The Great Gatsby is a extended critique of the American Dream. This critique is made up of all the more effective things for being personified by the people who pursue that dream. For a dream is precisely all that it is. No one truly achieves fulfilment, or try as they might. Their lives are like shallow and kinda meaningless. Jay Gatsby's fortune is built on the proceeds of crime, and though he appears to enjoy immense popularity, hardly anyone turns on him.
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