Disillusionment with the American Dream in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby: Analysis of Characters

Abstract

General Conclusion The master writer of the American dream, Scott Fitzgerald portrayed the disillusionment of Americans about the dream they have spent years obsessed with. Indeed, his masterpiece The Great Gatsby projects the dark side of the American dream in the context of the 1920’s. In reality, it was a dark decade where the dream become corrupted by greed, materialism and vicious competition inside the middle class in order to join the upper class due to people’s misunderstanding of it. This mad ambition leads to a state of unbalance in the social hierarchy and the psychology of the greedy personalities. The American dream became thus connected with material possessions rather than with moral values. Using psychoanalysis for the exploration of characterization and the author’s own vision with reference to the theme of disillusionment with the American dream in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, we achieved some results. After having introduced the topic of research in the general introduction, the first chapter set the historical background of the American dream and its reflection in literature throughout different phases and including a reference to psychoanalysis theory of literary criticism and its relation to the study of characters who experience a sense of disillusionment in Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. In the second chapter, the candidate initiated the discussion of characterization in terms of the theme of the American dream while the third chapter treated intricately the manifestation of disillusionment about the American dream that turns to be a nightmare, showing its reasons, types and symbols throughout the novel. Fitzgerald explores such a theme in his novel to show the contradiction between material prosperity and moral decadence of the American society. This vision manifests itself mainly in the complex personality of the protagonist Jay Gatsby, an overambitious character, derived by hedonism and pleasure and extremely blinded by luxurious possessions and the Bakri50 other characters around him. The socio-psychoanalytic characterization through the first chapter indeed displayed the different aspects of the myth of the American dream based on the response of all characters to it in the novel. The eponymous character Gatsby appeared to be unconscious of the fact that money cannot buy love or happiness, but rather it can bring frustration by the end. Consequently, at the end his dream deceivingly has transformed into a nightmare, a black reality. His pursuit of wealth and beloved Daisy culminates in an inevitable tragedy, his own death. Almost all the characters of The Great Gatsby are doomed because of the illusion about the American dream. The study of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby from the angle of the author’s own disillusionment demonstrated that the Americans, epitomized by Gatsby and the characters around him, have ended with frustration because of their excessive exaggeration in dreaming. The outcome is an unbearable sense of dissatisfaction where the illusion turns to be a disillusion especially in the beginning of the 20th century.It is worth noting that the novel shed light on two types of disillusionment, of wealth and love, and both had a terrible effect at the social and psychological levels. After having explored the social, cultural and personal reasons for the disillusionment about the American dream, a series of techniques which signify this disillusionment portrayal of the images such as the mansion of Gatsby, the valley of ashes, and the green light. The candidate engaged in investigating the motives of the writer himself behind writing about the lost twenties. The motives are personal, derived from his own experience as a member of a poor family, and thus the author has created his alter ego with the creation of the character of Gatsby that both men, the real and the fictional, share the overwhelming disillusionment and the eventual downfall. Fitzgerald’s perception of the drawbacks of the American dream is clearly manifestthroughout the novel especially its conclusion. The writer alerts and warns the reader and thus the then American public about the danger of abusing powers over the non- Bakri51 aristocratic people who does not belong to the same upper class society. Accordingly, the dissertation concludes that the American dream cannot be realized because people like Buchanans used power and wealth as means to subjugate others and to live a pleased life at the expense of the others. Long sides to Gatsby’s case, the Wilsons are also an example of moral decadence.Class conflicts alters the American Dreamers fate towards destruction rather than prosperity. To conclude, this humble work is far from being perfect. Therefore, a further research about the representation of the American dream by other writers from modernist America in comparison with Scott Fitzgerald would be useful and rich in terms of exploring class-based clashes’ impact on the precept of the ideal American Dream up till present times. This dissertation which focused on the perilous psychological and social implications of the American dream, as reflected in the characters’ and the author’s disillusionment.Hence forms a preliminary research work for some further studies in the field of American fiction.