ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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The Great Gatsby

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American Dreamin'

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a la Shmoop

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This world

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is some reflection of the American Dream.

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Or at least one person's view

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of the American Dream.

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So explain kind of

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what the take is on the American Dream here,

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because it's a failed thing before you even get out of the gate.

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Because you're not aiming at the direction you wanna go in life, anyway.

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[ manic giggle ]

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[ splat ]

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Right, and the end of the book really reminds us of that,

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because at Gatsby's funeral,

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where -- Three people show up to Gatsby's funeral:

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Nick, obviously, the owl-eyed man, the guy who found his books

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in the library, and Gatsby's father.

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And Gatsby's dad brings a journal

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that Gatsby had kept and shows it

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to Nick. And it basically has

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this schedule written out on it.

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Wake up at this time, do this, do this.

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And then at the bottom it says,

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"Stop X, Y, and Z." Basically telling himself

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how he can recreate himself.

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And we get to see young Gatsby's words,

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or young Gatz' words saying,

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"You're not gonna be who you are anymore.

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You're gonna change yourself."

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So we see that since he was young,

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he's been completely trying to reinvent himself.

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But he ends up dead.

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We find this out while we're at his funeral.

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So there's no way that Gatsby woke up and was like,

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"You know what? I wanna be

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rich and successful. That's my personal dream."

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That was not his personal dream.

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That was America's dream. That was the American Dream,

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to start from nothing and become rich and successful.

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And he does it. Again, he gets there,

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and, even though he has fulfilled someone else's American Dream,

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he has not fulfilled his own.

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And we think maybe if he'd gotten Daisy,

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would he have fulfilled that dream?

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But we think probably not.

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And it continues like that.

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Fitzgerald and his generation really were --

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It was a generation of disillusionment,

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meaning they really just were not psyched about what was going on in the world.

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And it reads for me as this

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ultimate underlying tragedy in that the guy worked so hard,

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so disciplined at all the values you'd attribute

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to a normal American Dream success,

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to fulfill a dream that wasn't really him.

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It wasn't necessarily his.

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At least inertly.

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And he ended up dying trying,

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so not a Disney animated musical coming soon your way.

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All right, so that's Gatsby a la Shmoop on video with Dr. Deb.

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[ music ]

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[ whoop ]

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How does Fitzgerald portray the American Dream in The Great Gatsby?

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[ wolf whistle ]

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It wasn't necessarily his.

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