Dust In The Great Gatsby Essay Research

Dust In The Great Gatsby Essay, Research Paper

Dust in The Great Gatsby

In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald incorporates many

different subjects, but the most prevailing message is that of the impossibleness of

the American Dream. Fitzgerald writes of two types of people: those who appear

to hold the ideal life and those who are still seeking to accomplish their dreams.

Tom and Daisy are two characters who seem to hold it all: a nice house, a loving

partner, a beautiful kid, and plentifulness of money ( Fitzgerald 6 ; ch. 1 ) . However,

neither of them is happy, and both end up holding personal businesss. Their lovers, Gatsby

and Mrs. Wilson, are two illustrations of characters who are still seeking to achieve

the perfect life. By the terminal of the novel, the hopes of both Gatsby and Mrs.

Wilson have been dashed and they have passed off. While discoursing the doomed

dreams of these two people, the image of dust is used several times.

In The

Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald used dust to typify the devastation of the dreams of

the common adult male.

For case, Mrs. Wilson was an ordinary adult female who had high hopes for

making a new and better life. She couldn & # 8217 ; t wait to get away her life as the married woman

of a hapless auto maintenance man ( 35 ; ch. 2 ) . Her hubby had settled for this life, but

Myrtle still hoped for better things. “ A white ashen dust veiled his [ Mr.

Wilson ] dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the locality –

except his married woman, who moved near to Tom ” ( 26 ; ch. 2 ) . Fitzgerald uses dust

to stress that Mr. Wilson had no dreams, and that Mrs. Wilson still had

aspirations of populating the perfect life. Myrtle & # 8217 ; s dreams are destroyed along with

her life when she was hit by Tom & # 8217 ; s auto, and Fitzgerald uses dust in her decease

scene to typify what she had lost. “ The other auto, the one traveling toward

New York, came to a remainder a 100 paces beyond, and its driver hurried back to

where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the route and

mingled her dark thick blood with the dust ” ( 138 ; ch. 7 ) . Dust is once more

used, this clip to insinuate the lost dreams of a common adult female.

Fitzgerald besides uses this symbol when he writes of Gatsby & # 8217 ; s vanquished hopes.

Gatsby was a adult male who had fulfilled most of his dreams. He had a big house,

tonss of money, and he mingled with the rich and celebrated, but he still had one

thing that H

vitamin E needed to do him happy ( 50 ; ch. 3 ) . Gatsby had achieved all that

he had for one intent: to win the adult female that he loved, Daisy ( 79 ; ch. 4 ) .

Gatsby eventually had realized his dreams for a short piece, when Daisy told him

that she loved him ( 116 ; ch. 7 ) . However, this flawlessness didn & # 8217 ; t last really long.

Daisy shortly went back to Tom, and Gatsby & # 8217 ; s visions of his ideal life were

destroyed. When Nick visits Gatsby & # 8217 ; s house after Daisy had gone back to Tom, he

noticed that “ there was an incomprehensible sum of dust everywhere ”

( 147, ch. 8 ) . This dust was what remained of Gatsby & # 8217 ; s blotted out phantasies.

Fitzgerald foreshadows the terminal of Gatsby & # 8217 ; s hopes in the really beginning of the

novel besides by speaking about dust. “ It is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul

dust floated in the aftermath of his dreams that temporarily closed out my involvement

in the stillborn sorrows and blown elations of work forces ” ( 2 ; ch. 1 ) .

This mention to the decision of the book shows Fitzgerald & # 8217 ; s position that

felicity is merely available for a short period of clip. Dust once more portrays the

image of the bantam fragments of hope left in the trail of dotted dreams.

In decision, F. Scott Fitzgerald writes of many subjects and uses many

symbols in The Great Gatsby, but none is more obvious than the subject of the

impossibleness of the perfect life. By the terminal of the novel, none of the

characters has achieved happiness through their dreams or actions, and

Fitzgerald frequently refers to dust in order to typify lost hopes and aspirations

of the common-born characters that try to travel up in society. Myrtle Wilson was

an ordinary, hapless adult female who dreams of a better life, and dust is used in her

decease scene to mean the devastation of her efforts to lift in societal category.

Gatsby was another common individual, but he had already attained many of his

dreams. However, he still needed one thing to finish his vision, and this was

Daisy. Gatsby & # 8217 ; s aspiration was rewarded with a little glance of felicity when

Daisy told him that she loved him, but she shortly went back to Tom. After this had

happened, dust covered everything in Gatsby & # 8217 ; s place, stand foring what remained

of his dreams. Therefore, Fitzgerald uses dust in the novel The Great Gatsby to

typify the lost hopes and dreams of the common adult male.

Work Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Collier Books, 1925.