The Great Gatsby Essay Prompt 1

Rachael Kerr
English AP 11
August 1, 2009
The Great Gatsby

Corruption and the American Dream

When the United States of America was settled, a document was written proclaiming each person’s rights to ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness’. However, as time went on, people began to lose sight of their pride and morals; everything came down to reputation and the almighty dollar. At the time, those that were involved thought nothing of it, but that does not mean anyone thought it strange later on. In fact, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a famous book on this subject, entitled The Great Gatsby. In this book, Fitzgerald introduces the narrator, Nick Carraway, to several characters undergoing this moral change, which allows him to articulate the corruption of a once wonderful thing. By using Nick as an uncorrupted observer and introducing him to corrupted characters, Fitzgerald demonstrates the twisted idea of the new American dream.
One of the most influential objects in this changing time of the 1920s was money. Everyone began to drop the idea of doing your job for enough money to live comfortably, and adopting the idea that illegal means such as bootlegging alcohol are ways to acquire enough money to become extravagantly wealthy. In fact, this was the plan for Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby. After spending years under his employer, he made a pact to spending the rest of his life to earning vast amounts of wealth, even if that meant turning to a life of crime. Later in the novel, it is revealed to the readers that Gatsby did this to win back the love of Daisy, Nick’s cousin and wife of Tom Buchanan. While Tom is confronting an affair between Daisy and Gatsby he blurts out this secret about Gatsby: “He…bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores…and sold grain alcohol over the counter[illegal at the time]”(Fitzgerald, 133). This is a very clear demonstration of tainted morals and thinking; Gatsby gave up his self-respect to turn to a life of crime, and Daisy rid herself of morals to only marry a man for his money because of her greed. However, they are not alone in their negative transformation.
Daisy and Gatsby are not the only two in The Great Gatsby with confused and misled morals. While Daisy was having an affair with Gatsby, her husband was not being faithful either; Tom was seeing another woman named Myrtle Wilson. While this is another example of corrupted morals, there is more to be seen from it. When Tom finds out about Daisy’s affair, he angrily forces a confrontation, thus making him a hypocrite because he was having one himself (and with a married woman no less). Also, as if dual affairs were not bad enough, both of them almost have no shame in revealing it. With Daisy, when her husband leaves the room and Gatsby is there, she will begin to kiss him, even though Tom is just in the other room: “As [Tom] left the room again, [Daisy] got up went over to Gatsby…kissing him on the mouth” (116). Then with Tom, he invites Nick to see his mistress one day when he goes off to visit her. In addition, Daisy and Tom’s marriage is the epitome of ‘shallow’; neither of them could be considered ‘good people’, but they married one another over their obsessions and corruption. Daisy only loved men if they had money, making her shallow, but she is unbelievably beautiful. Tom is a controlling, violent, sexist, hypocritical bully, all of which would make him undesirable, except for the fact that he has a vast fortune. These two characters’ small perks are what attract one to the other, but because they feel nothing for one another, they resort to adultery.
As we can gather from main character’s morals, the idea of being dishonest and cheating (both in the sense of relationships and rules) is a completely understandable one. The addition of another character furthers this theme: Jordan Baker, a beautiful woman, one famous for winning golf tournaments. At first, she seems completely fine; she tries to begin a romantic relationship with Nick, and she is unmarried. Later on, though, we learn that she might not be as great at golf as we had previously assumed. It is told that she cheated to win her first tournament, and that she continually bends the truth. In the beginning, Nick can already tell what kind of person she is, but he chooses to allow a close relationship because he believes “Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply” (58). In fact he goes on saying he actually felt sorry for her, and then forgot about it all together; this shows us what kind of character Nick is and how he is important. He can judge people fairly, while not seeming insane and obsessing over one person, and by abstaining from that, readers can understand him and trust his judgment.
Nick Carraway is not only the narrator of The Great Gatsby, but perhaps the most important character besides Gatsby himself. Nick has the job of the observer; he is there to be a ‘control’ character. The story is told from his point-of-view because he is not corrupted, thus he sees corruption clearly. Also, probably the most important part of Nick’s character is the fact that he is not from where the other characters are. Every other character had lived in the New York area for a multitude of years, giving the corruption time to settle. So because he is not corrupted, Nick understands what the characters do as strange and negative. In addition to not only being new to the area, readers ascertain the idea that Nick is a good judge of character because of the fact that he can look at himself and find flaws: “Every one suspects himself of at least one the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I [Nick] am one of the few honest people I know” (59).
In The Great Gatsby, the decline of the American dream is clearly exemplified by F. Scott Fitzgerald. By juxtaposing an innocent character with corrupted characters, Fitzgerald makes readers concentrate on the actions and morals themselves, not the characters. By using Nick as a narrator, readers are allowed to look at the tainted morals with their own judgment; opposed to if the narrator was a corrupted character, which would have the narrator justifying the twisted beliefs of the characters. By using Nick as an uncorrupted observer and introducing him to corrupted characters, Fitzgerald demonstrates the twisted idea of the new American dream. Each character in the novel represented a different type of moral change: Daisy demonstrated greed by only marrying rich men, Tom showed disloyalty by having an affair, Jordan was dishonest by cheating to win gold tournaments, and Gatsby showed lack of pride in himself and his country by turning to illegal means for money. When our founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, they set a goal for each citizen: ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ Time soured this beautiful dream, and it was tainted with all the negative wants and needs of those who lost sight of what was really right.