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　　The old dreamer is dead
　　——book report of The Great Gatsby
　　In The Great Gatsby, the author created an impressive character, Jay Gatsby. Through his hard struggle and the eventual failure, the author delivered himself of the corruption of American dream. Here I want to focus only on one character of the novel, because it reflects the changing society.
　　Gatsby is the embodiment of American dream. He has got the purest traits of the old dream: perseverance and hope. It is the belief that on the American soil, anybody, poor or rich, can realize his or her dream by hard struggle. We can find out two fundamental features in this belief, that is, an ethereal goal and a never-ending search for the opportunity to reach that goal, which Gatsby practiced and insisted on all his life. We can get this idea in Gatsby’s debut in the story. When Nick first saw him, “he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.” He was yearning for his dream desperately like a pilgrim though already a millionaire, and what he was yearning for was“ a single green light, minute and far way”. Yes, it is ethereal just like the dream he is pursuing. One may wonder what his dream is. It is money, success, the acceptance of the upper society, and the most important, it is Daisy. But these are only the surface of his dream, lying under them is the strong belief that he can obtain all these by self-struggle. And this alone is the elite of his dream, which fits exactly into the old American dream. (And still one point to make is that Daisy the person is no longer what he is chasing, for he has already seen through her enchantment, what he pursues is only the old dream of the past.)
　　Gatsby was an ambitious boy even at his early age. He was a small child growing up in the nameless town in the middle of Minnesota (humble parentage and poor), but he had a wild dream just like Franklin, and made a schedule exactly like his: timetable, general resolves… So we see, at the very beginning, Gatz believed faithfully in the old dream and practiced it in its purest and original meaning. He seemed to have achieved it by all these resolves and ambitions and efforts, at least it was so in other people’s eyes, e.g. his father, but the truth is that he would never have attain the fortune had he not taken to those illegal practices, using but the initial self struggle that he once believed in.
　　He perceived the great change of the time and tried to adapt his old dream to the modern society. He realized that by hard struggle only could not win him his dream. He cherished this dream so much and retained a never-ending persistence in realizing it, so he persuaded himself to lower his moral standards and to take to bootlegging, tried very hard to squeeze his way into the upper class by giving big parties, by the refinement of manners and by weaving up his past. He then knew and used money well, he tried to achieve his goal by his wealth, and he thought he could. That’s why he wanted to arrange a meeting between Daisy beside his magnificent mansion, and showed off his wealth proudly to Daisy and virtually wins her heart successfully. That’s also the reason he could see through the mysterious charm of Daisy’s voice while Nick can’t. Now that he perceived the hard cold money underneath Daisy’s face, what he is chasing was no longer Daisy the person, it is the single faith that he had to pursue his dream itself that support him to the end. He innocently took it for granted that since it is all done for his dream, it is justified to use these dirty tricks. But he forgot that money is a thing that rots people. Meanness and selfishness became a phase of his character during the process. This feature revealed while he tries to offer Nick financial reward for his help, and through his indifference to Myrtle’s death. Morally, he’s corrupted by money in some way, that account for the fact that Nick didn’t like Gatsby, it symbolized that during the process of this adaptation, American dream is already entangled with money, with immorality, which are rejected by the elite of the dream, thus caused a conflict. But Gatsby is still faithful to his dream; he wasn’t lost in the material world. He stuck to his dream. He still worshipped the green light in the quiet summer night whole-heartedly. He didn’t drink. He remained isolated to those orgiastic people in his own party . That’s the only bright point of this tragic process.
　　Having made great effort and used all means necessary, there is still a deep and vast gap between he and Daisy, between he and the upper class, between the people in West Egg and the people in East Egg. Gatsby was only a wealthy man without real standing. The topic is raised at the beginning of the novel during Nick’s talk with Daisy. Jordan uttered some similar comments on Gatsby’s Oxford days , and Tom humiliated him about his pretended nobility of calling people “old sport” in English fashion . It is plain that all these people of the upper class rejected him instinctively. On the other hand, That Gatsby himself couldn’t give up his dream to live the careless and meaningless life of the upper class people is a decisive factor. At the bottom of his heart lies a confined soul lingering in the ruins of the golden age, which distinguishes him from them.
　　In order to realize his dream, Gatsbt abandoned the old customs and the old values, thus was repelled by the Midwest people like Nick, while the East people of the modern society still couldn’t accept him. He was desperately lonely, just like a mule, having only the ethereal dream with him, which was his only hope. So he clung to it as a drowning man to a straw.
　　But his dear Daisy abandoned him at last. In the heated confrontation between he and Tom, Daisy finally declined to break up with Tom and betrayed Gatsby. Gatsby’s dream of restoring everything to the past went with the wind. He couldn’t afford this deadly blow and is painful in the extreme .
　　But he didn’t give up his hope then, for he insisted to wait for Daisy’s call which never came. Maybe in his heart, he began to conceive the fact that the old dream was gone and could never be resurrected, but he simply stuck to it, for without it, there’s no room and no support to survive the hard reality. At last, the last dreamer of the time died in loneliness. His death symbolized the death of American dream. It is a eulogy of an institution which once was, but is now gone and can never be. At the end of the story, the author present the young James Gatz in front of us by his father, perfecting Gatsby, the person, to a complete whole——A figure that is chasing the impossible from the very beginning to the very end, and perfects his everlasting pursuit by his death.
　　Gatsby is a tragic figure, just as Nick said: “he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.” He stumbles in the wilderness of inhumanity, trying to defend the old dream, the warm land of the past. He fights like a soldier against the trend of the whole society, forced to retreat, little by little, but persists until the last line, the last minute. The cold materialism bites into his dream, he is just like a man who is rotten all over except for his heart, in which lies the most important elements of the American dream: hope and perseverance——he would rather die without them. That’s why he is great.
　　"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning—— "
　　It is a very nice dream, but the dreamer is dead.