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“The American Dream in the Great Gatsby and the Joy Luck Club”

 American dream in the Great Gatsby:

The Great Gatsby underlines the decline of American dream in the days of
1920s. American dream is a firm belief that success can be sought at the cost of hard
labor, sincere devotion and determination, despite of race, culture or poor/dark
historical background. It lies around the fantasy that everybody has a right to achieve
their goals, fulfill the dreams and be rich while being engaged in a pursuit of
happiness. But Fitzgerald highlights the materialism through this novel that has
prevailed in the society, diminishing away all the moral values and traces of American
dream among the people.

The novel traces the lives of several people, inter-connected to each other by
means of love, hatred, jealousy, passion, success, desire of getting richer and richer
and most of all fulfilling the American dream that everyone dreams of. It tells the
materialistic difference between the people living in East egg and West egg that
eventually had opposite approaches employed to get their American dreams to be
came true.

Jay Gatsby is the name that gets entitled for his continuous struggling in order
to get fulfilled his greatest desire, the American dream i.e. to get his lost love Daisy
back. He belonged to poor background due to which he got rejected by Daisy’s father.
After that incident, Gatsby made this aim of his life to get Daisy back by means of
getting rich, known, established and highly successful as the people of West egg. The
narrator i.e. Nick describes his wish as “an extraordinary gift for hope (Fitzgerald 4)”.
This hope, rather to be called his American dream of winning Daisy back made him
dwell his whole being from the peak of moral values to dark pitches of success and
wealth gained at cost of wrong illegal means. He always pictured this hope as a
faraway goal i.e. his mansion was quite far from Daisy’s home by means of distance,
status and wealth. As Nick described:
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“Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single

green light, minute and far away (Fitzgerald 24)”.

Here “green light” is a symbol of longest desire and American dream that
stood by Gatsby till his deathbed.

He always ignored his past and never accepted his reality that he actually
belonged to a farm people family. He always pictured him as people of West coast
who got everything to boost off and get anything they want. As Nick described:

“So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy
would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end (Fitzgerald
105)”.

Gatsby tried every legal and illegal means to mount up his wealth and invested
it in building his huge mansion, showing it off by arranging grand parties now and
then. Every such get-together at his home filled with people, dead with moral values,
living only in materialistic world, with materialistic talks – a death of American
dream’s belief. Gatsby however looked at those occasions as advancing steps toward
completion of his dream. As Nick (narrator) described:

“My eyes fell on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps and looking from
one group to another with approving eyes (Fitzgerald 55)”.

Gatsby has mainly one belief of getting his American dreams fulfilled i.e.
getting Daisy back. He never compromised on the reality that she is married to
someone else. As he said:

“Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!
(Fitzgerald 118)”.

But he forgot that in attaining so he would be losing all that he once had, the
moral values. As Fitzgerald described:
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“A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing
dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about … like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding
toward him through the amorphous trees (Fitzgerald 172).

On the other hand, other characters had their dreams beside themselves. Nick,
the narrator always believed in the moral values of East egg and true meaning of
American dream. He got a bit attracted toward West egg’s people but never let go of
his goals. Jordan baker, the tournament player, believed in getting her American
dream of always winning fulfilled at cost of dishonest means. Martyle i.e. Mrs Wilson
always dreamed of being a part of rich people and availed it at cost of deceiving her
loyal husband and having affair with Tom, Daisy’s husband. Tom Buchanan was a
materialistic man whose greed never ended and always demanded more. He kept
beautiful wealthy wife with an affair. He was born with enough wealth behind that he
actually had not to earn it himself. Daisy was of the same nature. She was deceiving
him by having affair with Gatsby. But both of them had no feelings for the poor
Gatsby and Martyle who ended up in dying. They came back to each other with no
regrets and thus are better described in novel as:

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and
creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or
whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they
had made (Fitzgerald 191)”.

 American dream in the Joy Luck Club:

This novel highlights how every single person have different perspective of
his/her American dream and achieves it in owns way. It tells the story of four
mothers, their daughters i.e. eight women struggling in her own ways to get their
dream fulfilled. Their stories represent that how they perceive their dreams and once
attained how they interact with each other, lead their lives onwards and figures out
their true identities.

Each of the four mothers belonged to China and valued their morality and
cultural norms over there. This was their American dream which later transformed
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into something different due to several tragedies and hardships faced by them. They
all migrated to America in order to get their daughters to a safe platform of
independent and secured society. But in doing so, they failed to realize that their
Americanized daughters no longer value their true identities and had little connections
with their mothers. Their mutual bonds seemed get weakened gradually since the
mothers failed in making them realize that their real American dream must not be to
lead a fast paced, busy and materialistic lives. Rather, it should be lead a family
oriented life based on hopes, goals for better tomorrow and true devotion.

Suyan was an ambitious and iron-willed mother who lost her two daughters
during World war but somehow managed to grow up her third daughter Jing-Mei
Woo. Her American dream was to make her daughter determined like her and get her
lost ones back. Her dream was that Jing-Mei play piano which first refused in
childhood but after her mother’s death, played quite well.

An-Mei Hsu had a scarred past related to his mother who married a merchant,
but made her dream to let her daughter Rose lead a happy life and advices her in
every way. It was her strength that made Rose decided to not leave the house and
property to her deceived and divorced husband.

Lindo Jong was an obedient daughter who respected her parent’s will to get
married at age of 16 which ended badly. As a result, she dreamed of making her
daughter Waverly Jong independent and full of art of invisible strength.

Ying Yong had a dark past in which she got once lost, seduced by a man and
faced child miscarriage. Thus, she dreamed of making her daughter Lena a confident
and secure American lady and stand by her in every matter.

During all those times, at first the mothers and daughters lacked
communication due to which they could not understand the values of American
dreams of each other. But by going through several matters, they get to know what
their mothers really valued and dreamed of.
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 Comparison in themes of both novels:

The main theme of both novels moves around American dream, but with
different perspective.

In the “Joy Luck Club”, the theme is comprised on struggles that go on by

mothers in attaining their dreams, which at first failed a bit since their daughters got
secure, independent and successful lives materially but not morally. The American
dream changed between these two generations. However, later on the American
women, the daughters get to know their real values, true worth, Chinese norms that
helped them in realizing what their mothers once dreamed of was of great worth. The
novel ends well in which the daughters finally learned to how to keep balance
between their American-Chinese cultures.

On contrary to it, the “Great Gatsby” show the decline of American dream in
which the characters failed in realizing the true meaning of this firm belief even till
the very end. They get so obsessed with their American dream that ended up either in
betrayal or deaths. They could have saved themselves from it if worked upon the
advice as quoted by Nick’s father:

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people
in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had (Fitzgerald 3)”.

The American dream also failed in case of poor Gatsby, who had only one
motive, but never got satisfied with it. His dream turned into greed of having Daisy
more and more which resulted all in vain. As Nick said:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year
recedes before us. It eluded us then (Fitzgerald 193)”.
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Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F.S. “the Great Gatsby”, planetebook.com, n.p. n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. <
http://www.planetebook.com/ebooks/the-great-gatsby.pdf>