The American dream is what drives most people to settle in America, whether legally or illegally. Everyone wants a piece of this dream. For those looking at America, this dream means the perfect life. This is one of the similarities regarding the American dream in The Great Gatsby and Glengarry Glen Ross. Both of these literary works have the American dream as their fundamental theme. The ideas shared in these two works range from success and freedom to self-creation and failure. These works present these ideas from two different perspectives. However, are the ideas they show really that different? Success is defined as the accomplishment of an act or goal. The main character of The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, demonstrates this. Gatsby came from the dumps, but he was in love with Daisy. The only problem was that Daisy was in love with money. Gatsby knows this because at one point in the novel he states, “His voice is full of silver” (93). So for Gatsby to win her love and convince her to leave her husband, he needed money. After five years, Gatsby had earned enough money to hopefully win back Daisy's love. He threw elaborate parties almost every week, hoping someone would come and bring Daisy. Gatsby has success when Nick comes to one of his parties and happens to be Daisy's cousin. Gatsby also succeeds when he wins back Daisy's love. Even Daisy's husband can tell she's in love with someone when he exclaims, "I guess the last thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere have sex with your woman” (99). While Gatsby eventually achieves his goal, even if only for a limited time, only one of the characters in Glengarry Glen Ross actually succeeds middle of paper......works, while both works show the same ideas, they show them in different ways. One shows that success can occur without a tiny failure, the other that there is no success without failure. Both literary works show that it is important to create oneself in order to live the American dream. Individualism is represented much more in The Great Gatsby than in Glengarry Glen Ross. Finally, freedom manifests in both cases as the same thing, the ability to do whatever you desire, regardless of the outcome. Overall, the way these two works depict the American dream is much more similar than one might think. Works Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003. eBook. Glengarry Glen Ross. Foley, James. New Line Cinema, 1992. Film. Mamet, David. Glengarry Glen Ross. New York, NY: Grove Press, 1982. Print.