The American Illusion

           Throughout history, there have been themes and dreams that constantly repeat themselves: eternal life, eternal beauty, and most recently in western history, the idea of the perfect life in the perfect country, a life full of freedom where the house in the suburbs with the white picket fence is included; this dream has been dubbed the American Dream.

           Mad Men is a show that takes place in the 1960s in New York City. It follows the life of a man named Don Draper, who works in the advertising business. Don Draper appears to have everything, the house in the suburbs, a job in the city and a beautiful young wife who watches the children and always has food ready for him. In short, he is everything Jay Gatsby wishes he could be, sucessful, married to the perfect girl, and surrounded by people who admire and accept him. But what Gatsby refuses to admit and Don has long since found out, is that there is no perfect reality in the American dream.

Don and Gatsby are very similar, they both come from nothing, went to war, and created themselves into what they believed to be the ideal man, so perfect in fact that Daisy refers to Gatsby as “resembling the advertisement of man” (119). Which is the goal, because if you look the part, and act the part than sooner or later you become the part. This is what Gatsby hopes for and what Don achieves. It was not for lack of trying that Gatsby did not succede in his dream to become the perfict man, it was was the mere fact that Gatsby tried too hard, while Don mannaged to slide on seemlessly.

          

  Though their dreams might have differed in little ways, they both wanted the same results: money, a nice house, a respectable job, a membership to the country club and the girl. The girl is the icing on the cake, just something to complete the image of the dream, but the girl is not actually an active participant in the dream. The woman's role was only to be there when it suited the man. 

   

            
           Despite every outward indication, the American dream was nothing to be envied. It was a constant power struggle, one in which the man nearly always came out on top. It was not uncommon for the man to be having one or more affairs concurrently. However it was unthought of for a woman to even think of being unfaithful. Tom Buchanan had a flat in the city with his mistress whom he supported because she had no money to speak of, and Don is famous for his ability to coerce women into bed with him; it was expected, and everybody did it. However, when the news about Daisy and Gatsby surfaces, it  was compaired to an interracial couple, because the gap in social standing was so great, even though Tom's mistress was far worse off than Gatsby.

           It was a vicious cycle, the same thing day in and day out, with the same ups and downs and the same attempts to keep the running facade of perfection intact. The women found themselves not in a marriage that was full of mythical attributes like joy and love but in an arrangement to guarantee social acceptance and mobility. The American Dream was a beautiful fantasy, but it was only that, a fantasy.

Did Gatsby ever truly love Daisy? Maybe, but that love was overshadowed by the promises and possibility associated with Daisy and her position in society; she could have been replaced by any other girl of her standing and the dream would still be intact.

            For Gatsby, the American Dream was still full of wonder and possibility, it was still a light to follow. On the other hand those who achieved the dream were under no illusion; Don Draper and Tom Buchanan both knew what it was really like to live the American Dream. The expectation mixed with the falsehood and combined with the overwhelming isolation, due to them having nothing in common with their spouses aside from an enexplicable desire to be more sociable than happy, created a unique living condition in which “they weren’t happy… and yet neither of them were unhappy” (144). The American Dream was a fantasy, in reality it was an arrangement to propel one's climb on the social ladder.