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The main motif of The Great Gatsby is the slow deterioration of the American Dream. Fitzgerald argues that the American Dream no longer denotes the ambition to achieve a certain goal. Instead he feels that it has become corrupt and materialistic. In the novel, Fitzgerald uses Jay Gatsby’s life to symbolize the death of the American dream. According to Fitzgerald, in order to achieve the American dream, one must be determined and optimistic. With …

…the author's true story: the American Dream, once a pure and mighty ideal, has been degraded and buried by the dehumanizing lust for money. Nick Carraway is an outsider to his own story: he is an honest man, an observer who bears witness to the calamity. The Great Gatsby is not, in the final analysis, a eulogy for a man named Jay Gatsby; instead, it serves as a eulogy for the idea of America itself.