Essay on The Great Gatsby

Essay on The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a novel about a man who tries to win over a woman

he had lost many years ago. Jay Gatsby is the hero in this novel

because he stands out amongst the rich. Unlike the rest of the rich

people in this novel Gatsby has moral values, and the rest of them can

only grasp things of material value. Gatsby spends his whole life

trying to hide the fact that he wasn’t like the others. Gatsby never

fits in among them because what he perceives of them is all wrong,

they were as uncivil as anyone else. Through being less primitive than

the rich, determination for love, being ruled by his emotions that

erase any doubt, he is quiet tempered; which upholds his greatness,

and he is protected by others that tell us of his importance.

Gatsby is not as primitive as the rest of the rich humans, he is more

mannered and civil. The people at his parties are all wild and not

civil, what you would not expect from people of this stature. Gatsby

is this way because he has had to earn his money and has not just

inherited it like the lazy lot of them. The only other person that

comes close to Gatsby is Nick, but we don’t get to see what he would

be like with wealth. Throughout the novel Gatsby looks out upon the

crowd, when he comes down to greet Nick he is very polite to everyone

surrounding him, knowing they spread rumors and lies about him. He

doesn’t think anything of it because he knows it’s natural for people

to gossip, he can’t judge them on it because it is the crowd he wishes

to become. Nick tells Gatsby he is better than the whole rotten bunch

of them, Nick realizes this because he knows what it is like to be

poor and he knows Gatsby still acts like a poor man, but he has all

t...

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...new him. He always wants Nick to come with him on

things he is unsure of, like when meeting daisy for the first time in

eight years (p.83). He needs others to fulfill his confidence in

himself, it is how he got as far he did in the novel (money wise). He

only meets new people through association with someone else in the

novel, he meets Nick through Jordan and Daisy through Nick. He is

like this because he expects things to come to him like they have in

the past like his job from Meyer Wolfshiem.

James Gatsby is the hero in the novel through: his modern acts,

determination for love, his conquering emotions, his quiet

temperament, and his protected state. A hero is someone unlike the

others and Gatsby fills this character perfectly in the novel.

Therefore Gatsby is the character and no one else should even be

considered for his place in The Great Gatsby.