When I was growing up, I was told that hard work and determination could take me anywhere. However, as I entered adulthood, I began to question whether that simple idea of the American Dream was truly achievable for everyone.

    The American Dream is the idea that anyone, no matter where they come from, can build a better life through hard work and determination. While it has inspired many to strive for success, some argue that obstacles like inequality make it harder for certain people to reach it. Still, the dream continues to shape how many of us think about opportunity and success today.

    The true American Dream was about democracy, equality, and liberty. Additionally, it didn’t contain anything about money and fortune. However, in recent years, its emphasis has shifted from those ideas to material wealth and social status. 

   Nowadays, the American Dream has evolved into a more complex idea, where success is no longer solely defined by financial wealth, but also by personal fulfillment, equality, and access to opportunities.

  Through many centuries, the idea of the American Dream has transformed in so many ways; however the fundamental idea of it being delusional, out-of-reach, and destructive remains the same. Since everybody doesn’t have  the same opportunities, the American Dream doesn’t work for everyone. Despite being really hard-working, some people can not succeed easily because of factors such as financial and economic statuses, race, geographic limitations, structural barriers, and so many other things.

  Unfortunately, while some people work really hard to achieve their dreams and earn some money, others are simply born with those opportunities already. In Scott Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby,” the Yale-educated and wealthy narrator Nick Carraway, realizes that the American Dream would work only for ‘certain’ people.

  “In my young and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ Carraway describes.

  Nick’s father’s advice reminds him that not everyone has the same luxury opportunities, which reflects the inequality within the American Dream. It suggests that some people are born with advantages such as wealth and status that others didn’t happen to be born with, making it harder for them to achieve the same success.

  In addition to the American Dream being destructive, it is also delusional. The notion of achieving something greater with hard work may also have the opposite effect; people may spend their entire lives holding onto that ‘dream’ and not letting it go.

  In some cases, the idea of being ‘first’ and have a ‘successful’ life may lead to huge losses — loss of the meaning of life, when people become too obsessed with that dream and set a whole list of expectations, only to later find out that they spend their entire lives holding onto past, which can’t be returned.

  The perfect example of such a scenario is the case of Jay Gatsby from “The Great Gatsby”.     Gatsby doesn’t realize that his relationship with Daisy five years ago isn’t the same anymore. She’s now a married woman who has a child from another man; however it doesn’t stop Gatsby. He wants to start from the place they left off without realizing that he can’t stop the time and go back where everything was exactly like in his ‘dreams’.

 “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic 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 —-” describes Carraway.

   In the end, nothing matters: not Gatsby’s luxury parties he used to throw in hope to see Daisy, not his real books in his huge library, not his expensive shirts, nor his green light. 

    Despite the American Dream being motivational and beneficial to certain people, it also tends to be catastrophic due to affectors like social status and wealth, which wasn’t part of the original American Dream.

   Furthermore, in recent years, the idea of prosperous success and wealth became arduous because of the lack of opportunities for some people, their financial states, as well as inequalities. People’s unrestrained desire for money corrupted the modern notion of the American Dream.  

   Therefore, if individuals didn’t set tremendous expectations for themselves just after seeing other people’s “successful success” stories, they would have gotten much more goals achieved at their own pace, better mental state of health, and sense of individualism.