"I don't dream at night, I dream all day; I dream for a living.
echo the idea of the American Dream, where virtues of hard work and ambition can take one anywhere. .
Generically defined, the American Dream means someone starting low on the economic or social gamut .
working really hard to turn prosperous or famous. Although such rags-to-riches stories take root in the .
deepest parts of many of our hearts, we must use reason to realize the inherent illogic behind the American .
Dream. How many of us can't dream? How many of us don't have an ambition? And how many of us don't .
work hard? Are we ALL who we want to be right now? No! While chivalrous and quixotic, the pursuers of .
the Dream usually fail to take into account other factors of society as well as reality that will eventually foil .
their wishes. That last statement will be considered heretical by many, but there are those who agree; .
Francis Scott Fitzgerald would be one. In his book, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald touches upon the lower .
parts of the social spectrum, where most of the Dream lives on. During the discussion of the lower classes, .
Fitzgerald connects them ultimately with failure, telling us morbid tales of the "American Nightmare-. In .
The Great Gatsby, Francis Scott Fitzgerald uses the lower class characters and their failures to prove that .
the conceptual American Dream is a belief that doesn't truly function.
Fitzgerald uses the character of Jay Gatsby to show the overworking of the American Dream, .
leading to its failure. Jay Gatsby is the epitome of the American Dream pursuer, yet the ideal American .
Dream doesn't work in his case because his ambition is too great, thus overworking the Dream. The .
American Dream requires one to have a goal, yet goals tend to be too ambitious, as is in Gatsby's case, in .
which he wants to achieve something that is impossible. Fitzgerald shows Gatsby's ambitions through .
the thoughts of Nick Carraway, a close friend of Gatsby's, "He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she .
