![—F. Scott Fitzgerald
[H]e stretched out his arms toward the dark
water…I…distinguished nothing except a single
green light, minute and far away…When I looked
once more for Gatsby he had vanished…](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/iqrvyrtrrtd0lmo5cikc-106-representation-of-the-american-dream-in-the-great-gatsby-230320094203-73da75a0/85/Representation_of_the_American_dream_in_The_Great_Gatsby-pptx-6-320.jpg)
Representation_of_the_American_dream_in_The_Great_Gatsby.pptx
- 1. Representation of The American Dream in ‘The Great Gatsby’
- 2. Prepared by Gayatri Nimavat Roll no. : 6 M.A semester 2 Batch : 2022-24 Paper 106: The Twentieth Century Literature: 1900 to World War II Email id: [email protected] Enrollment no. : 4069206420220019 Submitted to Department of English,MKBU
- 3. Road Map of the Presentation INTRODUCTION About Author ‘The Great Gatsby ‘ -Daisy and Myrtle, Representations of the American Dream -Gatsby’s Pursuit of the Dream The American Dream in Literature Failings of the American Dreams Invisible Man -Invisibility and Racism 1 5 3 2 6 4 Conclusion Works cited
- 4. Introduction The American Dream has been a central theme of American literature since the early nineteenth century. The American Dream has subsequently become a tool for depicting the uniqueness of America. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ (1925) and Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ (1952) are two classic American novels, depicting the American Dream in different social and racial contexts.
- 5. About Author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in September 24, 1896 at St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S. and died in December 21, 1940, Hollywood, California. He was an American short-story writer and novelist famous for his depictions of the Jazz Age (the 1920s). His most brilliant novel being ‘The Great Gatsby’. -His Notable Works: ‘Tales of the Jazz Age’ ‘Tender is the Night’ ‘The Beautiful and Damned’ ‘The Crack-Up’ ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ ‘The Last Tycoon’ ‘This Side of Paradise’
- 6. —F. Scott Fitzgerald [H]e stretched out his arms toward the dark water…I…distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away…When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished…
- 7. The American Dream in Literature -The American Dream does not revolve around one single definition but includes “religious transformation, political reform, education attainment, sexual expression: the list is endless” (Cullen). “The American Dream has been defined as “one of the motivating forces of American civilization” (Carpenter). Literature on the American Dream explains that the Puritans and the Founding Fathers created guidelines based on moral and liberalist ideas. -Through American literature we can trace the American Dream as a representation of hope and idealism turned into disillusionment, depravity and falsity. Nineteenth-century writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman wrote of the emerging U.S. democracy and hymned man’s love for the land. The dark side of the Dream emerged in literature from the mid-nineteenth century with writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James and Mark Twain who became disillusioned by a changing America and wrote of finance, capitalism, industrialism and social corruption.
- 8. continue… -Twain’s suggestion that the American Dream was flawed at its core was further explored during the early twentieth century by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It became a trend for twentieth-century writers to personify the Dream as a beautiful young woman such as Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, the beautiful but vacuous fairy girl of George F. Babbitt in Sinclair Lewis’ ‘Babbitt’ (1922) and Faye Greener in ‘The Day of the Locust’ (1939). Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck have as modern American writers written about the Dream’s hollowness.
- 9. ‘The Great Gatsby’ -American values changed during the Roaring Twenties as white Americans were able to accumulate great wealth. Because of a rising advertisement industry, citizens were nourished with new ideas about the American Dream. -America during the 1920s was a country were citizens started to compare material possessions with their own “self-worth”. In ‘The Great Gatsby’, this is shown in the possessive behaviour of the protagonists with their large mansions and luxurious cars. Fitzgerald criticises the materialist outlook of their characters by depicting their lives as tragic and sorrowful as their material accomplishments fail to bring them happiness.
- 10. Daisy and Myrtle – Representations of the American Dream -Fitzgerald represents the American Dream through a beautiful woman Daisy Buchanan. By marrying the wealthy Tom Buchanan, Daisy has reached the “fullest stature” and is “better and fuller” in the eyes of Gatsby. Moreover, she comes from a family of status and was born under “fortuitous circumstances of birth and position” makes Daisy a desirable woman and links her to the American Dream. -This deceptive nature of Daisy can be read as a Fitzgeraldian criticism of the wealthy elite class.
- 11. Continue… -Another characterisation that allows Fitzgerald to criticise the social structure of 1920s’ America is Myrtle Wilson whose character demonstrates the American Dream’s impact on the frenetic quest for wealth. -Myrtle desires a richer and better life through escaping her husband and possessing material things. Regardless of whether Myrtle is subconsciously aware of the American Dream, she believes in the power of ownership, material things and their ability to create happiness. Her fundamental belief in materialism may be why Fitzgerald dooms her flawed character by sentencing her to a cruel death.
