In Fitzgerald"s The Great Gatsby, all the characters are, in one way or another, attempting to achieve a state of happiness in their lives. The main characters are divided into two groups: the rich upper class and the poorer lower class, which struggles to attain a higher position. Though the major players seek only to change their lives for the better, the idealism and spiritualism of the American Dream is inevitably crushed beneath the harsh reality of life, leaving their lives without meaning or purpose. Tom and Daisy Buchanan, the rich socialite couple, seem to have everything they could possibly...
of earning his money by illicit means, though that practice goes directly against the principles of the American Dream. Nick comments on this failure of the American Dream in his narrative descriptions of the characters, where all the immoral people have the money and the moral ones are the poor lower class. The American Dream is something all people work toward to some extent, yet it is doomed to failure as its ideals conflict with the reality of life. Although it is an admirable goal, it is an unobtainable one. The American Dream is just that - a dream.