Gatsby :: essays research papers

The American Dream I have just read a novel called "The Great Gatsby" this novel was based in the 1920's. In this novel there are lots of drinking, and parting. In this essay I'll be writing about how the novel condemns the belief of "The American Dream", this belief states that, hard working people are successful and live happy lives. And in this novel "The American Dream" was just a mirage. One of the characters in the novel that represents the American Dream is Wilson he was one of the character that was a hard worker and own his own mechanic shop, he was one of the characters that worked every day and every night to support his family. For all he did for his family he was rewarded by his wife leaving him for another man and for a friend to have power over him with words and to get a loved one killed by a car that she was walking toward("When he came outside again a little after seven he was reminded of the conversation because he heard Mrs. Wilson's voice, load and scolding, down stairs in the garage "Beat me!" he heard her cry. "Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!" A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting; before he could move from his door the business was over. The "death car" as the newspapers called it, didn't stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically f or a moment and then disappeared around the next bend."Pg.144-145). For all this he got for all his hard work he went and killed Gatsby and killed himself("The chauffeur--he was one of Wolfshiem's proteges heard the shots--afterward he could only say that he hadn't thought anything much about them. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby's house and my rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing that alarmed anyone. But they knew then, I firmly believed. With scarcely a word said, four of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener and I, hurried down to the pool. There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. The touch of a compass, a thin red circle in the water. IT was after we started with toward the house that the gardener was Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, and holocaust was complete"Pg.