Flaws In The Great Gatsby

The Roaring Twenties is home of the classic American novel, The Great Gatsby. This time period seemed as if it was written around the characters of this fictional story. F. Scott Fitzgerald created an authentic representation of the times with his beloved yet gravely flawed character, Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby’s biggest flaw was his desire to repeat his relationship with his star crossed lover, Daisy Buchanan, despite her husband and child. Throughout the novel he works to be with Daisy, no matter the obstacles in front of him which proves to be damaging to his character and others. In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby's unhealthy relationships and preoccupation with the past define who he is and reveals the selfishness of the time period.

In the 1920’s America was corrupted with materialism and selfishness, as portrayed through the characters of Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Jordan, and Jay

Gatsby. During the 1920s, while the stock market was booming, everyone in America wanted to get their hands on their fair share of the wealth (Quinn 1). Daisy is an excellent representation of this goal held by many. She married into the Buchanan family, a wealthy family of Chicago, Illinois. Daisy, being a girl for Louisville, Kentucky, wanted to get her fair share of the wealth of the U.S., thus marrying a wealthy man, Tom Buchanan (Fitzgerald ). Jay Gatsby is another perfect depiction of the “American dream” of the time: gaining this wealth and fortune.
The novel The Great Gatsby follows a unique cast of characters “starring” Jay Gatsby, a millionaire in rambunctious New York. F. Scott Fitzgerald created two fictional cities, East and West Egg, to portray the different people of the 1920s and their ways of life. Jay Gatsby was a part of the new and flashy West Egg, while his ex-lover, Daisy, married into old money and resided in East Egg (Fitzgerald #). Gatsby had not always been the extravagant millionaire he is described to us in the beginning of the novel.
In fact, Gatsby was raised on a small farm in North Dakota where his family struggled to make ends meet. He ran away at age seventeen to pursue his dream of a better life. On the way, he met a character who shaped him into a classic gentleman, Dan Cody. Fitzgerald uses Cody as a mentor for “James Gatz” as shown in this quotation: “A few days later he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pair of white duck trousers, and a yachting cap. And when the Tuolomee left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast Gatsby left too”(Fitzgerald #). This is beginning to introduce Dan Cody as an important role in Gatsby’s life.
At this point in the novel, the reader sees the Dan Cody has become a father figure for the young and alone Gatsby. He helped Gatsby achieve his dream of a perfect life, but Gatsby still wanted more. Donaldson, from Possessions in the Great Gatsby, said “Fitzgerald, like James, understood that the pursuit of independence was doomed from the start. Try though they might, Fitzgerald's characters find it impossible to throw off "the cluster of appurtenances" and invent themselves anew. That is the lesson, or one of the lessons, of The Great Gatsby” (Donaldson 3).This quote shows the internal struggle of Jay Gatsby in trying to become someone new. It also shows how Gatsby is always looking to attain more in status, wealth, possessions, and relationships, which in the end, was his downfall.
In his search for more, he ran across a sweet and beautiful girl from Louisville, with whom he had a summer romance. Unfortunately, their relationship could not continue because Gatsby was still struggling for money, while Daisy and her parents wanted better for themselves. “Many critics have pointed out that the ideal Daisy embodies in the novel is the original idea of America, corrupted by materialism in the modern age”. Materialism is one of the many characteristics of the time period, as said by Quinn from History in Literature. Materialism often led to selfishness in many because of the constant craving for more. The theme of “not being good enough” is a recurring one in many people’s lives during this time. Everyone was always striving for more material possessions, depicted through Daisy, Tom, and Jordan. This only made Gatsby more determined to be the best he could be, leading him to turn to suspect jobs, which eventually made him a millionaire. (Fitzgerald #).x
A new neighbor changed the course of Gatsby and Daisy’s lives. Nick Caraway, Daisy’s cousin, moved next to Gatsby. Gatsby proved his character flaw of his infatuation with the past by becoming Nick’s “friend.” He uses Nick to advance his plan to repeat the past with Daisy. It is visible to the reader now that Gatsby is the perfect embodiment of the 1920s because of his absorption with himself. Throughout the novel, he ignores people as friends and views them as pieces to his plan to be with Daisy.
Another example of this is Meyer Wolfsheim, Gatsby’s “business partner.” Except this time, the tables are turned because Wolfsheim uses Gatsby for work only while Gatsby considers their relationship to be friendly. An event that shows the extent of their relationship is the absence of Wolfsheim at Gatsby’s funeral. After Gatsby’s death, Nick narrated “That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure he’d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there’d be a wire from Daisy before noon — but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfsheim arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote this novel with personal experiences and true authenticity behind every character. After being studies, this novel is said to have close relations to Fitzgerald’s own life. One cannot truly understand Gatsby’s feelings towards Daisy, who he had known as his only friend. Jay Gatsby’s relationships never had the depth and feeling of a normal human interaction because of his constant obsession with his past. The only genuine interactions in his mind were those with Daisy when they were young. He lied in waiting for the perfect moment to repeat the past which never came. Ultimately, his fatal flaw was his inability to move on from the past.
Another flaw seen with Gatsby throughout the book is his constant desire to be better than he is, and better than he can. The greatest revealing point in this is the lie he holds throughout his life about attending Oxford. We see this when he and Tom Buchanan get into an argument and Tom asks him about the university he attended, showing the reader his doubts about Gatsby’s true self. Gatsby is hesitant with his response, but explains how he didn’t go to the Oxford University, but how he instead went to Oxford in the United States. Stated in “Jazz Age” from History in Literature, “The product of an impoverished midwestern family, James Gatz (his real name) became the disciple of a self-made man....But Gatsby’s accumulation of wealth is solely for the purpose of winning Daisy.” (Quinn 5). This quote from Quinn proves that Gatsby abandoned his early life and self to pursue the things he desired, this being the only means for him to do so. Gatsby’s longing for achieving more than he can is also shown in the fact that he lies about his father having died. This reveals to us that Gatsby doesn’t want us as readers, as well as the other characters, to know who he truly is and where he came from in reality. By doing so, he is able to prevent us from seeing his true identity, thus allowing him to obtain more opportunities throughout his life compared to if he were shown to be a man who came from a poor family. Though Gatsby attempts to lure Daisy to return to himself, she along with Tom, being as wealthy as they are, manage to get what they desire in the end: each other.
Although he attempts through many different approaches to “woah” Daisy back into his life, Gatsby falls short in doing so.

“He believes that wealth will impress her and she will divorce Tom and marry him” (Verderdame 2). As explained to us by Verderdame in “Identity in the Great Gatsby” from Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature, we can see that Gatsby’s main approach to reclaiming Daisy for himself is using his money to turn her away from Tom and back to himself. This, too, is an excellent example of the selfishness of the 1920s, as Gatsby is entirely obsessed with obtaining Daisy again only for his personal gain. As Verderdame explained, Gatsby wants Daisy to divorce Tom and come back to himself, also showing that Gatsby does not care how his decisions and his gains affect other people, but he is merely concerned with how they will benefit his own life. This is possibly the most significant illustration of the greediness of the time period, as it deals with people fighting over people, while at the same time not being attentive to how it will influence other

people.
F. Scott Fitzgerald sells the theme of selfishness and preoccupation in his novel The Great Gatsby, using the main character of Jay Gatsby. He is used as an embodiment of the time period, the “Roaring Twenties”. Gatsby was held back from living a happy life because of his obsession with the past he lived with Daisy. One can learn from this novel the importance of realizing that the past is unrepeatable, and to be truly happy one needs to first accept their faults.