The book “The Great Gatsby” demonstrates the solid barrier between status. The American dream is only achievable for people who have distinguished family background because they can “Rigging the game” by using abundant wealth and opportunities in the upper class. Like the documentary Park Avenue said: Some that has a lot of assets, social mobility, money to do what they want. As opposed to other people who are more disadvantaged, more underprivileged don’t has the same lads of resources.” Therefore, people without family background like Gatsby has to change himself completely and pave his road with lies and tackles in order to chasing his dream. First of all, we have to understand Gatsby’s motivation through the whole book. From chapter 6 Gatsby said: “He could remove the past to stay with daisy”. Since Jay Gatsby overcomes his poor past to gain incredible amount of money from illegal dealing and heritage succession. Meanwhile, he accumulates some social status through parties. It is more important for him to keep these wealth and status.
The truth is he did not realize what he want is not pure love but was the upper social mobility to be accepted as a member of “Old Money”. In the other word, to be accepted by daisy means be accepted by “Old Money”. In order to achieve this goal, he deceived other people and his own heart.
To reach his goal he drew up an identity for himself from a wealthy family and be educated from famous school. He does not want to be a mystery himself but in order to straighten out contradictions in his lies and make it plausible, he has to be careful when he communicated with other people and rarely appeared in his own party. As the time past, he even deceived himself that he still wanted to pursue the innocence love with daisy when they were eighteen years old. The young Gatsby, which was still an ordinary person were attracted deeply by Daisy. She owned everything that young Gatsby could not imagine. After that, Daisy became a perfect illusion in Gatsby’s mind until she was marked by value.
We can say that Gatsby was almost success to be a fake “Old Money” under his dishonest protection while his desire to status and his innocence understanding of money lead him to lost in the battle with “Old Money” Tom.
I commented Eric's blog 😊
I commented Eric's blog 😊
The green light was Gatsby's ideal life with daisy
Hi Sue,
ReplyDeleteIn your blog, Continuous Lies, you explained how the American Dream is only achievable to those who do not come from prominent family through dishonest ways. Your reasoning is very solid but I find that, after re-considering and re-connecting the novel and the documentary, I am agreeing and disagreeing with your idea that the same time. As you mentioned, Gatsby’s dream fundamental motivations are getting rich and marrying Daisy, and I consider these two motivation reveals two aspects about the viability of the American Dream.
I think the American dream is not attainable to all and I’ll start with explaining this. The reason why I think it has no connection with one’s personality or so and is never achievable is because it demands social equality, which is primarily unrealistic in our society. In the Great Gatsby, Gatsby overcame every possible potential barrier that laid between he and Daisy, yet due to the education and influence the Old Money people received, New Moneys are always, and will always be different and inferior species in comparison to them. Undoubtedly, Daisy cannot be with him even because of this simple reason.
The idea of unachievable American Dream is very appealing, since this idea holds very true in many societies that are not in America. Just like the documentary argued, our life is like a rigged game and for those entering the game, all the wealth and opportunities have been divided already and people can hardly make any change on that.
Diana
So we consider this, Gatsby makes his way approach the life with Daisy, but she would never accept him. in this light, we could hardly say his dream had realized.
ReplyDeleteDiana
As for his other dream, which is getting rich. As you have made clear, he achieves through bootlegging and illegal businesses, or in other word, he achieved by compromising his personality and moral values. I didn’t consider his dream as realized in this way, but as a matter of fact, he does get rich and obtain the money he craves. Given that the under privileged people having no access to money and opportunities as the richer people, it is reasonable to believe that his only chance is by being dishonest.
ReplyDeleteDiana