How Does Fitzgerald Illustrate The American Dream Through Characters

Who is the most destructive character in The Great Gatsby, and why?

The American Dream itself for corrupting the ideals and actions of so many of the characters. One of the book's possible titles was Under the Red, White, and Blue and does not single out any one character in any way. It is a weapon of mass destruction.Daisy Buchanan, whose voice is "full of money," symbolizes the commercial principle for many and ends up committing vehicular manslaughter with Jay Gatsby's car. Her victim is her husband's married lover, Myrtle Wilson, another seductive woman. This incident triggers a chain of violent incidents that leave both Gatsby and George Wilson dead. Jordan Baker is likewise seen as a "fast" woman associated with men and automobiles.The cover of the first printing of The Great Gatsby created by Francis Cugat depicts disembodied eyes and a mouth over a blue skyline, with images of naked women reflected in the irises. The seductiveness of women is quite clearly seen as destructive.Issues like Prohibition and bootlegging illustrate many of the same quandaries. On the surface, alcohol (like adultery) was prohibited and people acknowledged its dangers. Under the table, bad behavior of all kinds occurred.To be orders of magnitude more successful than most others, boundaries must be crossed. Women might be complicit in this as Daisy's fatal drive suggests.The supposed dangers of women continued to be documented after World War II in novels and pulp fiction that replay some of the themes found in The Great Gatsby, which takes place shortly after World War I. The rising power of women was in fact becoming a reality and seen as both seductive and destructive.I personally think all of this is a projection of dangerous male "drives" such as ambition and lust onto women. Male writers can interpret these encounters any way they wish--and so can female readers!I myself am obsessed with the beauty of F. Scott Fitzgerald's language and literary artistry even when he does violence to women, so I know how this goes. Sex and death are the most basic animal instincts, after all.

In "The Great Gatsby": did Fitzgerald maybe intend for the readers not to judge the characters?

No. Fitzgerald is judging the characters by his very descriptions of them and expects us to draw conclusions about them. At the heart of the novel is the question of morality. Are the people that Fitzgerald populates his novel with moral creatures? As readers, are we expected to accept the behaviors of the people without making a judgement? What about the party-goers who trash Gatsby's mansion, bring along their mistresses and take advantage of the young women there? What about Gatsby who associates with a member of organized crime? Should we think it's okay for Tom Buchanan to have an affair with Myrtle Wilson? Should Daisy get a pass after running over Myrtle and leaving Gatsby to be the fall guy?At the beginning of the novel, Nick tells us that he is "inclined to reserve all judgements."  Nick is meant to be our guide as he tells us of the events over the course of that time in Gatsby's world. Yet, Nick's experiences change his attitude of being nonjudgmental to something else entirely. "And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on." His moral outrage is clearly heightened because he's been through a profound experience and has been changed by it.                                       When Nick says, "I don't care what its founded on" he implies that it needs to be founded on something. When he came home from the East, "I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever."In a sense, Nick is our guide and Fitzgerald's voice as he admires Gatsby's romanticism and integrity in following his dreams. He abhors the Buchanans in the end, the "foul dust" that "floated in the wake of [Gatsby's] dreams." Through Nick, Fitzgerald condemns those in American society like Tom and Daisy who are careless and irresponsible.No. Fitzgerald is judging the old and new rich in the novel and expects us to do the same.

What role does Nick play in The Great Gatsby? Wasn’t really sure why he was even included.

Obviously, as our narrator and like all narrators, Nick Carraway serves as a liaison between readers and the remarkable and sometimes nearly unbelievable characters and events in the novel. He lends credibility as a “solid” Midwesterner who, despite his ambitious desires and somewhat romantic temperament, represents common sense and decency. He is not always the best representative of those values—-the social pressures and milieu work on him to compromise his own moral center, which illustrates the seduction of money, class, and material comforts, a theme of the work. In the opening pages as well as on that unforgettable final page, Nick’s perspective on the events and people mirrors Fitzgerald’s and our own: uniquely in America we subscribe to becoming whoever we dream we can be. Sometimes the means by which we attempt to transform our lives into some version of the American Dream deserve scorn or fall short of the goal, but the striving itself is an essential part of our national character.