American Dreaming: Really Reading The Great Gatsby
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American Dreaming: Really Reading The Great Gatsby William E. Cain 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) is one of the best known and most widely read and taught novels in American literature. It is so familiar that even those who have not read it believe that they have and take for granted that they know about its main character and theme of the American Dream. We need to approach The Great Gatsby as if it were new and really read it, paying close attention to Fitzgerald’s literary language. His novel gives us a vivid depiction of and insight into income inequality as it existed in the 1920s and, by extension, as it exists today, when the American Dream is even more limited to the fortunate few, not within reach of the many. When we really read The Great Gatsby, we perceive and understand the American dimension of the novel and appreciate, too, the global range and relevance that in it Fitzgerald has achieved. It is a great American book and a great book of world literature. Keywords F. Scott Fitzgerald . The Great Gatsby . American dream . Oswald Spengler . Money . Income inequality . 1920s . James Truslow Adams . Zelda Sayre . Barack Obama . Hillary Clinton . Donald Trump . New Amsterdam . American literature . World literature
It is odd that we connect F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to the American Dream, for this dream is one of equal opportunity, and the celebration of material well-being and personal success, of contentment and happiness, whereas the novel concludes with the demise of its deluded protagonist, shot dead in a swimming pool by a deranged husband who believes that Gatsby killed his wife by smashing into her in his fancy car. We honor and profess to believe in the American Dream, a dream that we say the nation’s history has shown to be a reality for many millions. Those born at the bottom, but who possess spirit, pluck, and determination, can rise to prosperity and personal fulfillment; immigrants, unable to speak English, can learn the language and acquire education, find employment, marry, buy a home, have children, lead decent lives in safe neighborhoods, vote in democratic elections, and enjoy a comfortable retirement. But the prime place accorded to The Great Gatsby in the literary canon suggests that Americans have known all along that the American Dream is largely myth, ideology, propaganda.
* William E. Cain [email protected] 1
Department of English, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481, USA
Reading The Great Gatsby is intended, it appears, as an indoctrination in reverse: we require young people to study Fitzgerald’s novel in high school and college courses so they realize, before embarking on their careers, that the American Dream they have heard about and will hear about, is beyond their reach. Even if they fulfill their dreams and gain their desires in material terms, they will not be happy. When we think in this disenchanted way about The Great Gatsby, published in 1925,
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