Essay on The Great Gatsby Book

The Great Gatsby book was written during the jazz period. The author of this particular book formulated a neat and useful work as he had an excellent understanding of the American way of life. In his book, Gatsby was a character who went abroad leaving his loved one back. Gatsby was just an unfortunate soldier who just a poor soldier who was shipped to other parts to fight in other wars. When Gatsby returned to his home country, he found that the love of his life has grown impatient and moved on. Due to this factor, Gatsby focused on retrieving his lost lover. The themes evident in this book are very much alike to those in The American Dream.

The Great Gatsby is a critique of the American dream as it focuses on the moral decays which are described in The American Dream. Fitzgerald is not a critique of the book "the American dream" itself but the level of corruption of the American Dream. The Great Gatsby provides an excellent exploration of the American Dream as this book came into existence in the fixed period of the history of America which was around the 1920's. This paper further critiques The America Dream by emphasizing moral decays and frustrations of the modern society (Zabielsk, 2013). The content of Great Gatsby was written describing the American Dream and how individuals had greed for money and practiced materialism. This book focuses on the themes of corruption and materialism as during the jazz age; these times were considered times of corruption and degradation of moral values in many countries some of which bordered the United States of America.

Critique of the American dream is carried out by matching the central themes of The Great Gatsby with those of The American dream. The issues expressed in this book are very relevant to the period when the book was written (Zabielsk, 2013). This book was written after the occurrence of the First World War with which came the introduction of new materials such as cars and radios.

Nick who remains a mystery in the story is the character by who we get to meet the main character, Gatsby. Nick may seem to be insignificant in the story, but he plays a significant role in bringing Gatsby as a hero. Although Gatsby is a character who is full of vices and wicked doings and who will stop at nothing until he gets what he wants, he is still considered as a hero by Nick. Nick considering Gatsby as the hero of the story is very significant as this character must emerge as a hero as the title describes him as excellent. Although Gatsby is a liar and a man involved in crime Gatsby can be described as a tragic hero as Gatsby turned all there was right at the end of the book.

The theme of wealth and society and classes is the most dominant as in the novel the main character Gatsby is considered to be of high social class. Gatsby is grouped into the upper level as he possesses five vehicles. This theme is supported by other themes such as love, betrayal, wealth, marriage and materialism. Issues in a novel have been recorded to be represented by symbols such as color have been used to describe the occurrence of specific themes. For example, in The Great Gatsby, the yellow color is used to represent fake money while gold is used to refer to lawful money. Yellow is considered phony gold and used to describe the character Gatsby who rises to power through illegal means. He is further regarded as yellow after he expresses inability to adapt to the high-class society of the New York City.

Symbols are dominant from the start of the book as in chapter one we find something which is referred as The Green Light. The green light is very symbolic as it used to show that Gatsby had hopes which had grown to become dreams. This hope was about how Gatsby dreamed of a future with Daisy despite the distance between them. The green light can also be analyzed to represent the vast gap between the daisy and Gatsby (Zabielsk, 2013). On further analysis of this exciting novel, we find the term "the valley of ashes" which is used symbolically to represent the difference in social classes.

The book "The Great Gatsby" written by Fitzgerald was written during times when materialism was the main vice practiced by American citizens. This book took into consideration of this factor which was influenced by the outcomes of the Second World War. Materialism is a dominant theme among other listed topics such as love, betrayal, and marriage. The author of this book had good knowledge of the current situation of the country and he neatly and adequately outlined this issues in the course of the book. The current status of the nation was addressed through characters such as Nick, Gatsby, and Daisy. Daisy is used to enhancing the theme of betrayal while his counterpart Gatsby is used to improve determination and decay of morals in the society.

Works Cited

Literary Articles. Criticism of the American Dream in the Great Gatsby. 2009. http://www.literary-articles.com/2009/06/fall-down-of-american-dream-in-great.html. October 2017.

Zabielski, grace. Color Symbolism in the Great Gatsby. 2013. https://prezi.com/yq8-7ighp3fp/color-symbolism-in-the-great-gatsby/. October 2017.