How can Gatsby be called Great

The title of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ can be seen as incredibly ironic: not only can the ‘greatness’ of the eponymous character be vehemently contested, he is not even named ‘Gatsby’. In fact, he is a criminal, James Gatz, who, although he appears to be an epitome of the idealistic American Dream, having grown from an impoverished childhood into a life of excess and splendour, he has obtained everything through crime and corruption. Indeed, it has been said that ‘The Great Gatsby’ is “a parable of disenchantment with the ‘American Dream’” , and it is, for the American Dream is the idea that “through hard work, courage and determination, one could achieve prosperity.” James Gatz did not obtain his prosperous lifestyle through “hard work”, but rather through felony. Of course, it may seem that he ‘worked hard’ for it, and there is no disputing his determination and perhaps even his courage, but the “hard work” on which the American Dream is based is not the work of criminals.

Of course, we cannot deny that Gatsby has achieved a great deal in his lifetime, all, apparently, in the name of love. Indeed the narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, describes Gatsby as having “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person”, and this forms the basis of his opening argument for the greatness of Gatsby. We must, however, examine the reliability of the narrator. Nick says himself that he is “inclined to reserve all judgement”, but then quickly goes on to say how “it has a limit”, that he cannot reserve judgement on everyone, and also that Gatsby was “exempt from my reaction”, following this with how Gatsby “represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn”,...

... middle of paper ...

...l of Daisy, either. After all, Nick himself says that “Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply”, and one can assume that this would also be true for Daisy: Wilson would not have shot Daisy as he does Gatsby: it would appear that his “romantic readiness” was eventually the cause of his murder. The fact that he was killed by Wilson is deeply ironic: the underdog, the only poor character we see in the novel, running a “bare”, “whitewashed” garage under the god-like eyes of “Doctor T. J Eckleburg”, kills the prosperous, rich, idealistic hero, showing not only the “disenchantment of the ‘American Dream’”, but also that there really is no place for Jay Gatsbys in the world: the qualities which Nick perceives as “great” slowly pave the way for his defeat. Was Gatsby “great”? No, he was simply naively idealistic in a society completely deficient in morality.