The American dream, this is what drives most people to move to America, whether legally or illegally. Everyone wants a piece of this dream. For people who look at America this dream means the perfect life. This is one of the similarities regarding the American Dream in both The Great Gatsby and Glengarry Glen Ross. Both of these literary works have the American Dream as an underlying theme throughout. The ideas shared in both of these works range from success and freedom to self-creation and failure. These works portray these ideas in two different lights. However, are the ideas they show really that different? Success is defined as the fulfillment of an act or purpose. The title character of The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, demonstrates this. Gatsby came from the dumps, but he was in love with Daisy. The only problem was that Daisy was in love with money. Gatsby knows this because at one point in the novel he states that: “His voice is full of money” (93). So, to win her love and convince her to leave her husband, Gatsby needed money. After five years Gatsby had earned enough money to hopefully win back Daisy's love. Almost every week he threw elaborate parties, hoping that someone would come and bring Daisy. Gatsby is successful when Nick comes to one of his parties and happens to be Daisy's cousin. Gatsby is also successful when he wins back Daisy's love. Even Daisy's husband can tell that she is in love with someone when he exclaims, "I suppose the last thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife" (99). While Gatsby ultimately achieves his goal, if only for a short time, only one of the characters in Glengarry Glen Ross actually succeeds in the true… of the works show the same ideas, they show them in different ways. The first proves that success can occur without a minimum amount of failure, the other that there is no success without failure. Both literary works show that self-creation is important to living the American dream. Individualism is represented much more in The Great Gatsby than in Glengarry Glen Ross. Finally, freedom is shown in both as the exact same thing, the ability to do what you want, regardless of the outcome. Overall, the way both of these works describe the American Dream is much more similar than you might think. Works Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003. eBook. Glengarry Glen Ross. Foley, James. New Line Cinema, 1992. Film.Mamet, David. Glengarry Glen Ross. New York, NY: Grove Press, 1982. Print.