John D. Rockefeller was (and remains) one of the wealthiest men in US history. After living an impoverished childhood, he entered the oil industry along with his brother, creating a monopoly. Standard Oil is a company name that remains known, all because one sixteen-year-old boy in America was good at crunching numbers.
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Andrew Carnegie grew up impoverished, just like John D. Rockefeller. However, Andrew Carnegie spent his time investing in the steel industry. He made forty thousand dollars prospecting oil, invested all of it into the steel industry, and became the first corporation to break one billion dollars. His extra money? Donated to charity.
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Oprah Winfrey was raised by her grandmother, because she was born out of wedlock and her parents, who were still teenagers, left her. Sexually abused as a child, she lived in poverty. Taking media classes in high school, she started cable news shows until she landed her own show, and became a household name.
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Chris Gardner was poor. With a son, he lived in a homeless shelter. He was working as a stockbroker by day, and try to find somewhere safe to sleep and amass some food for the night. Eventually, after working years, he started his own company in an apartment he could finally afford, growing it into something worth millions. He sold it, started another company, and made sure his son had enough food for the rest of his life.
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All of the people I mentioned on this page worked hard, starting out with little to nothing in the way of resources, until they became astonishingly successful in their endeavors. It took years of hard work, ladder climbing, and cultivating their professions before they ended up being known for their successes. They made it. They encompass the very ideal of the American Dream. However, Gatsby did not work honestly, like all of these people did. He bought into an illegal business to get money as fast as possible, to get back to Daisy. How could he be a part of the American Dream without putting in the amount of effort the aforementioned did? It would be disrespectful, even, to lump him in with hard-workers when he is not one.