Gatsby believes firmly in the American Dream of self-made success but his sole focus on Daisy Buchanan proves his aspirations were ultimately unattainable, representing the loss of illusion that was prevalent in the time period.

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    Theme Analysis

    The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic twentieth-century


    story of Jay Gatsby's quest for Daisy Buchanan, examines and
    critiques Gatsby's particular vision of the 1920's American Dream.
    Written in 1925, the novel serves as a bridge between World War I
    and the Great Depression of the early 1930's. Although Fitzgerald
    was an avid participant in the stereotypical "Roaring Twenties"
    lifestyle of wild partying and bootleg liquor, he was also an astute
    critic of his time period. The Great Gatsby certainly serves more to
    detail society's failure to fulfill its potential than it does to glamorize
    Fitzgerald's "Jazz Age."

    Fitzgerald's social insight in The Great Gatsby focuses on a select


    group: priviliged young people between the ages of 20 and 30. In
    doing so, Fitzgerald provides a vision of the "youth and mystery that
    wealth imprisons and preserves" (157). Throughout the novel Nick
    finds himself surrounded by lavish mansions, fancy cars, and an
    endless supply of material possessions. A drawback to the
    seemingly limitless excess Nick sees in the Buchanans, for
    instance, is a throwaway mentality extending past material goods.
    Nick explains, "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they
    smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their
    money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them
    together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made"
    (188).

    Part of the mess left in the Buchanan's wake at the end of the novel
    includes the literal and figurative death of the title character, Jay
    Gatsby. Certainly, his undeserved murder at the hands of a
    despondent George Wilson evokes sympathy; the true tragedy,
    however, lies in the destruction of an ultimate American idealist. The
    idealism evident in Gatsby's constant aspirations helps define what
    Fitzgerald saw as the basis for the American Character. Gatsby is a
    firm believer in the American Dream of self-made success: he has,
    after all, not only invented and self-promoted a whole new persona
    for himself, but has succeeded both financially and societally.

    In spite of his success, Gatsby's primary ideological shortcoming


    becomes evident as he makes Daisy Buchanan the sole focus of his
    belief in "the orgastic future" (189). His previously varied aspirations
    (evidenced, for example, by the book Gatsby's father shows Nick
    detailing his son's resolutions to improve himself) are sacrificed for
    Gatsby's single-minded obsession with Daisy's green light at the
    end of her dock. Even Gatsby realized the first time he kissed Daisy
    that once he "forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable
    breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God"
    (117).
    For the first time in his wildly successful career, however, Gatsby
    aspires to obtain that which is unattainable, at least to the degree
    which he desires. As the novel unfolds, Gatsby seems to realize that
    his idea and pursuit of Daisy is more rewarding than the actual
    attainment of her. Gatsby recognizes that -- as he did with his own
    persona -- he has created an ideal for Daisy to live up to. Although
    Gatsby remains fully committed to his aspirations up until his death,
    he struggles with the reality of when those aspirations for his
    American Dream are either achieved or, in Gatsby's case, proven
    inaccessible. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1924, while working on
    The Great Gatsby, "That's the whole burden of this novel -- the loss
    of those illusions that give such color to the world so that you don't
    care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the
    magical glory" (xv).

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