What comes to mind when you hear, “The American Dream”? Freedom? Opportunity? Wealth? Fame? While the American Dream was once about affluence and materialism, it is now considered to be the hope that any American has the opportunity and freedom to earn success if they work hard enough. This means that race and economic class do not play a role in achieving happiness. Success is when you achieve your goals, which means you consequently feel happiness. While many may gain wealth, they may not feel happy. Many are unable to achieve either. Nostalgia (a particular affection for the past) and materialism (the tendency to prioritize physical possessions over other aspects of life) are both large factors in The Great Gatsby and Between the World and Me. The corrupted, materialistic Dream of gaining wealth without happiness is demonstrated well in The Great Gatsby, and the fact that many Americans (specifically African Americans) are at a great disadvantage towards achieving the American Dream is understood through Between the World and Me. Therefore, with these texts in mind, America is a land of nostalgia and materialism.
Nostalgia proves to be very detrimental to Gatsby when he lives his life trying to achieve the American Dream. When Daisy and Gatsby first met, Gatsby was very poor. His military uniform was the only thing allowing him to be with such a wealthy family as Daisy’s. He knew Daisy wouldn’t marry a poor man so he “made the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously” (149). Gatsby did everything he could in life to lift himself out of poverty. Due to the fact that he did anything and everything he could, he lost sight of his morality. By describing Gatsby as acting “ravenously and unscrupulously”, Fitzgerald suggests that Gatsby made advances that were possibly more like harassment in hopes Daisy would accept him. Although Jay Gatsby wanted to be an upstanding, moral husband for Daisy when they met five years later, Daisy could not love him because of his unscrupulous means for becoming rich. Nostalgic Gatsby wanted to bring back the past, but his conduct over the five years made him stray away from real success, the real American Dream of feeling content and free. Furthermore, Fitzgerald seems to be showing that Gatsby’s nostalgic feeling is similar to how America never quite reconciles much of its past.
Materialism also plagues Gatsby’s life when he makes his only goal in life to get rich. At the end of the story, Nick reflects on Gatsby’s emotions when he bought his mansion in West Egg. He “thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock...his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it” (180) The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock symbolizes Gatsby’s dream. Gatsby was focused solely on generating wealth so that he can win over the trophy that is Daisy. Once he felt “so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”, he believed that nothing would stand in the way of him and his dream of being Daisy’s lover. He disregarded the fact that five years had gone by and everything changed, including Daisy. This ignorance shows how naïve and materialistic Gatsby had become when his only purpose in life was to get rich. Additionally, Fitzgerald shows that this naivety and materialism from Gatsby was characteristic of Americans in the 1920s.
While some don’t achieve the American Dream because their understanding of it is corrupted or skewed, Ta-Nehisi Coates knows that African Americans have been and are still at a large disadvantage when it comes to achieving the American Dream. In a message directed to those in power, Coates writes: “Enslaved people were not ‘bricks in your road’, they were ‘people turned to fuel for the American machine’” (70). For much of America’s young lifetime, African Americans were used as free labor, doing grueling jobs for white landowners. This labor was “fuel” that helped grow the fortunes of white American men. These powerful white men were responsible for the “American machine”, so African Americans could never be prosperous and happy in a society where the machine’s prosperity depended on their downfall.
Coates went on to point out how invalid the excuses are for stopping black people throughout history from achieving the American Dream. When people in power looked back and said that mistakes were made but they meant well, Coates responded, “‘Good intention’ is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream” (33). This reasoning of good intention for the enslavement of black people is void of truth. African Americans’ ability to achieve the American Dream was completely destroyed, and those that caused such destruction never faced repercussions because of their “hall pass”. Coates words explain illustrate that powerful white men look at the horrific past and wish that slavery didn’t end. This nostalgic feeling is extremely immoral because when discrimination pervades, it slows and prevents African Americans from achieving the American Dream.
Historically speaking, America is a land of nostalgia and materialism. America always has been and, in many ways, still is today. However, this may be changing for the better in recent years. A New York Times opinion article from February 2019 cited an American Enterprise Institute survey which found that “85 percent [of those surveyed] indicated that ‘to have freedom of choice in how to live’ was essential to achieving the American dream”, whereas only 16 percent thought becoming wealthy was essential to achieving the American Dream. Indeed, The Great Gatsby exposed the flaws in the early 20th century American Dream, and Between the World and Me does the same for the American Dream that exists today. But it appears that many Americans have shifted their understanding of the Dream to a desire for freedom rather than a desire for wealth. I hope that this shift in the Dream is true, so that despite all the issues impacting our country (such as the tragic death of George Floyd on May 26), Americans can live in whatever way that makes them happy—because then we will all prosper.
Jack, some fascinating ideas here. You're right: Gatsby is not held back by scruples, just as perhaps our country has not been. Your discussion of nostalgia is fascinating to me since that word literally means "returning home." But Gatsby wants to return to a home that never existed and the same is true for the U.S. (as when people say our country was founded on equality). Last: I like your discussion of the pursuit of wealth morphing into the pursuit of freedom, but I wonder if we can ever be truly free if we are not economically free.
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