- 12. -The protagonist accomplishes one element of Cullen’s definitions of the American Dream in the sense that “the American Dream was never meant to be a zero-sum solution: the goal has always been to end up with more than you started with” (Cullen). -Wealthy individuals acquire their riches not from salaries but from shares or investments. An individual acting solely for the sake of making money risks becoming blind and missing the deeper, more meaningful themes of the American Dream. -Gatsby’s traits show the duplicity of his character and the belief in the American Dream. His attributes are honourable and inspiring; however, in due course, the same characteristics result in his death, which defines Gatsby as a tragic protagonist. The dichotomy of Gatsby can be interpreted as a dark side of the American Dream’s idealistic ideas, driven by the expectations of the upper class in the growing consumeristic American society Gatsby’s pursuit of the Dream
- 13. ‘Invisible Man’ -Ralph Ellison’s 1950s novel ‘Invisible Man’ depicts the misadventures of a nameless young African-American narrator from graduating high school to the intense race-tensions in Harlem. The protagonist’s physical journey and psychological development is marked by his invisibility in society and the racist structures of early twentieth-century America. -Invisible Man’s eagerness to be acknowledged and the racism he suffers which obstructs his American Dream.
- 14. Invisibility and racism -The nameless narrator’s journey can be discussed from the set of dreams that he aspires to fulfil. For the protagonist and his fellow college students, Booker T. Washington’s rhetoric is a gospel of the American Dream. His influence is supposed to be a force of enlightenment but over time it is depicted more and more as blinding and restricting for the Invisible Man. -Ellison begins his novel by letting his narrator and protagonist acknowledge that he “is an invisible man” who “might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (Ellison). -The novel’s opening cements the belief that other people view the protagonist as a less intelligent human being because of his race, or that white people are not deemed by society to understand African-Americans because they are believed to have different minds.
- 15. Continue… -The protagonist believes strongly that all it takes is “only to work and learn and survive in order to go to the top”. Even if we accept the fact that he truly does that, he fails to reach “the top” and instead ends up hiding away in his basement, thinking about his agonising dreamlike chronicles. -His belief in the American Dream is destroyed because he exists in an unequal society – a fact he cannot change. The Invisible Man possesses the liberalist drive that the early American thinkers valued so highly but his blindness and the racist ideology which he exists in disillusions him. -In similar fashion, Gatsby’s disillusion is caused by a personal deficiency, his blind love for the Daisy of his past, and a social structure – the hysteric quest for wealth. No matter how hard the Invisible Man tries to show his worth with rhetorical skills or hard labour white racists and social structures stand in his way.
- 16. Failings of the American Dream -The green light in ‘The Great Gatsby’ stands as a symbol for the failure of the American Dream. -The Great Gatsby’s version of the American Dream is the eagerness within people to reach towards something that is out of reach – something greater than themselves. -Three instances of the green light symbolise its representation, and the American Dream. First, in chapter one, the light is mysteriously described by the narrator. It is almost as if the narrator is not sure about where the light is coming from. The light is undeniably a physical object in the novel but also, the light seems to stand for a philosophical idea. -Second, when Gatsby is showing the light to Daisy. Here, instead of an almost magical light appearing in the distance, the light is described as something of “colossal significance” that has been lost, or perhaps that a symbolic component has ceased to exist. Gatsby here realises that Daisy, and the green light and his American Dream, are all regular to him.
- 17. Continue… -The final encounter with the green light is during the novel’s final paragraph where the light no longer remains a visible object. Gatsby is now dead, Daisy gone, and the narrator no longer resides in Long Island. The green light only exists in the narrator’s memories. -Ellison’s and Fitzgerald’s protagonists highlight the characters’ respective search for the American Dream. Ellison’s hero reaches the conclusion that he cannot view his dream as a political, financial, territorial, or religious prize to be won at the end of the road because this would violate its original promise. His journey shows strong evidence for the failure of the American Dream and the narrator realises this towards the end of the novel in order to redefine his outlook, and himself, before the novel ends. -Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson, on the other hand, lack the clarity to see their respective doomed paths until it is too late. Gatsby and Myrtle are unable to reach the social class to which they aspire and thus are victims of the ideology of the American Dream.
- 18. Conclusion -Fitzgerald’s representation of the American Dream in the characters Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby with special attention paid to Fitzgerald’s criticism of the consumerism of the 1920s. -Ralph Ellison’s protagonist has shown that he desires to be acknowledged in a society defined by racist structures. -The Invisible Man narrates the American Dream from his own perspective while Nick Carraway, as an outsider, can see the Dream’s fatal impact on Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby. Nick Carraway cannot stop their fate as this is only something the individual can understand, as the Invisible Man realises.
- 19. Works Cited Akesson, Johan. “The Failed American Dream? - Representation of the American Dream in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ralph Ellison.” Lund University Publications, 2017/18, https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8933871/file/8933872.pdf. Accessed 4 March 2023. Carpenter, Frederick I. American Literature and the Dream. New York: Philosophical Library, 1955. Print. Cullen, Jim. The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. London: Penguin Books Ltd, (1952) 2014. Print. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, (1925) 1993. Print.
- 20. GOLDBLATT, LAURA. “‘Can’t Repeat the Past?’ ‘Gatsby’ and the American Dream at Mid-Century.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, 2016, pp. 105–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44162974. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023. HANZO, THOMAS A. “THE THEME AND THE NARRATOR OF ‘THE GREAT GATSBY.’” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 2, no. 4, 1956, pp. 183–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26273109. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023. Mizener, Arthur. "F. Scott Fitzgerald". Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Dec. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/F-Scott-Fitzgerald. Accessed 3 March 2023
- 21. Thank You