On a superficial level, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald is about a man named Jay Gatsby trying to win the affection of an upper class woman named Daisy by becoming rich and successful; but the real reason Fitzgerald wrote it was to make people aware of the disintegration of the American Dream in the 1920s. Fitzgerald was trying to show how people in Post World War I society became materialistic and careless. Every character in the novel was affected by the corruption of the American Dream.

Fitzgerald's point is made most obvious in his description of the Valley of Ashes.

"This is the valley of ashes- a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already...