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The American dream is an ism that directed people to America, a country full of opportunities, prosperity, and wealth. James Truslow is the man behind this idea and he coined it in 1931 (Warshauer para. 1). This dream owes its root to the declaration contained in the Declaration of Independence. The dream is composed of three components, that is, all men are equal; that men can trust one another and therefore help one another, and the honest, vestal, and industrious get rewards (Warshauer para. 1). According to this dream, there are inalienable rights that every American citizen should enjoy. It expresses a situation where American children can receive American education and proceed to secure employment within America.
In the wake of World War I, the American dream started to change gradually from happiness and success to the accumulation of wealth and nice possessions. As the desire to have more money griped people, the American dream was doomed to die. The desire to accumulate wealth overnight opened the doors to corruption. The death of the American dream started the moment it became inherently corrupted. People lost vision of what this dream was supposed to mean and it became a dream, not of the vestal and industrious, but of the corrupt coterie, hence corrupting the dream itself. Americans soon found themselves becoming disillusioned about the dream with the urban American life. Within the confinements of this dream, through hard work, the poor can become rich.
Scot Fitzgerald highlights two forms of corruption: the newly rich and the already rich. Tom Buchanan is the epitome of the rich and this class runs the country without necessarily coming to the spotlight. Buchanan belonged to this class. ” His family was enormously wealthy…now he had left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather astounded you: for instance, he had brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest (Fitzgerald 10). Buchanan marries Daisy to make a perfect couple in the rich circles in what Fitzgerald views as ‘achievement of the American dream.’ Gatsby on the other hand represents the newly rich.
Fitzgerald goes on to portray yet another form of corruption in this dream. In The Great Gatsby, we cannot divorce money from corruption. Again, Fitzgerald talks of new and old money but they all remain money. The America of post-World War I is not the ancient America where morality rules the day. In this new America, money represents power, which in turn bears corruption. With regard to this claim, Daisy stands out. She marries Tom because of money even though she loves Gatsby. The corruption of this dream commences here; marriage should be out of love not for money. Alcohol, friends, and family forces Daisy to marry the wrong person with the wrong motives. Consequently, she loses her freedom and ingenuousness when she weds Tom and as a result loses her dream. It is true that she has meliorated her social class to become part of ‘old money, but she forfeits her reputation. The disillusion that she has for the dream comes out clearly as she moves from the west (new money) to the east (old money. Actually, Nick posits that “this has been a story of the West, after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners…” (Fitzgerald 184).
Finally, Fitzgerald emphasizes the inherent corruption of the American dream by Gatsby himself. In the turn of events, Daisy becomes ‘the dream’ to Gatsby; a dream that he pursues to a dead end. This dream may not be corrupt after all; however, the modality Gatsby uses to pursue it, is definitely corrupt. After returning from the war in Europe, Gatsby finds that her lover of the youth; Daisy, is married to Tom, a rich man. Consequently, to win his love back, he decides to become rich like Tom to compete for Daisy. To get the desperately needed money, Gatsby resorts to bootlegging and befriends the likes of Meyer Wolfsheim; the man behind the illegal fixing of the ‘World Series’, which happened to be America’s peachiest pastime. This fixing later turns into a scandal and this rock the whole nation leading to the subsequent ostracism of some of the greatest players of the game. What else could lead a loyal soldier; well shaped by the war, turn into some illegal stuff like this? The answer is a corrupted dream, the American dream. Fitzgerald uses this incidence to stress the point that the American dream is dead and lost.
Fitzgerald put together this book during the time of the famous Roaring ’20s characterized by the ‘Jazz flappers.’ This was a totally lost decade together with its generation. The norms changed because of rising disenchantment with urban American life. The American dream took a back seat as the rich ceased to assist the poor and instead, started to exploit and repossess what they had given together with what they had not. One could think of the truth in the bible that, whoever with little, it shall be taken away and whoever with more will be given more.
Think of George Wilson in the novel. This auto mechanic is a devastated man and to him, the American dream is all about money and fame. “He was a blond, spiritless man, anemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes” (Fitzgerald 121). Due to rising disenchantment, George Wilson pursues financial gains; a feat that he never achieves. According to Warshauer (para. 6), the rising disenchantment, and the misinformed notion that the American dream is all about money and class, derails the moral uprightness and maligns the real meaning of the dream itself. Rampant corruption was the rule of the day as individuals forced their way up the ladder to richness and opulence.
On the other hand, Ernest Hemingway talks of the struggles of this life. Take for instance his work The Sun Also Rises. The theme of this novel is Ecclesiastes chapter one. “What does a man gain after all the toil under the sun?” (Hemingway 5). This story does not come any close to the reality of the American dream. It exemplifies a lost dream, the American dream. The American dream is not about vanity; it is about substance, peace, love, sanity, and purity. People are supposed to enjoy life, raise their children, seize the many opportunities present in this Promised Land doing all that pertains to a good full life, all in the name of the American dream. Unfortunately, many think this is an illusion, and in a bid to disenchant from it, they pursue personal gains hence corrupting the dream. Hemingway committed suicide later in life and this is not what the American dream was meant to be.
The American urban life got the best of Americans; large businesses started to drain the little that New York residents had, scandal, greed, and thirst for money tinted the American dream and within no time, it was gone. It appears that the word “American dream’ was and still is, a misnomer. People dream differently, and success is relative with each individual quantifying success differently. The American dream may not be corrupt and lost after all; however, it is lived and realized by those privileged few who dream it.
References
Fitzgerald, Scott. The Great Gatsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner’s, 1940.
Warshauer, Matthew. “Changing Conceptions of the American Dream.” 2003. Web.
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