In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald echoes the illusions and disenchantments of the American Dream. The essential background of the American Dream is the belief in the possibility of starting over again, of escaping from the past and inventing a better future. This dream can be traced back to the earliest European explorers and settlers who came to the New World partly motivated by the desire to search for a new beginning for mankind in an earthly paradise rich in natural abundance and free from the corruptions and injustices of the Old World. That same dream motivated the pioneers as they moved always further westward across the continent. Less bound by tradition than Europeans and, until the end of the nineteenth century, with land on the frontier always available for their new start in life, Americans have constantly dreamed of defining themselves differently from the previous generation and of achieving total happiness and fulfillment.
As a concept, the American Dream incorporates a complex of moral and social values and romantic ideals. On a sociopolitical level, the dream is the ideal of opportunity for all, of advancement socially or in a career regardless of one’s origins. This vision of an “open” society was formulated in opposition to “closed” European social systems, where power and wealth were concentrated in the hands of an aristocratic elite.
Economically, the American Dream exalts the “self-made man”, the individual who rises in society through his own efforts rather than inheriting his wealth and status.
In spiritual terms, the American Dream is an expression of the basic human desire to transcend the limitations of one’s life and to achieve happiness and fulfillment. This aspect of the dream was expressed by the American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), the most important figure of Transcendentalism,
the American counterpart of the European Romantic movement. For Emerson America was associated with a dream of freedom. However, for him true freedom was not mainly a question of political and economic liberty but meant the right to explore the possibilities of being, to reach for a higher self, to invent one’s own future.
The 1920s witnessed the betrayal of these ideals underlying the American Dream, which at that time was largely reduced to the pursuit of material success. This period also witnessed the degradation of the ideals of equality in its renewal of racism and anti-immigration laws. There was no place for transcendental idealism
in this materialistic age. Moreover, the ideal of individualism, which for Emerson had meant creating the conditions for spiritual perfection, was distorted into a rationalization for every kind of exploitation and self-indulgence.
Many of these characteristics of the American Dream are present or implied in The Great Gatsby, where the Jazz Age is not glamorized but shown to be a period of decadence, amorality, violence and confusion. To the people who attend Gatsby’s parties, the ideals underlying the American Dream mean nothing, since they live in a world of materialism where objects are more important than morality and have no culture or religion by which to order their lives. The spiritual sterility of the 1920s is also exemplified in the lives of the upper-class protagonists who, being devoted to materialistic goals, have lost the capacity to enjoy life, to love unselfishly and to treat other people as human beings.
