hello everybody and welcome back to another episode here from gwiglet your youtube channel for all things books beards and beyond today i want to make a special shout out to lava dragon thank you very much for your kind comments and best of luck to you and all your classmates for your forthcoming test on this the great gatsby and the american dream i'll be exploring the theme itself today providing with a number of quotes techniques and analysis so if you haven't already give this video a thumbs up do be sure to share it with all your friends and hit that bell icon for more updates on the channel we are also across twitter instagram and tick tock if you haven't found us there just look for gwiglit and you'll be sure to find us so as far as today is concerned what you can do with the video not only take notes in your own copies but comment it's the quiglet guarantee i will reply to every single comment i receive test yourself as well use this as a way of practicing apply the quotations and the relevant information i provide for you would be really really useful for you going forwards and in addition just repeat viewings keep repeating your knowledge to really make sure you can build that up and strengthen it itself so context now we need to understand the american dream in the background of this in order to fully understand itself now what's quite interesting about this is whilst the great gatsby was published in 1929 the term itself wasn't popularized necessarily in fitzgerald time certainly not within the time that the book was published in fact the first proper usage of it and coinage of it comes in 1931 by the author james truslow where he is quoted as saying that it is that quote dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement so we've got to understand that the theme was there but the actual term of the american dream was not something that was really in usage at the time so i have to understand if the american dream itself was an idea as it absolutely was but it wasn't really popularized or coined in such a term what does it actually mean well american dream means many things but when you break it down into its simplest component parts when we think of the american dream we think of opportunity the idea of being able to grasp opportunity in the land of the free of america freedom freedom to create reinvent yourself and to build yourself up from nothing the idea of equality is also very important to this that everyone has equal chance at doing such a thing as well as upward mobility your idea of working your way to the top coming from a rags to rich's tail was one that was very alluring about america in addition all of these uh come from hard work the hard work will earn the success that is richly deserved so it's important to think of these when we consider it in the context of the great gatsby itself these are the five pillars one might say of the american dream and how it's seen now in the novella of the great gatsby the american dream has really seen one around one character and that is jay gatsby so how does the american dream come to define him how does he become defined within the context of the american dream itself well first of all we look at opportunity he reinvents himself from the name james gatz notice the spelling there james very simplistic name very everyday kind of ubiquitous male name but gats as well that g-80 said it's almost that um has that more brutal connotations where if we change it to gap speeders with the eloquence and the refinement that comes with it in addition to this equality gatsby attempts to assimilate himself into the rich he doesn't see himself as nouveau riche in terms of new rich necessarily though he courts the people that are around that but he tries to become part of the old money particularly that aspect that daisy is part of particularly to use the phrase like old sport he tries to create this veneer this aesthetic of him being somebody of the wealthier classes and freedom gatsby's parties are a symbol of what is known as the carnivalesque and that's a really important literary term i would encourage searching up this idea of abandonment that in the form of his parties they're a symbol that everybody can let loose and everybody is not tied to class structures rich and poor doesn't matter that the party and the element of the party is where people lose themselves in in a sense of freedom very clearly tied to the american dream that his party's almost a microcosm of that however there are a couple of barriers and we'll go into more detail on this in a second notice upward mobility gatsby's means as kind of a bootlegger somebody who deals in what was then prohibited illegal alcohol creates kind of dubious ways of him creating this wealth for example characters like dan cody who he befriends maya wolfsheim who he ends up doing a lot of work for it's alluded to throughout the novella shows how this idea of hard work and graft is actually something that gatsby corrupts and actually manipulates and and one might say cheats his way to whereas a number of the old money characters such as tom and daisy are quite morally corrupt you could argue that gatsby himself is corrupt in the financial sense um particularly working with criminals also this idea of heart will hard work as a route to these he his whole money and his foundations of his money are built upon profits from bootlegging and illegal activity so while he pursues the american dream he pursues it through a illegal means and it's important to recognize that there are barriers to his pursuit of the american dream he is just a common poor young man and for him to do this he has to almost fast track his way there