Power In The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a classic novel about the yearning for love and money and how it affects the characters in the end within the story. This is a story of man by the name Jay Gatsby who desires the love of Daisy Buchanan and shows he will do everything in his power to get what he wants. The novel is told through the eyes of a young man named Nick Carraway, who not only is Jay Gatsby’s neighbor but an outsider watching the situation. Taking place in the 1920s, which is known as the Roaring Twenties, Fitzgerald focuses on the idea of achieving the American Dream and how power can lead to material success. Many of the characters in the novel fall for a different idea of an American Dream. Consumed by the ideas of material

items they forget about virtue, hard work, and the morality of gaining success. I believe in this novel there is a change in the American Dream and America itself because of the idea of using money to buy happiness. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the wealthy characters prove the saying, “Money can’t buy happiness.”
Many characters in the novel were obsessed with the idea of obtaining an image for society and having lots of material items. They all are very oblivious to the truth that is money cannot buy happiness. We could blame this disease on the Roaring Twenties. For it was the era that was known for great parties, expansive cars, extravagant clothing, and jazz music. One of the worst characters in the book for being obsessed with fancy items is Jay Gatsby, who seems to have caught this illness. He has very large house, which he throws extravagant parties in, and lots of materialistic items which he seems to think can give him happiness.
Gatsby really focused on buying Daisy’s love because he could afford to have expensive cars. As a child Gatsby was born into a poor family who did not have much items and received poor education. This poor education can be easily noticed, as it was by Nick Carraway when they first meet. “I was looking at an elegant young redneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I’d got the strong impression he was picking his words with care.” (48) By saying this Nick suggests that he knows that Gatsby has the money to throw large parties but he is an imposter because of the way he speaks and presents himself. This shows that even though Gatsby is an extremely rich man he cannot escape his past and the roots of where he grew up because someone will always notice and be observant.
In chapter four of the novel Gatsby lies to Nick about his background, trying to prove that he has been wealthy and happy this whole time.

He says, “I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle East- all dead now. I was brought up in America buy educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.” (65) After he states this lie, Nick notices how he rushed through the phrase “studied at Oxford” and he can see why Jordan Baker had thought he lied. Later in chapter six we find out the truth after Gatsby’s background. “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang himself from his Platonic conception of himself. He was the son of God- a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that- and he must be about his Father’s side business, the service of vast, vulgar, and mysterious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year old boy would be likely to invent, and to his conception he was faithful to the end.” (98) By this statement Jay Gatsby is now seen as someone who is not proud of who he really is. What he use to be did not make him happy and he did not think he could make something of himself with that background. Like a normal kid he had dreams, dreams of achieving the American Dream, but money got in the way of

it.
Gatsby first goes wrong by thinking that money can buy love. His goal is for nothing but success, material success. His want for material success proves that Gatsby buys into the ideas of money buys happiness because he thinks he can buy Daisy’s love. He is all about material success and winning over Daisy with the amount of material items he has. In chapter five he proves his worth and his consumption of material items by showing them to Daisy. “He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray.” (92) Shortly after him throwing them Daisy begun to cry. She cried because she realized that before she married Tom and was in love with Gatsby she would of had it all, wealth and love. With Tom she just has wealth, but with Gatsby she could have had wealth and love. She cries because it is too late for her and Gatsby to ever be together since she is already married and has a family with Tom. Ultimately Gatsby, wasted all his time trying to impress Daisy because it was already too late. All the elaborate parties he threw to get her attention, buying a large house right across from hers, and all-in-all becoming wealthy mostly for her just proved to be worthless for him. He stares at the green light every night longing for Daisy to come back to him and for them to be in love again. Before Gatsby left for the war he already had it planned out in his head that you can repeat the past, which was Daisy and him being together and in love.Throughout the novel he believes that until the end when he realizes you truly cannot repeat the past he see’s that all the work he has put forward to get Daisy back and make him happy has been for nothing.
Tom Buchanan, the husband of Daisy, is another character who believes that happy can buy you pure happiness. Fitzgerald places many emphasis in the novel to money, especially dealing with Tom Buchanan. In the novel Carraway references “a string of polo ponies”, which lets us imagine how rich Tom really is. The idea that they were polo ponies is a very important detail since only very rich people attend polo matches that are important and upper class. Another example of how rich Tom is, is when he gave Daisy a pearl necklace on their wedding day that cost him three-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. For their wedding day he was also sure to have four private cars and a whole floor of a hotel just for their wedding. (76) The more money Tom spends on Daisy, the longer she wants to be with him. He see’s Daisy as his possession, not his wife. The love Daisy has for Tom is purely from his money and his expensive gifts he has provided her with. Look at Daisy, she’s not even happy with Tom and Tom is not happy with her either since he is cheating on her.
Daisy Buchanan is a character whose whole life and choices are made using the factor of wealth. Her voice is one to be described as “full of money” (120). Gatsby is describing Daisy’s voice after we see’s her again after so many years. By saying her voice is full of money is stating what she is about. It is easy to get to know a person and know what they are like by the way they talk and they sound of their voice. By saying that about Daisy is telling us that she is all about money, after all she did marry one of the wealthiest men in the novel, Tom. Daisy describes herself to us as “Sophisticated- God, I’m sophisticated” (17). By saying this she is stating that she is able to go places and be something so much better than everyone else because of the money she has. But in the end Daisy ends up the most miserable of all the characters because she ends up having to leave her house and her lover behind.
Daisy’s good friend, Jordan Baker, tells the readers about Daisy before and after her marriage with Tom.

Nick Carraway describes how Daisy changed after marrying Tom. “She went with a slightly older crowd- when she went with anyone at all. Wild rumors were circulating about her- how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going over seas” (75). As he said she hangs with a slightly older crowd, suggesting that she is very mature for her age. She does not care about the rumors and what people say about her because she was in love with a soldier, Gatsby, and despite all the talk she still went to New York to say bye to him. She was a young women who was carelessly in love with a solder. She refers back to herself later in the novel after finding out her child in a girl. “And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (118). Shes describing herself and how she fell in love and quickly realized after Gatsby left that she has to move on with her life and marry another man. But this realization that she had could have been the reason as to why she ultimately becomes so

unhappy.
In the end of the novel everyone is left unhappy. Daisy finds out Tom is cheating on her with Mrytle so she runs her over. But Tom because Tom is so wealthy they are able to pack up and move away and start over. Gatsby is so in love with Daisy he takes the blame for her mistake and ends up dead. So in reality none of the characters end up happy or with successfully fulfilling the American Dream. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the wealthy characters prove the saying, “Money can’t buy happiness.”