The "American Dream" in The Great Gatsby

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The "American Dream" in The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald emulates the "American Dream" as something corrupt, and not easy to achieve. The "American Dream" is made up of a long social ladder, and it is often impossible to be accepted at the top of this social ladder. In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald portrays Gatsby as the epitome of the "American Dream." However, there is a fine line between what many of us think is the "American Dream", and what Fitzgerald thinks is the "American Dream."   One must be able to differentiate between Gatsby's ideal "American Dream", and the ideal "American Dream" of others.
What is the "American Dream?"   The "American Dream" can be perceived in a number of different ways. It is optimism for the future. Some people start out with nothing, work honest and hard, and sometimes never achieve anything. There are also people that have their family's financial support to educate them.   Finally, there is the illegal way of achieving the "American Dream." Gatsby felt that the illegal way was the most appealing to him.
There are a number of passages that lead us to infer Fitzgerald's view of the "American Dream." On page six in the middle of the second paragraph, Nick drops the first innuendoes that lead us to conclude to infer Fitzgerald's view of the "American Dream."
Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction-Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"- it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No-...

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