Time, the most impersonal and brutal of juggernauts, cares for neither civilizations nor their cultures; it destroys with a simplistic ease that even the most ardent of warmongers could never achieve. How then can something as simple, as pure, and as vulnerable as a dream stand against the slow but steady stream of time, that beats like particles of sand against the bottom of an hourglass? For a dream to continue to nourish the minds of the masses generation after generation, it must adapt--change to better fit the new circumstances that a change in time invariably evokes. But as a dream changes, is it as pure, as innocent, and as high-minded as it once was? Could the American dream, which has hereto defined the very spirit of the era, have lost its original luster in its adaptation, mutation, and perversion? The American dream has traditionally been defined as the ability to achieve satisfaction, success, or greatness, through work. It states, rather ideally, that the only obstacle to greatness is contained within the dreamer and not the world; that if we as individuals work hard enough nothing can escape our grasp. Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby, explores the ever-elusive nature of the American dream as he questions the very basis upon which we identify ourselves with. Fitzgerald does not, however, question whether the American dream drives us towards greatness as it once did; rather he questions the deficiencies present in our ability to drive, and the path that we take. With every blossoming and withering flower, change of season, and revealed facade, Fitzgerald chips away at the illusionary 'greatness' that so pervades the conception of the American dream, showing how its adaptations pervert its original spirit, and that its true fulfillment is in the past and not the future.
Nothing mortal endures the tests of time, and though beautiful for a short while, lawns, flowers, and gardens eventually wither and die. If even the Garden of Eden is subject to this natural law, how can the American dream exist outside of it? Fitzgerald through use of flower, garden, and lawn imagery suggests that perhaps the American dream, this "incorruptible dream"(154) that has defined and driven Americans since the Puritans, is no longer a reality in this day and age. Fitzgerald first introduces the concept that the modernized American dream is but an "imitation" when he makes parallels between Gatsby and his mansion, which is "spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy" (5). The new garden and 40 acres of lawn that define Gatsby's mansion are therefore but imitations, and they cannot "[hold the] breath" of the "Dutch sailors' eyes", as the "old island...that flowered once" (180) can. Gatsby's new ivy cannot "[pander] in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams" (180). Fitzgerald here is of course speaking of the American dream, which he claims is no longer attainable in its pure form. Gatsby, in "[wedding] his unutterable visions to [Daisy's] perishable breath" causes Daisy to "blossom like a flower" (111). But though she blooms now, and so too does his dream, it will eventually wither and die, which is why what Nick "had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever."(111). The true American dream remains forgotten, almost remembered, but inexplicable in this modern day so full of meretricious materialism. The contrast between the blooming flower imagery that occurs when Gatsby kisses Daisy is readily apparent as Gatsby reemerges. Five years later Gatsby walks "down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and crushed flowers" (110). The dream that Gatsby struggled so long to attain is therefore in the past, a past that Gatsby so desperately tries to repeat. More disillusionment as to the American dream lying in the future occurs as Gatsby awaits Daisy's phone call. Nick believes that "Gatsby...no longer cared...he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream, He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is...A new world, material without being real" (161). As the American dream is the strongest driving force behind Gatsby, his disillusionment as to its greatness is Fitzgerald striking a major blow in the illusion of greatness that the American dream has been surrounded with. Gatsby realizing that roses are grotesque because they die can be related back to him wedding his "incorruptible dreams" to Daisy who "blossomed like a flower". In doing so, his own dream has become grotesque, and the new world, which is material and superficial like Daisy, is not real, it is but a false imitation of the "fresh, green breast of the new world...which had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams" (180), the American dream. Fitzgerald uses the withering of roses to show that the American dream, which once blossomed, entertaining our capacity to wonder and driving us towards our goals, has withered in a materialistic world that has lost sight of true happiness. Fitzgerald makes parallels between the American dream and the city through Tom and Wolfsheim's association with the city. But the American dream is "somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night" (180), and Fitzgerald therefore says that "There's something very sensuous about [New York]-overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands" (125). Sensuous is also used to describe Myrtle, and the connection between the two shows the degradation in moral and ethical principles that now follows the American dream which is overripe, past its bloom, and now withering and dying.
