Examples Of Idealism In The Great Gatsby

Kanye West once said, “Reality is catching up with me Taking my inner child..” Kanye West himself is an idealist and has trouble accepting reality. He relates this to how it ‘takes his inner child’ to show that romanticizing your reality is childish and accepting it is required in order to live a logical, reasonable, accepting life. Sometimes, reality is rather hard to accept. Especially when the world you live in is not the one you intended, and when an individual is caught up in their own fantasized world, reality hits them all at once. In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Gatz, otherwise known as Jay Gatsby, gets caught up in his own idealized thoughts. Like Kanye, Gatsby soon realizes his reality, and this results

in his death. Gatsby is essentially an innocent victim (romantic idealist) who is destroyed by his inability to accept reality.
Jay Gatsby was associated with several gang related activities.

His wealth was not earned legally, for he bootlegged illegal alcohol to make the obscene amount of money he has. At his parties, one could hear ’’He’s a bootlegger,’ said the young ladies, moving somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers.’’(Fitzgerald 61) Though these were just accusations, it is later revealed that these ladies were correct about Gatsby, and he created this reputation for himself. Gatsby makes the accusation that he won’t get caught doing this, which is an example of his idealistic expectations. Tom Buchanan finds out the person Gatsby really is, and Daisy finally discovers the truth of how he got his wealth. Nick Carraway, the narrator, is introduced to Gatsby’s ‘friend’ Meyer Wolfsheim. As the scene goes on, the reader discovers that Meyer is no friend, he is a part of criminal activity. This is first revealed when Nick and Meyer have the conversation regarding his cuff buttons, which were made of “‘Finest specimens of human molars,’he informed me[Nick]” (Fitzgerald 72). This created the idea that he is a man who participates in illegal actions. Soon enough, Gatsby informed Nick that “‘He’s the man who fixed the World Series in 1919”’(Fitzgerald 73). All this information is the evidence that Gatsby was up to no good, and he never expected for it to come back to him, being the idealist he

is.
Aside from his misbehavior, Gatsby is in love with his old lover, Daisy Fay. Pursuing her is the reason for doing illegal things to recieve money and impress her. John Green, an author who has written several popular novels in the 2010s, explains in his CrashCourse video on Youtube, that “All the money he’s acquired and all the parties he’s thrown are about one thing and one thing only: winning back Daisy Buchanan” ( CrashCourse, 6:54). Here John Green explains Gatsby’s desire to have Daisy in his life again, and what he goes through to accomplish this fantasy. To gain the respect from Daisy and her family that he desires, his whole criminal act is to become wealthy. The reality of this situation is that no matter how much Gatsby wants to be with her, Daisy is just an unavailable woman. He attempts to reunite himself and Daisy, but it will not deny the fact that ‘Old Money’ families look down on ‘New Money’ families. “He had been full of the idea so long dreamed it right through the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity” (Fitzgerald 91-92). Once Gatsby spends the time he desired with Daisy, he comes to the realization that she is not what he hoped she’d be, and he’ll never be satisfied. A professor of English and Creative Writing, Michael Glenday, also agrees. His informative book, F.Scott Fitzgerald, goes into depth on several aspects of each character, especially Jay Gatsby. He explains how “This reading allows us to see Gatsby’s grail is not only to recover Daisy Fay, but, more importantly ‘some idea of himself..that had gone into loving Daisy’”(Glenday 65) which shows his unfortunate realization of reality.
Gatsby is adamant that what he once had can just magically happen again.

In conversation, he tells Nick “‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!”’(Fitzgerald 110). Obviously, this is not the case for most situations, especially the one Gatsby finds himself in. John Green also brings up this topic in his CrashCourse video and explains that “Gatsby believes the key to the beautiful future is a perfect restoration of the beautiful past” (CrashCourse 4:15). John Green analyzed Gatsby’s beliefs perfectly and completely agrees that Gatsby is awfully obvious of recreating what he once had. Gatsby has performed several actions displaying his desperacy, such as purchasing a house near Daisy’s, hosting extravagant parties, and will even go to an extent where he would illegally become equal to her wealth just to win his old lover back. Once he has tea with her, Gatsby is blinded by the fact that the past cannot be repeated when he comes to the terms that Daisy is not what he wants. This is revealed by the weather symbolism. “Outside the wind was loud and there was a faint flow of thunder along the Sound”(Fitzgerald 95) Here, it is shown that the weather is poor and so is the way Gatsby feels about this date. Later on in the novel, it is explained that “He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: "I never loved you." After she had obliterated four years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to

be taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five years ago” (Fitzgerald 125) This quote is very important to show that Gatsby is an idealist because the outcome of this situation was not the one he dreamt it would be, and he simply wants Daisy to erase the past and start new. The truth is, no one can live without the consequences of their past, whether they like it or not.
Gatsby is a victim of romanticizing, idealizing, and forgetting his life. In the long run, this all essentially killed him. In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is killed towards the end of the novel. There are several immediate reasons, but the fact of the matter is that his obsession with his ex and his infuriating her spouse, got him shot by George Wilson. It was at this moment Gatsby’s hope was still getting in the way of reality, for he believed that Daisy was calling him on his phone, when it was really just his friend. Gatsby can be interpreted as an ignorant and childish fool who should’ve just fixed his problems and move on from his idealized lover from the past. Like Kanye West, reality caught up with Gatsby, and nearly took his inner child, the only mindset Gatsby ever had.