through achieving it through as i said previously dubious means now on top of justice there are barriers to gatsby's american dream gatsby's american dream is twofold it's the pursuit of money and wealth but it's equally the pursuit of daisy buchanan so how do these barriers manifest in terms of gatsby's pursuits of his two-fold american dream of not only becoming rich and wealthy but also to gain the hand of daisy buchanan so firstly we have to establish this idea of old money with the exception of jay gatsby the rich characters within the novella nick carraway and buchanan's all come from old money that's something that's generational and hereditary he cannot ever achieve that as much as he tries to in addition his troop pursuit as i mentioned before is daisy buchanan and the two become conflated sometimes he talks of how daisy's voice uh you know sounds like money i'm paraphrasing there but he mentions this very keenly and it's important to recognize how the two are intertwined and daisy's fortunes and her connection to him are synonymous and deeply connected to his rise and fall in addition rumor and gossip that the gatsby as a character does not physically appear and does not speak until a third of the way through in chapter three now he is a character who at the time uh is is seen as being associated with kaiser wilhelm that there's allegations he killed a man gatsby's rumor and gossip make him an already a sinister kind of almost shadowy figure at the very start of the novella and it's something that he can't rid himself of particularly with his connections and associations to such dubious characters as maya wolfsheim but the one thing as well above all of these that really pushes him back is time and the past his american dream is deep rooted to daisy buchanan and a memory of something that took place nearly five years ago and to quote nick carraway you can't repeat the past the sense that this moment in time with daisy is gone and gatsby's ill-fated attempts to achieve that are his ultimate undoing so moving forward i'm going to show you a number of key quotes here and how i would break these apart when discussing or studying the american dream and it's presentation in the great gatsby and they're going chronological order they also color coded with the wig lip color scheme for the key words and phrases so he gatsby stretched out his arm towards the dark water i distinguished nothing except a single green light minute and far away this quote comes from nick carraway in chapter one and it's important to see this idea of the gatsby almost comes across as this uh phantom-like figure at this beginning point the verb and phrase stretching out his arms this idea of reaching for something he never can is almost a microcosm and a symbol of how the american dream plays out in the novella gatsby reaching for this light at the end of daisy's dock that he can never quite reach and never quite get to is really important when we consider the fact that it's just that in the progression of the plot of the novella he never can get there he never does achieve it in its full glory this single green light now the green here can be conveyed in different ways i've seen this interpreted as green as like a traffic light green for go green for money you know has different connotations this this light but the connotations of the light are important but it's just as important to remember where the light is it's from the dock of daisy and tom's house so it's this pursuit and this distant pursuit almost futile that the novel or the novella rather foreshadows in this very first quote now an interesting one here is this quote from nick in the same chapter i felt that tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game now this quote is one of the rare exceptions where an old money character in this case tom buchanan the arguable antagonist of the novella is connected to the sense of the american dream this idea that is in his first presentation nick sees him as someone who is is trying to seek something he can never achieve again this idea of his glory days at university where he was a well-renowned sports personality he's going to constantly seek this notice that phrase forever seeking as well that isn't going to be always within him and turbulence that's very rarely hinted at in a novella beyond that point but it's a really interesting touch-out while the vast majority of the american dream is centered around gatsby's pursuit of daisy and the pursuit of wealth that comes with that some of the other characters convey this as well and in this case it's tom now one other quote from this first third is we talked notice the interesting description here by nick carraway of the food at gatsby's party he describes buffet table turkey's quote bewitched to a dark gold now first this idea of gold is in money this idea that even the food itself has connotations of richness and achieving the american dream that it has this this element this aura or this atmosphere of being part of the american dream that gatsby is trying to facilitate this kind of aesthetic of the american dream but the verb there is quite telling as well bewitched nick is almost hinting to us here as the reader that even though gatsby can put on all the food and can put on all the celebrations that even there is an element of the corruption bewitched there's always something there of the darker arts about how gatsby has achieved all of this there's a really important point to just notice now heading towards the middle third of the novella we see the few quotes here that are really important when tied to the american dream first of all he gatsby hurried the phrase educated at