Gatsby might be the purest embodiment of the American Dream; self-made, boundlessly optimistic, and forever reaching toward a dream of life "so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it." Yet the very romance of that pursuit cloaks a man who is almost entirely unknowable. His past a shroud of half-truths, his future a mirage built out of memories that never were. Gatsby is not only the dream fulfilled; he is also the dream corrupted, the American success myth…