Fitzgerald uses the changes in season, which also follow a bloom wither pattern, to show the elusive nature of the American dream. Nick comes to the East with the "familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer" (4). New beginnings, however, are not all they are cut out to be. For there to be a beginning, there must be an end, and Fitzgerald shows that the new beginnings that Gatsby undertakes stem from the end of an era defined by an attainable American dream. Gatsby meets Daisy "one October day" (74), which implies that he meets her in the fall. By winter Gatsby goes off to war, and by the "next autumn [Daisy] was gay again, gay as ever... In June she married Tom" (75). Daisy thus "began to move again with the season...drowsing asleep at dawn... with dying orchids on the floor beside her bed" (151). With the shift of the season the orchids die and a part of Daisy, the part that loves Gatsby and what he stands for, dies with them. With the flower imagery taken into account, Fitzgerald is showing how the American dream dies with the new beginning that Daisy undertakes with the change of season. As Jordan points out, "life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall" (118). But Gatsby dies in the fall, when there "was an autumn flavor in the air" (153). His death is like the "little ripples that were hardly the shadow of waves" (162); a simile that proves both his inconsequential life and his inconsequential death punctuated by the fact that "nobody came" (174) to his funeral. His life did not start over again in the fall as Jordan's assuredly did after her head cleared from the dizziness that her relationship with Nick provoked. Tom and Daisy both emerge out of the ordeal at new beginnings, though "They weren't happy...and yet they weren't unhappy either". Despite this lack of happiness, they are still better off than Gatsby who is left standing "in the moonlight-watching over nothing." (145) Gatsby, in the fall, is left with nothing, which is equivalent to the chances of attaining the American dream. As summer turns to fall, Gatsby is left with "only the dead dream [that] fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward the lost voice across the room" (134). The American dream is no longer tangible, its pursuit can only lead to unhappiness, and though it may drive Gatsby towards a goal, the characters in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby lack adequate driving skills. Gatsby's pursuit of the American dream is therefore like driving "on toward death through the cooling twilight" (136). That the American dream has changed and been perverted is also evident in Gatsby's journey back to Louisville in the fall. Gatsby "knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever" (153). The ever ambiguous 'it' is the very essence of the American dream that is so key to American identity, and Fitzgerald is claiming that the freshest and the best part of it has been lost in the fall and is no longer present when new beginnings occur in the summer.
Much like the changing of seasons, the sharp distinction between East and West provides a platform upon which Fitzgerald claims that the American dream is no longer attainable. The American dream has traditionally been defined as a westward movement, but with the census and Turner declaring the frontier closed, the American dream has been forced to evolve. With nothing lying to the West to explore, people go back East. Nick experiences this after returning from the war and feeling as if the Middle West was "like the ragged edge of the universe" (3). However Fitzgerald constantly asserts that the East has "a quality of distortion" (176). Going back "West from prep school" however, involves "long green tickets" and an "[unutterable awareness] of our identity with this country...before we melted indistinguishably into it again. That's my Middle West." (175-176). The West therefore is the true attainable American dream, but because the frontier is closed the American dream is "behind [us]...beyond the city" (180) and in the past.
Fitzgerald thought seriously about changing the title from The Great Gatsby to Under the Red White and Blue. In this thought process, Fitzgerald reveals much about the nature of his novel. Fitzgerald is suggesting that the American dream is hollow and stuffed, and like the gilded age, wretched beneath the surface. Though the American dream once bloomed, serving as inspiration for many great Americans, it has since over ripened and withered in a sensual and materialistic world. Its pursuit can only lead to unhappiness and can be fatal to the dreamer.