The End of the Great Gatsby and the American Dream Frances Scott Key Fitzgerald is widely known for her literary classic, The Great Gatsby; a critical novel about the historical “roaring twenties”, set after the First World War. The American Dream was originally about freedom, equality, and opportunity; through this novel, Fitzgerald states that the American Dream was corrupted during the “Roaring Twenties” era through the pursuit of wealth and class; which lead to the moral decay of society. Therefore, the American dream did not ruin Jay Gatsby, the corruption of wealth and class, leading to moral decay, influenced him to the point of death and the incompleteness of his American dream. The American Dream did not ruin Jay Gatsby, the corruption of the American Dream is what ruined it; one of the greatest corruptions was wealth, this corruption of wealth. According to Parisha Changizi and Parvin Ghasemi of Shiraz University, the attainment of wealth has changed people's views on happiness, the pursuit of happiness has transformed into the pursuit of wealth. The only person in Fitzgerald's novel who did not have an obsession with wealth was the narrator, Nick Carraway. Nick could see that everyone around him was in love with the power of money; he can also sense it in his cousin, Daisy, when she makes the comment of “her voice was full of money” (Fitzgerald 127). Materialism had a great impact on the corruption of wealth, Gatsby is the most materialistic. Gatsby believed that his possessions equaled all the happiness, harmony, and beauty in the world (Changizi and Ghasemi). The corruption of wealth helped ruin Jay Gatsby by blinding him from all the negative aspects of money; which would be materialism and blind him of... middle of paper... EdChangizi, Parisha and Parvin Ghasemi. “The Degeneration of the American Dream in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.” Degeneration of the American Dream in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby 2.2 (2012): 62-65. www.rejournals.com. Shiraz University, Iran, February 2012. Web. 27 May 2014. Curumno. "F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (Chapter I)." Genius of poetry. Np, 2013. Web. May 27, 2014. Dixon, Richard. “Materialism: Corruption of the American Dream.” Wessex scene. Sam Everard, February 12, 2012. Web. May 21, 2014. Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 1996. Print.Moss, Robert F. “Ross Macdonald's Marked Copy of the Portable Book F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Study of Influence.” Macdonald / The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina., 03 December 2003. Web. 21 May 2014.