Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, is used to contrast a true American dreamer with what American society had become in the 1920s. By exaggerating the tragic fate of dreamers, communicating that 1920s America lacked the substance to make dreams come true, and exposing the superficiality of Jazz Age Americans, Fitzgerald foreshadows the destruction of his own generation. The beauty and splendor of Gatsby's parties masked the innate corruption within the heart of the Roaring Twenties. Jazz Age society was a bankrupt world, devoid of morality and plagued by a crisis of character. Jay Gatsby is a misfit in this world. He tries, ironically, to fit into the picture: he fills his garage with status, his wardrobe with fashion, his lawns with joy, his mannerisms with affectation. However, he would never be one of “them”. Ironically, his loss seems to Nick Caraway to be his greatest asset. Nick reflects that Gatsby's drive, ambitious goals, and most importantly, dreams set him apart from this empty society. Fitzgerald effectively contrasts the dreamer Jay Gatsby with a world defined by Gertrude Stein as the "Lost Generation" and by TS Eliot as "The Waste Land." and by mounting the most successful on the highest pedestals, it is almost automatic to predict that Fitzgerald would uphold this heroic vision of the American Dreamer within his novel. However, to reinforce the social corruption evident in the 1920s, Fitzgerald contradicts the idea of ​​the successful dreamer by instead indicating that dreamers of this era led the most unfortunate lives of all. Dan Cody exemplifies the...... medium of newspaper......vel, The Great Gatsby.Works CitedPiper, Henry Dan. "Social Criticism in the American Novel in the 1920s." The American novel and the twenties. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer. London: Edward Arnold, 1971. 59-83.Posnock, Ross. “‘A new world, material without being real’: Fitzgerald's critique of capitalism in The Great Gatsby.” Critical essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 201-13.Raleigh, John Henry. “The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Mizener 99-103.Sklar, Robert. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Last Laocoön. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1967. Spindler, Michael. American literature and social change. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983.Trilling, Lionel. “F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Critical essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.