Examples Of Irony In The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald’s title, The Great Gatsby is the ultimate irony in his novel because Gatsby falls far short of being great. Gatsby is introduced as a well off businessman who built himself up into a public icon in New york after having been in the army. Gatsby leads a life that shouts wealth and extravagance, he seems to have achieved the American Dream, or at least the gilded perception of it. However, once past the glamorous outside, Gatsby has really amounted to nothing, focusing all his energy in a vain attempt to steal the attention of a girl from his past, Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby never attempts to actually better himself, he did the absolute least possible to sustain the facade of importance he had created to be his life, reaching out to the

His dream was like many others, he wished to become a wealthy and respected man, and in his youth he met Daisy, she was a charmer who exuded an air of dignity and money, her voice was described by Gatsby as being “full of money” (Fitzgerald 120). At that moment Gatsby’s dream was tied to a figure in his past, obscuring his visions for the future and his dream became a distortion. The green light referenced in the book represented Gatsby’s dream, it was a glowing orb of hope for him, something to reach out for, but since his sights were set in the past, the idea that he was close to attaining his dream was just an illusion. Jay Gatsby falls short of his dream because he isn’t aware that the people that he once idolized have become corrupted and rotten around him, and he dies striving to achieve his dream, the title contradicts gatsby’s fate, he didn’t end up great, he ended up

His naivety in believing that anybody around him truly cared was misguided and represented in the fact that nobody came to his funeral. Gatsby stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the people with old money, and his car was a symbol for him with it’s, “monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns”, but “Everybody had seen it” (Fitzgerald 64), it was extravagant, so much so that it came off as tacky. Gatsby tried to formulate a plan akin to Thomas Jefferson’s, but he didn’t completely comprehend the mannerisms in the “improving book[s] or magazine[s]” (Fitzgerald 173) he noted in his general resolves either. Gatsby could've been vastly more successful in his attempt to become better had he attempted to actually read the books in his library, or be morally right, maybe even truly