The Great Gatsby--"The American Dream"

Don't expect people to just give you information- you should be doing your own research. But if you post the rough draft, people will probably give you suggestions on how to improve it or tell you where you've gone wrong.

Since you have "The American Dream" in quotes, I would suggest that you first define what exactly that means. It sounds like you are writing a paper on a topic that you don't understand. Once you figure out what the "American Dream" is from a 1920's perspective, you can see how that compares and contrasts with Gatsby's approach.

the great gatsby and other famous novels written by america's most famous writers were never intended to be read as classroom assignments for high school... the books were written for those people who can relate to the subject matters of the novel..i.e men and women who are 30 yrs old and older living the good life...

sure kids can write wonderful essays about the novel, but there is no real relationship bewteen the essay ahd the book.. one has to "experience" the stories of the novel to appreciate the depth on what fitzgerald wrote...

kid don't be hard on yourself... when you write an essay make sure it's punctual and grammatically correct...sit down with your instructor and talk about the book.. get a feel from him as to what he expects from your essay..don't worry he knows you're only a highschool student with limited life experience...

There was an entire thread on this a couple of weeks ago...look for it

I have to disagree with this. A good novel (or any piece of art for that matter) is able to relate to a wide array of people. Human feelings, emotions, desires, problems, etc... are universal at just about any age. Perspectives may change, but the core stays relatively similar. That's why a young white upper class college student can relate to a story about an old poor black man in prison (just an example, not referencing a specific story) Sure the book can mean different things to the same person at different points in their life, but that doesn't mean that a high schooler can't appreciate the Great Gatsby.

You beat me to what I was about to say.

One of the greatest things about a good book is how it changes as you change. It's not just valuable at the one point in your life when you can relate to it.

Write about cars in the great gatsby. Lots of stuff about cars in that book. And it was written at the time when cars were just beginning to be mass produced.

F.Scott Fitzgerald wrote:

Can someone help me out with my essay. I recently wrote a rough draft on Mr. Gatsby's "American Dream", and how it is unreachable. My teacher said it was a "D" paper, so can someone please help me out with this topic "the American Dream"? Or if you have any links to information on this please feel free to post, but please no sparknotes, or cliffnotes stuff.

Thanks

We can't tell from this why your teacher considers it a 'D' paper at this point. Is it because he thinks you don't understand the book? Or is it because the essay is poorly written and argued?

Here's some trivia for you. Fitzgerald hated the title and resisted it bitterly. He proposed several titles to Maxwell Perkins, and only one even had the name Gatsby in it. Fitzgerald's preferred title was Trimalchia. Why was that and what/who was Trimalchia? I'll let you research that yourself. That alone is the subject of a good essay and sheds some light on what the author was getting at.

I read an essay a couple years ago by an academic who had an opportunity to examine one of the first drafts of Trimalchia that Fitzgerald submitted. She was amazed at how heavily Perkins edited the manuscript. Key scenes were substantially changed. Very interesting.

The very rich are different from you and Me: they have more money.

Here's the only summary you need:

http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/fitzgerald.gatsby.shtml

Tom Buchanan got just about everything he wanted in that book (he wouldn't have been interested in Myrtle for long). Jordan Baker made out pretty well, too.

Wow...I'm very sorry, but you're an idiot. A complete idiot. You're simply a product of the vile, relativist conformity that's weakened American values/education and robbed "our youth" of their ability to guiltlessly form and hold convictions. Have fun being old and "living the good life." A "good life" for me is one in which I can comprehend the purpose of my reality to whatever extent is possible at the moment...and waiting until I'm "in my 30s and 40s and living the good life," would hardly make that possible.

Here's an easy way to write English papers: focus on the last page.

In Gatsby, you could write about the paradox of the past: we can neither escape it, nor repeat it.

I'm watching you!

The last sentence of the book is awesome! And is Fitzgerald's clearest assertion that the AD is unattainable. To be honest, your topic is a bit humdrum. Wish I had the paper I wrote on it back in college. The first A I got on a college paper...

I've done this before, and god knows I'll probably have to do it again. You're welcome:

Foucault mourns the loss of boats and our arrival in a civilization where, without their heterotopia, “dreams dry up.” But the final scene of The Great Gatsby indicates that, despite the problems of modernism, our world still does have its boats: “we beat on, boats against the current,” Nick tells us (180). The vision of the Dutch sailors can be relived today in a car or on a train, so that we too can find some “transitory enchanted moments.” The Great Gatsby has been interpreted as alternately a criticism of the American dream of wealth, or as a complex, halting praise of a more romantic dream, that of imagination. It is the emergence of automotive vision which makes this latter reading so effective: it allows us to acknowledge that there will never be a “warm center” to the modern world, to realize that everywhere is just another “ragged edge” of suburbia; but it allows us to know, at the same time, that as we zip about through modernity, there will be some way to find, like Nick’s sailors, something commensurate with our capacity for wonder, if only so briefly. As Foucault claims, “the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space”; throughout American literature, from Whitman’s “Song of Myself” to Kerouc’s On the Road to Paul Auster’s New York wanderings, writers have attempted to stake out some space within the developing behemoth that is America, and time and time again they take to motion in order to preserve this space. Through automotive vision, through space in motion, they retain some romantic “adventure” in the face of postmodern “espianoge.” By moving, they find some way to navigate their world. For, as Ronald Berman points out, the key word of Gatsby’s final sentence is “against”: “We beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Though modernity remains, Nick keeps struggling to keep his boat afloat, finding some meaning in the process.

Foucault was born a year after Gatsby was published.

Eric Carmen recorded "Boats Against The Current"