Fitzgerald and the American Dream

The American Dream, as it arose in the Colonial period and developed in the ninteenth century, was based on the assumption that each person, no matter what his orgins, could succeed in life on the sole basis of his or her own skill and effort.  The dream was embodied in the ideal of the self made man, just as it was embodied in Fitzgerald's own family by his grandfather, P.F. McQuillan.   The Great Gatsby is a novel about what happened to the American dream in the 1920s, a period when the old values that gave substance to the dream had been corrupted by the vulgar pursuit of wealth.  The characters are midwesterners who have come east in pursuit of this new dream, as well as money, fame, success, glamour, and excitement.  Tom and Daisy must have a huge house, a stable of polo ponies, and friends in Europe.  Gatsby must have his enormous mansion before he can feel confident enough to try to win Daisy.   What Fitzgerald seems to be criticizing in The Great Gatsby is not the American Dream itself, but the corruption of the American Dream.  What was was a belief in self reliance andhard work, has become what Nick Carraway calls"...the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty."  The energy that might have gone into the pursuit of noble goals has been channeled intot he pursuit of power and pleasure, and a very showy, but fundamentaly empty form of success.   Both the character groupings and images suggest a second major theme that we can call "sight and insight."  As you read the novel, you will come across many images of blindness; is this because hardly anyone seems to see what is really going on?  The characters have little self knowledge and even less knowledge of each other.  Even Gatsby lacks the insight to understand what is happening.  He never truly sees either Daisy or himself, so blinded is he by his dream.  the only characters who see, in the sense of "understand", are Nick and Owl Eyes.  The ever present eyes of Dr. Eckleburg seem to reinforce the theme that there is no all seeing presence in the modern world