What are the themes of The Great Gatsby?

Jay Gatsby’s death is symbolic of the demise of the great American dream.

Question: What are the themes of The Great Gatsby?
Position‹4 of 5›: The Great Gatsby is about death
Argument1 of 2›: Jay Gatsby’s death is symbolic of the demise of the great American dream.

The American dream expounds that through hard-work anyone can find success and happiness. However, when Gatsby died, he eliminated this possibility for all the characters. Nick lost his ties with the elite, Daisy lost her opportunity to find true love, and ultimately Gatsby’s death ushered the death of the American dream.

The argument

Gatsby's death is symbolic of the death of the American dream, and on this reading it is what brings the novel full circle: the figure who had assembled wealth, a house, and an audience in pursuit of a single hope is removed by the very world he had tried to enter. The responsibility for the death is distributed in a way the argument treats as significant. George Wilson murdered him, but Gatsby still carries some of the blame, because he had taken responsibility for Myrtle Wilson's death in order to protect Daisy. The killing is therefore not an accident that interrupts the story from outside; it follows from a choice Gatsby made, and it is the pursuit of Daisy — the object the dream had narrowed to — that puts him in the path of it. Structurally, death is where the plot has been heading. The narrative builds to that moment and makes it the climax of the story, which is the argument's evidence that the novel is organised around death rather than merely ending in it. What follows is dispersal: the death again separates the characters, and they go back to their daily lives. Without Gatsby there is nothing tying them together, which reveals that the ties between them were never mutual attachments but connections routed through him. The one exception carries the theme. The only person who grieves over Gatsby is Nick Carraway, and what he loses is double — a friend, and his ties to the elite class. Without Gatsby, Nick does not see the point in staying in New York, so he moves back to the Midwest. Because death is the event that structures the novel, assigns its blame, and dissolves everything the book assembled, this argument holds that The Great Gatsby is about death.

Premises

[P1]Gatsby's death is the climax the entire plot builds toward, symbolizing the demise of the American dream and bringing the novel full circle. [P2] Death is what dissolves the characters' ties—without Gatsby, Nick loses both a friend and his link to the elite class and leaves New York for the Midwest. [C] Because death is the pivotal event that structures and resolves the narrative, The Great Gatsby is about death.

Counter-arguments

Gatsby's death isn't symbolic of the death of the American dream. Instead, it is a symbol of his love for Daisy. He was able to prove how much he loved and cared for her by taking responsibility for Myrtle's death. Gatsby created his life around pursuing Daisy, and she was the reason for his death.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise argues for the wrong conclusion: reading the death as a symbol of the American dream's collapse makes the dream the subject and the death the device, which supports the sibling position rather than this one. [Rejecting P2] Death as a plot mechanism is not death as a theme — a novel can end in a killing while being about class, money or self-invention — and the dispersal of the characters afterwards shows what held them together, which the argument itself identifies as Gatsby's money and the access it bought.