The great gatsby and the fall of the american dream. The book 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald was an 'icon of itstime.' The book discusses topics that were important, controversial andinteresting back in 1920's America. The novel is 'an exploration of theAmerican Dream as it exists in a corrupt period of history.' The mainthemes in the book are the decay of morals and values and thefrustration of a 'modern' society. The Great Gatsby describes the decayof the American Dream and the want for money and materialism. Thisnovel also describes the gap between the rich and the poor (Gatsby andthe Wilsons, West Egg and the Valley of the Ashes) by comparing thedifferences between the Western United States (traditional westernculture) and the Eastern United States (money obsessed values). On asmaller scale this could be seen as the difference between the West Egg(the 'new, money) and the East egg (the 'old' money). The 1920's werea time of corruption and the degradation of moral values for the UnitedStates and many other countries. World War One had just ended andpeople were reveling in the materialism that came with the end of it,new mass produced commodities such as motor cars and radios werefilling people's driveways and houses, money was more accessible(before the Great Depression). Cars were becoming a social symbol inthe 1920s as we can see with Gatsby's five cars, one of which he givesto Nick and one of which kills Myrtle Wilson later on in the novel.Herbert Hoover (an American President) said in 1925 "We will root outpoverty and put two cars in every garage." The parties that Gatsby heldevery week in the summer were a symbol of the carelessness of the time.Gatsby would hide in the house while the 'guests', most of whom werenot even invited, would party, eat and drink until the early hours ofthe morning without even meeting the guest or even knowing who he was.People would turn up just to be seen or reported in the localnewsp...
