Role Of Patriotism In The Great Gatsby

‘The Roaring Twenties’: a decade of unprecedented affluence that shaped America’s consumerist society as it is today. The epoch entailed a plethora of quick money, sparkling appliances and loose morals that reincarnated the ‘American Dream’ to comprise much more than its original pledge for ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of land’. Fitzgerald’s infamous stance on the American Dream thematically appears throughout ‘The Great Gatsby’ where a tactful succession of language and characterisation critiques America’s supposed illusory nature of wealth. Ironically, as cousin to the author of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, Fitzgerald’s views followed a far less patriotic route, on one occasion stating; ‘The idea that we 're the greatest people in
Reflecting, Nick recounts America’s discovery ‘that flowered once for Dutch sailors ' eyes’ connecting with Key, ‘on the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep’, which prospects Nick despondently notes have been lost to ‘inessential houses’ and ‘vanished trees...that had made way for Gatsby 's house’. Nick ignores Gatsby’s monetary achievements and states ‘his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it’: such a nonchalant attitude in terms of Gatsby’s wealth and status echo views expressed by Fitzgerald, that capital is not the American Dream. This passage is pictured through a sequence of sibilance1 and euphonic adjectives2 using fantastical language that perhaps reflects what Fitzgerald fantasises as the original American Dream opposed to the plastic consumerist society ‘The Great Gatsby’ tells of. The National Anthem may be an archetype for Fitzgerald’s story, yet with Nick’s depiction read with a bite of sarcasm, conveying Fitzgerald’s distaste for the materialistic society that has overtaken principle values envisaged in Key’s