The Green Light and the Golden Glitter : Money and the American Dream in The Great Gatsby

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between love and money in the context of the American Dream in F. Scott. Fitzgeraldʼs The Great Gatsby. In general, those who try to buy or sell love tend to be punished in the end in American novels, such as Kate Croy in The Wings of the Dove, Lily Bart in The House of Mirth and Carrie Meeber in Sister Carrie. However, love and money in The Great Gatsby are closely related with each other in terms of the concept of the self-made man who pursues success in both love and money. By employing the concepts used in the money system as metaphors such as convertible paper money, inconvertible paper money and trust, I examine how Gatsbyʼs love for Daisy is harmonized with his money-making and how the process of his money-making equals that of making his “self.” In the end, Gatsby is killed and his American dream seems to fail. However, this is neither his failure nor a punishment for Gatsby as the system of the American Dream requires some kind of difference to maintain itself: we gain profit from difference but difference vanishes through gaining profit; therefore, to retain profit, we have to keep difference. In his narrative, Nick Carraway tries to underline the gap between Daisy in the present and Daisy in the past to avoid the restoration of the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy, which, as a result, prolongs our expectation for the fulfillment of the American Dream.論文Article