Luke Karam
Professor Whitley
English 100
December 12, 2018
Pidgeon, John A. “The Great Gatsby.” Modern Age, vol. 49, no. 2, Spring 2007, pp. 178–182. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=25374689&site=ehost-live.
In this Text, John Pidgeon opens up his paper with how the American Dream came to be, relating it back to the first people who settled here. They brought with them this idea of that God has already predetermined who will be saved, but they could be dropped from the saved list if they didn’t work hard and live up to what God deemed they should be. Since you wouldn’t know who was saved, it was thought those with wealth were the ones saved, since wealthy people normally worked hard to amass their fortune and material possessions. From these early American settlers came the idea that if you worked hard and amassed wealth you would be saved, but really it laid the groundwork for what we now call today the American Dream, where any man or women regardless of race or color can be successful in this country.
Pidgeon goes on to explain how the Great Gatsby represents the “Withering” of the American Dream. He states that Jay Gatsby cannot see through the façade that the Buchanans put up throughout the book. That they just aren’t nice people in general and hide behind their amassed fortune. Pidgeon says that Gatsby is chasing this Ideal Imagine that should be possible in America, but Daisy is simply not it, and the tragedy of this book is that he fails to recognize it in the story. Gatsby maintains this innocence about him in the boo and is never really able to see past the “Green light”, he is stuck with this idea that the Buchanans is the Imagine that he is trying to obtain, like in the chapter when he begins to throw his shirts on Daisy to show her that he isn’t poor and is just as wealthy as he is. The author claims that Jay is simply living in the past and is unable to see through the world that he is living in. Gatsby is just trying to use his material wealth to acquire Daisy, he isn’t actually into material things.
The last major point of the author’s article was how Jay Gatsby was “Mythic” in a sense. He claims that nothing was private about Jays life at all, it was all transparent, but that had nothing to do with him achieving his meaning. His meaning is to obtain Daisy’s love from Tom, he repeatedly asks daisy to say that she has never loved Tom and wanted to be with him. Pidgeon continues to explain how Jay refuses to accept the reality of things because his dreams and reality has clashed. Meaning that if he were to accept what his reality is, he would have done all of this dreaming and hard work for nothing, because he refusing to acknowledge he cannot have daisy. He finishes with saying that Jay was the American Dream and how he was better than all those around him but was too caught up in his dreams to realize what he actually was.
I agree with Pidgeon on the pint that Jay is naïve in his pursuit of Daisy without seeing her what she truly is, but you can’t help but feel where Jay is coming from throughout this book. Jay met Daisy years before he became very wealthy and couldn’t continue to pursue her after that one night they had because he knew Daisy came from old money, and she would only accept him if he was also wealthy. You have to admire his drive to get to where he is in his life because of this dream of being with this girl, but as Nick says, “Jay was better than all of them”,
Jay’s failure to realize this is irony of this book. This wild dream he has chased his life to get where he is, makes him better than Buchanans, they rest on their wealthy family, and have little to no drive, Jay’s drive is what the American dream truly is.
Jay Gatsby represents the idea of the American Dream, and I believe the author of this article fails to mention that. He alludes to the fact that the Green light is Jay just looking for Daisy and the “old’ money. I believe that the green light actually represents new money in America, this light is what obviously divides Jay and Daisy. Jay hasn’t also been rich and represents the new kind of wealthy person in America, while Daisy has always come from wealth, the light represents Jay looking into the past, what America was leaving behind at the time. Not only does it represent the divide in old and new money, but it shows how the old money families will always stay wealthy and be able to rest on their wealth while the new money in society has to keep working and can never settle. This is also represented at the end of the book when George kills Gatsby and himself while the Buchanas are able to retreat back to their money and continue to live out their loveless lives. The author of this piece fails to mention the divide and just sees the light as Jay’s constant pursuit of a girl he will never be able to obtain.