The Great Gatsby: Pursuit of Dream

The novel The Great Gatsby is written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. The story takes place in East Egg, West Egg and New York City. It is about a young man; Jay Gatsby catches a great opportunity and works hard to achieve his goals and becomes wealthy. He regains the girl that he loves. He wants her to leave her husband and be with him. Death of a Salesman is a play written by Arthur Miller. The play takes place in 1949 in New York City. It is about a salesman Willy Loman who lives in New York and goes to work by driving hundreds of miles. He has mental illness and extremely wants to be success. He struggles in the past by daydreaming and does not want to face the reality. The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman are different because people express love differently; people are not satisfied what they have; work hard does not equal success, a good opportunity is one of the important factors of success.

People express love differently. Fist of all, Tom’s love is self-centered. He wants Daisy and Myrtle. Tom makes an excuse and tells everyone why he could not divorce Daisy because she is Catholic; according to Catherine: “It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce (Fitzgerald 33).” Furthermore, Gatsby’s love for Daisy is true love. Gatsby would not leave Daisy in danger and go away although she does not love him anymore. Nick suggests Gatsby to leave town right away after Daisy kills Myrtle by driving into her with Gatsby’s yellow car; according to Nick: “You ought to go away. It’s pretty certain they’ll trace your car” (Fitzgerald 148). According to Gatsby: “but of course I’ll say I was” (Fitzgerald 143). Gatsby refuses Nick’s “go away” suggestion. He decides to take the blame of killing Myrtle and stay in town to protect Daisy; according to Nick: “He wouldn’t consider it. He couldn’t possible leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn’t bear to shake him free” (Fitzgerald 143). Finally, Willy and Biff express their love incorrectly. They choose the wrong way to express their love to each other. No matter what Biff does, Willy is never satisfied and often criticizes him. Thus, he never thought that Biff would love him; according to Willy: “Isn’t that remarkable? Biff-he likes me” (Miller 106). Willy realizes that his son loves him during the argument when Biff tries to tell him the truth of everything. Willy ends up killing himself at the end of the play because he wants to provide something to his family after he finds out that his son loves him. Let his family to get insurance money after he commits suicide, so they do not need to struggle financially anymore; according to Willy: “Can you imagine that magnificence with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket” (Miller 108)? That is the only thing that he can be able to do for them. Everyone wants to be loved, but people need to express love correctly.

People are not satisfied what they have. Fist of all，Gatsby has a lot of money, but he is still unhappy. Nothing can make him happy but Daisy. Gatsby is a millionaire and he is Nick’s next door neighbor in West Egg. The reason why Gatsby buys his mansion is because he wants to be close to Daisy and it is across the bay of Daisy’s house. Gatsby is unhappy because the woman he loves does not have a good time during the party at his house. Daisy is upset by Tom exposing Gatsby and how he makes money through bootlegging. It makes Gatsby frustrated. He has so many things that he wants to tell Daisy and he does not know how to tell her in order to let Daisy be able to understand him. According to Gatsby: “I feel far away from her,” “It’s hard to make her understand” (Fitzgerald 109). Also, Gatsby wants Daisy to be the same person as he met in Louisville. He wants Daisy to leave her husband and to be with him; he wants everything to be as same as previous. According to Nick: “He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: “I never loved you” ” (Fitzgerald 109). Nick tells Gatsby that “You can’t repeat the past” (Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby disagreed with Nick and convinced about the things can be changed by him. According to Gatsby: “Can’t repeat the past?”“Why of course you can” (Fitzgerald 110). Furthermore，Myrtle is unhappy with her marriage. Her husband George is a poor man and she knows that he can not give her what she wants. George is described as a stagnant, and hopeless. Myrtle and George have been married for twelve years. They have been living in the Valley of the Ashes for years.

“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman. I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe,” Myrtle tells Catherine (Fitzgerald 34). “The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake ,” Myrtle tells Catherine (Fitzgerald 35).

Myrtle meets Tom on the way to New York to visit her sister. As soon as she sees Tom, she knows Tom is rich. She believes that Tom can give her what she wants. Tom can help her to raises her social status. Not long after that, she becomes Tom’s lover. Finally, Willy is not satisfied with what he has. He thinks both of himself and Biff has failed everything. He does not make as much money as before; he gets fired; Biff does not graduate from high school; Biff does not have a job that pays him well; Biff cannot borrow money from Oliver in order to start their family business; his relationship with Biff is declined. Therefore, he immersed in the past and ends up to kill himself. Linda talks to Willy at his funeral, “I made the last payment on the house today.” “We’re free and clear” (Miller 112). Willy has a wife who is loyal to him; he has two sons who are no longer in school and love him. His house will belong to him within a month. He still not satisfied with that. He only concerns about how to achieve his gold or how to let his son achieve it for him. Happiness is easy to be found if people enjoy what they have.

Work hard does not equal success; a good opportunity is one of the important factors of success. First of all, Gatsby achieves his American Dream by catching good opportunities. He is from a poor family on a North Dakota farm. According to Nick: “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people” (Fitzgerald 98). The age of seventeen is one of Gatsby’s turning points. A wealthy man, Dan Cody gives his new name--Jay Gatsby, according to Nick: “James Gatz--that was really, or at least legally, his name” (Fitzgerald 98). He becomes an assistant of Cody by warning him about an impending storm. The other turning point of Gatsby is Mr. Wolfsheim, which is Gatsby’s business partner; according to Mr. Wolfsheim: “I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter.” “I got him to join up in the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for a client of mine up to Albany” (Fitzgerald 171). Not long after that, Gatsby becomes a millionaire. Furthermore, Ben Loman achieves his American Dream by accidentally. He is the symbol of success man for Willy. When Willy is three years and eleven months, Ben leaves him and tries to find their father in Alaska. Ben tells Willy, “At the age I had a very faulty view of geography, Willy. I discovered after a few days that I was heading due south, so instead of Alaska, he ends up in Africa”. Ben does not plan to go there; he goes to Africa by mistake. There are a lot of opportunity and diamonds in Africa; according to Ben: “when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich” (Miller 33). Finally, Willy does not achieve his American Dream. As soon as Willy realizes that he cannot be able to achieve his American Dream, he put it on his elder son, Bill. He wants Biff to be a successful man in order to achieve his dream for him, but that is what Biff wants. Unfortunately, Willy gets fired when he asks his boss to get him a job in New York. Willy is so angry about that, according to Willy: “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away--a man is not a piece of fruit” (Miller 61). On the other hand, Biff can not borrow money from his old boss, Oliver in order to start their family business--sporting goods. Willy cannot accept the bad things just happened to him and his son; he does not want to face to the truth; he does not believe that he fails his dream. Biff says that at Willy’s funeral: “He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong” (Miller 111). Things do not work out because the dream that Willy has been chasing for years does not fit him. Success is not getting what you want; it is what you have achieved.

Maria Robinson says: “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” Everyone has a dream; the process of pursuing dream can be happy or can be painful. According to The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman, people act differently both in the story and the play: people express love differently; people are not satisfied what they have; work hard does not equal success; a good opportunity is one of the important factor of success. However, to find a suitable dream to pursuit would make people easier to success and happier.