It's All About the Great Guy

The Great Gatsby is filled with symbolism and allusions to the American society as it was in the 1920's. Even though many of them are objects, like the green light, Gatsby himself could be considered the most important symbol.

Jay Gatsby (originally James Gatz), is first introduced to the reader resembling a celebrity. All we know is mostly rumors heard by the narrator, Nick, and he just seems to be an unreachable character with an enviable life. As the book progresses, Gatsby is personally presented as a vulnerable guy who had to go through criminal activities in order to become as rich as he now appears, and it all happened because of love and ambition.

It can be said that Gatsby and the whole book itself is a representation of the Americans, and how their ambition and corruption ruined the true American Dream. It is all overestimated, like Gatsby's love of Daisy. His view of his future with Daisy is deferred, and he is relying on the completion of an unrealistic dream that might never happen. His whole life is based on bringing back Daisy and making her fall in love with him again, but it will never be as good as he imagines it in his head. The same thing happens with the American Dream.

Gatsby had to rely on criminal activities to gain his wealth and recover what he lost when Daisy wouldn't accept him for his lack of money. The author, Scott Fitzgerald, uses this to show how ambition, greed, and desire for pleasure pushes people to use any means to pursue their goals, no matter how immoral they become.

Even though Nick says that Gatsby represents everything he hates, he also once mentions how he is "worth more than the rest of them." Even the way how outsiders view the corruption of dreams and the greedy struggle to the top has changed into acceptance, just like Nick accepted Gatsby's ways and even considered him better than anyone else he knew.

The world in which all the characters of The Great Gatsby live in symbolizes America and the corruption of the American Dream, and Jay Gatsby is the typical American who disposed of his morals in order to achieve monetary goals. The search for materialistic satisfaction has led to decay in the original values in the pursuing of the American Dream.