Analyisis of The Great Gatsby

             "He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity." p.89
             In "The Great Gatsby", Jay Gatsby accomplished the American Dream as he rose from a childhood of desperate poverty to an adulthood of extravagant wealth. Jay Gatsby's representation of the dream was to attain Daisy Buchanan. She was the "...idea so long, dreamed... "
             F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" critiques the cultural capital of the American Dream and its symbols. Cultural Capital is general cultural knowledge or beliefs, values which are drawn into the text from the culture which produced it. The American Dream is a life that should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with opportunity for each according to ability and achievement. It is a dream of social order in which each man and woman should be able to attain the full stature of what they are capable of and be recognised by others for what they are, regardless of the circumstances for birth or position. Fitzgerald critiques and criticizes the moral failure of the American Dream and American society through the elements of cultural capital and its symbols.
             This novel is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway in the 1920's or the Jazz Age where for ten years people tried to forget the horrors of the First World War, with everyone wanting to concentrate on the future. The 1920's was the decade of youth. People lived life at a frantic pace as they tried to put the past behind them.
             "The Great Gatsby" is set in this age there is evidence of the characters trying to put the past behind them and move forward as fast as they can by attending parties where they dance and drink the night away. However, Jay Gatsby was an exception to this as he not only wanted to remember the past he wanted to repeat it.
             "I wouldn't ask...

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