oxford or swallowed it or choked on it as though it had bothered him before so this is when the reader is introduced to nick and jay gatsby having their first encounter together we see at this point there is the verbs hurried swallow choked when gatsby is attempting to provide his life story to nick carraway he almost fails at it there's flaws already in the artifice of him perceiving and pursuing and achieving the american dream that he while he puts himself over someone with immense wealth and hordes of riches and an incredible story of how he's visited all the capitals of europe he when telling this to nick almost stumbles and trips at the first hurdle the verbs hurried swallowed choked show how he can't even get out his life story in any meaningful sincere manner in addition he literally glowed this is gatsby again in chapter five when he is now with daisy without a word or a gesture of exaltation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room this is the one part in the novella where gatsby has almost achieved his goals and achieved his aims notice the verbs here glowed radiated filled that when he's that the american dream for gatsby is not wealth it's actually daisy because when he has daisy we see his self-fulfillment and his idea of him finally achieving his ends and his means while the american dream for many is gathered up in a materialistic sense and gatsby is carried up in a more romantic and and almost uh a loving sense with daisy this idea of glowed radiated filled that when he's got her he feels fulfilled particularly in the choice of those verbs there and then we carry on in this however nick has a cautionary tale to note nick mentions how no amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart there is a nod here where nick is almost arguing for want of a better term with jay gatsby it's not the pursuit of any so-called american dream but it's the pursuit of the past that gatsby is really concerned with finalizing and completing what he never was able to as a soldier five years prior ghostly heart as well notice that nick sees this in a really different way whilst gatsby comes across as forward thinking and dynamic and he has all this latest technology the hydroplane and the flash car the circus wagon as tom buchanan describes it nick sees him as someone who is quite regressive and in some cases and someone staring back into the past that his ghostly heart gatsby's ghostly heart is fixated on something not of the future as in the american dream might be believed to be connected to but rather in the past and then we reach the final third of the novella we see here this one particular quote the truth was that jay gatsby of west egg long island sprang from his james gatt's platonic conception of himself he was a son of god a phrase which if it means anything means just that so what we see here is the story this is around the subplot regarding dan cody and the invention of jay gatsby from the original james gatz we see this idea of jay gatsby as a as an artist as as a as a false creation springs from a platonic conception of himself nick almost sees jay gatsby here is almost narcissistic and sort of self-loving this platonic conception of himself but also how he believes james gatz aka jay gatsby sees himself as a son of god literally the son of god okay that he has some greater destiny beyond what his own family have for him so there's a real sense here that even from the beginning before he meets daisy buchanan that james gatz a.k.a.j gatsby was always one to pursue this notion of the american dream because he believes himself to be greater than humanity itself in many regards so long before daisy comes along he always had this burning desire to achieve something greater than his midwest self ever could and then we have the last line of the entire novella itself a very telling almost cautionary tale about the pursuit of the american dream how tomorrow we will run faster stretch out our arms farther and then one fine morning so he beat on boat boats against the current born back ceaselessly into the past so here when the events of the novella have all unfolded and nick is left ruminating on what has happened and what could have been he comments on how this idea of that there's a duality there's two sides to the american dream on the one hand this idea of the tomorrow the faster and farther tomorrow these verbs and the notion of tomorrow that we can constantly keep stretching and reaching out for more and achieving more and yet notice this break this hyphen and how it cuts off so abruptly and the tone becomes all of a sudden much more somber and melancholic the idea of beating on ceaselessly into the past that for nick the pursuit of the american dreamers as it comes to be known is something that many people aspire to and dream to and gatsby does one of the reasons gatsby can be seen as a pitiable character is because of his constant attempts to reach for something he never can that green light at the end of the dock however this last four words of the novella ceaselessly into the past gives the idea of the american dream as something cautionary that for some the american dream is pursuing something new but gatsby's destruction is not in the american dream but in his idea of ceaselessly endlessly forever wanting something in the form of daisy buchanan that was stuck in the past and a past he can never ever achieve ultimately so thank you very much as always for tuning in for today's video thanks again for all your support don't forget to search up quiglet across all the different platforms if in doubt like share and subscribe as always and all the very best until next time take care and bye