Script
(Baseball Sound) There he is Babe ruth, hitting another home run. The star of the winning team, the hero of new york, and now it is your turn. New York is your home, it is time you became the champion of it. JAK is on your side looking for talented people like you who were born with greatness within them. We want the ambitious american, the resilient american the strong american, we want you. It is time you take your american dream. (Baseball Sound)
Why Baseball?
Meyer Wolfshiem, “the man who fixed the World Series” is the epitome of the corrupt. Though the reader only meets him two times, he makes a profound impact on the story as showing the dark underbelly of the Gatsby extravagant life. Wolfshiem’s has an “expressive nose” (75) which is the hallmark of a stereotypical Jew. It is “expressive” because it tells the reader that he is a swindler and a crook. It shows Wolfshiem as being the lowest of the low, yet he “flashes” (76) this aspect of himself showing he is proud of his swindling ways. He treats people like pawns; from him fixing the World Series as “one man [who] could start to play with the faith of fifty million people” to him, in the end, discarding Gatsby as shown by him not attending Gatsby’s funeral. But why baseball? It is iconically American. Wolfsheim, and all the corruption he represents, shows just how much Americans are innocent and easily manipulated. Nick understood the 1919 World Series as “the end of some inevitable chain” (79). It was a simple answer to the odd happenings of some players seemingly unable to catch a ball during the whole game. Nick and all the other fooled Americans saw what Wolfshiem, and Gatsby wanted them to. They were caught up in the glitz, the parties, the game at a ball field, and blinded to the payoffs, the phone calls, and all of the dark dealings.
I figured the best promoter and cover on the radio would be Babe Ruth. He was an American hero, winning seven World Series. By using him as a promoter of our bootlegging business, mirroring Wolfshiem’s cover on his fixed gambling, JAK could promote itself on radio but seem innocent to the general audience.
American Dream
“Your American Dream” implies that everyone has a different idea of the ideal american lifestyle. Not everyone dreams of a white picket fence, Nick desired to be like his neighbors with extravagant parties, not the “80 dollar” rent he had to work for and pay. Daisy desired wealth, at the price of her personal happiness and affection found in Gatsby. Henry J. Gatz wanted the best for his son. It seems that in most cases, an American Dream is a dream for something better, whatever that may entail; better living, better social standing, better life.
It is an incredible irony that in the book yellow and gold are the colors of corruption, yet it is part of the poem inscribed on the statue of liberty. The travelers are also "tempest-tossed" invoking images of the rough blue sea, that symbolises difficult to achieve dreams in the book. It is as if the book is saying "to truly achieve your dream the true path in this country is that one must be corrupt."