The Great Gatsby written by F Scott Fitzgerald in 1920"s illustrates the failure in striving for the American Dream. What he failed to understand was that Daisy and he lived in two different worlds, which because of social circumstance was never allowed to intermingle. Daisy was a rich southern belle, who became involved with Gatsby when they were still young and later rejected him, because he was too poor to marry her and in his place married Tom Buchanan, a rich abusive man who ended up cheating on her. From the start they took him for a fraud and that"s all that he ended up being, because he never understood the true meaning of the American Dream. He mistook the meaning of success for being wealthy and as a result he died having lived like one of the East Eggers, whom he despised. Like the idle rich of East Egg he too accomplished nothing. His evolution as a man amounted to nothing more than a faded dream, because he never did accomplish what he had set out to do, which was to win back the heart of his one true love, Daisy. The prize for his success is similar to one who has made a deal with the devil in the sense that the reward is not worth the sacrifices made to attain it.

             Gatsby is a man whose delusions of achieving the American Dream is corrupted by the basis on which he strives for it. American Dream consists of becoming rich through hard work and determination through legal means. Gatsby"s poor background didn"t afford him to take the straight and narrow path through life, so instead he chose to make his money by working for the mob. After leaving the Army he met this rich drunk named Cody who employed him as a worker on his boat. He ended up befriending Cody in hopes of inheriting his fortune. He never inherited his fortune, but instead from this experience he learned that drinking could ruin a man"s dream of success. From this point in his history he becomes clouded in an air of mystery leaving the reader to only speculate how he became involved with the mob.