Research Paper Outline For The Great Gatsby

Brooke Palubicki

Ms. Buckley

American Literature

11 March 2016

Thesis: In the novel The Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald shows that chasing hollow dreams will only result in misery through the lives of characters Jay Gatsby, George Wilson, and Daisy Buchanan.

1. Gatsby’s American dream is to live happily ever after with the love of his life; Daisy.
A. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...and one fine morning” (Fitzgerald 149).
B. “faithful to his self-created dream but scornful of the factual truth that finally crushes him and his dream” (Fitzgerald ch 6).

2.

Gatsby ends up literally shot down by his dream.
A. “So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight” (Fitzgerald 170).
B. “It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete” (Fitzgerald 171).

3. George Wilson tries to keep Myrtle happy and keep them together.
A. "Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly, and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom” (Fitzgerald 123).
B. "I told her she might fool me but she couldn't fool God. I told her to look to the window and said 'God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God' (Fitzgerald 159).

4. Despite his efforts, George ends up sad and alone.
A. A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting — before he could move from his door the business was over”(Fitzgerald ch 7).
B. “I’ve got my wife locked in up there,” explained Wilson calmly. “She’s going to stay there till the day after tomorrow, and then we’re going to move away”(Fitzgerald ch

7).

5. Daisy dreams of having wealth and acts selfishly in order to be happy.
A. "Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly. That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. (Fitzgerald ch 7).
B. “She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except for me.” (130)

6. When Daisy fails to see how selfish she is, she loses someone who really cares about her unlike Tom.
A. But with every word she was drawing further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room” (134).
B. “In his mind, they had an epic love, and as soon as he became wealthy, he thought he could win her back. Her rejection, however, both shocks and disappoints him, and "the words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby” (Fitzgerald 135).