The Illusion of the

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is far more than a tragic love story—it is a piercing critique of the American Dream, laid bare through the glittering chaos of 1920s New York. At its core stands Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire whose entire life is a meticulously constructed lie, built to win back Daisy Buchanan, the woman he lost years ago. His parties—lavish, crowded, and empty—are not celebrations of success, but desperate cries for attention from a past he cannot reclaim. What makes Gatsby “great” is not his wealth, but his unshakable belief in the possibility of reinvention. He embodies the American myth: that anyone, no matter their origins, can rewrite their story and attain happiness through hard work. Yet Fitzgerald dismantles this myth with brutal clarity. Gatsby’s wealth comes from bootlegging, his mansion a facade, and Daisy—his “green light at the end of the dock”—proves to be as shallow and unattainable as the dream itself. When Gatsby dies, few mourn him; his parties vanish, his name fades, and the East Egg elite return to their privileged indifference, revealing the Dream’s ugly truth: it often rewards greed, not virtue, and leaves those who chase it most fiercely with nothing. The novel’s final lines—“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”—haunt because they capture the universal struggle of chasing something just out of reach. Gatsby’s tragedy is not his love for Daisy, but his refusal to see that the past cannot be repeated, and that the Dream he worships is an illusion. A century after its publication, The Great Gatsby remains a timeless warning: wealth and status may glitter, but they can never fill the void of a dream unfulfilled.