ISSN 2348-31ϱϲ (Print) International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research ISSN 2348-31ϲϰ ;onlineͿ Vol. 5, Issue 4, pp: (344-348), Month: October - December 2017, Available at: www.researchpublish.com Page | 344 Research Publish Journals The American Dream Corruption in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby 1 Ibrahim Adam Said Daier, 2 Dr. AbdulMahmoud Idrees Ibrahim Faculty of Graduation, Al Zaiem Al Azhari University Abstract: The Great Gatsby is a tragic love story on the surface, but it’s most commonly understood as a pessimistic critique of the American Dream. In many respects, the American Dream has been deeply rooted in the concept of a journey-the journey to a new country, the journey across generations, and of course, the journey within one's life. It is about motion and progress, it is about optimism, and it is about finding success and fulfillment along the way. The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of race, class, gender, or nationality, can be successful in America. if they just work hard enough. The American Dream thus presents a pretty rosy view of American society that ignores problems like systemic racism and misogyny, xenophobia, and income inequality. It also presumes a myth of class equality, when the reality is America has a pretty well- developed class hierarchy. Hence , the study aimed at investigating the American Dream Corruption in The Great Gatsby . The descriptive analytical method was used to carry out the study. The study sample consisted of the novel The Great Gatsby. The results of the main findings are: The Great Gatsby shows the tide turning east, as hordes flock to New York City seeking stock market fortunes. The Great Gatsby portrays this shift as a symbol of the American Dream's corruption. It's no longer a vision of building a life; it's just about getting rich. According to the above findings, the study recommends the followings: to investigate howGatsby symbolizes both the corrupted Dream and the original uncorrupted Dream and how Gatsby's corrupt dream of wealth is motivated by an incorruptible love for Daisy. The study suggests that, Gatsby's failure does not prove the folly of the American Dream rather it proves the folly of short-cutting that dream by allowing corruption and materialism to prevail over hard work, integrity, and real love. And the dream of love that remains at Gatsby's core condemns nearly every other character in the novel, all of whom are empty beyond just their lust for money. Keywords: American Dream and Corruption. 1. INTRODUCTION The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people