Exclusion From The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

The Great GatsbyThe Great Gatsby, written by F.Scott Fitzgerald and published in 1925, illustrates a variety of themes between the lines of its story. As the beautiful and charming Daisy finds herself torn between two loves, Gatsby and her husband Tom, we see her emotions split between the desire for new money and old money. As the book comes to its close, she chooses old money, symbolized by her husband Tom, because it envelops a net of safety created by social connections. As a representation of the American Dream, the golden girl makes more than choices; she defines who is a true part of the ideal life, and who is not. In a similar way, Tom defines who is a lady worthy of being heard ...view middle of the document...

Nick names many people who accepted Gatsby's hospitality, giving one or two details about them, marking them all as equally unimportant, vain and forgettable. Most of these characters appear at Gatsby's parties, however, the pages of the text are flooded with sceneries where people are as unimportant as decoration, as if they were the furniture of the party. We find how these characters seemingly lived and believe to live the American dream, but were in fact completely ignored, as Nick explains, "they were never quite the same ones in physical person but they were so identical one with another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before".Their identities are marked by a financial standard and external beauty, exposing how none of these characters has true value, they live in a farce of the American dream, having money but no personal relevance. In consequence, we can observe that their lack of social connections made most people equivalent to the new money characters of the epoch.Tom's neglection of Myrtle, demonstrated when he declares he doesn't recognize her dead body establishes that the poor were unable to become part of the society living the American Dream. In the beginning of the book, we see Myrtle change entirely when, "under the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change" (30). However, seeming...