The Great Gatsby and The American Dream: A Jazz Age Disintegration
             F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the decline of the great American Dream through six distinct personas living out a typical 1920's lifestyle. Many deem wealth and success to be the means to this paradigm. When stability, security and family values become part of the suburban lifestyle, the American dream comes close to being reality. Fitzgerald sets this exact downfall in two affluent Long Island neighborhoods, East Egg and West Egg. The people in these neighborhoods are symbols of superficiality and arrogance of the Jazz Age, theRoaring Twenties.? A new way of life after the harshness of World War I stemmed from a booming economy, prosperity and usually sudden wealth. People were becoming irresponsible with each dollar that they acquired. If a person was in the position where they earned very little, they could still live a lavish lifestyle by attending random parties, the hit of the twenties.
             Tom and Daisy Buchanan as well as Myrtle Wilson and Jordan Baker are a tragic example of the corruption the American Dream faced in the Jazz Age. Their whole persona consists of pure ignorance and self-centeredness. Everything seems simple in their eyes because their access to money and popularity can cure any problem. Myrtle Wilson never had much money to her name but her affair with Tom Buchanan provided her with a pleasurable spending account. Escaping into the city from her husband's less than admirable garage, she would slip into something impressionable and? with the influence of the dress her whole personality [would] also undergo a change. The intense vitality was converted into impressive hauteur? (Fitzgerald 35). Even though she was of the same class as one of the workers in her city apartment she still spoke to him with a superior, condescending tone exclaiming that?You have to keep after [public workers] all the time?? (Fitzgerald 36). Daisy is a woman of only on
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