Superficiality In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

People are masters of disguise, masking who they really are and concealing the parts they hate about themselves to appeal to the world. Superficiality is all too common, using false truths like wealth to attract the kind of attention they desire. F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby focuses on Jay Gatsby, a man who's superficial greatness is being an amoral showman of wealth; however, his true greatness is his capacity to love hopelessly and trust.

To begin, the West Egg icon Jay Gatsby meets newfound friend and narrator Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate from Minnesota, and tells him the story of how he became the man he is. While driving together to West Egg Village for lunch, Gatsby tells Nick who he “truly” is, "'I'll tell you God's

truth.' His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by. 'I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West--all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.' He looked at me sideways--and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying" (Fitzgerald 65). Although Gatsby swears he is telling the truth, Nick has an underlying feeling that he is not. Towards the end of the novel, readers find out that Jay Gatsby starts as poor farm boy James Gatz of North Dakota. As a young boy, James Gatz has big dreams to become wealthy, "The turbulent imaginings of his adolescence first take shape in the scheme of self-advancement..." (Way). He believes that if he is going to achieve the American Dream, he has to distance himself from everything that makes him James Gatz and focus on what makes him wealthy businessman Jay Gatsby. During this time of adolescence, "...he has a plan to make himself rich, but no clear mental picture of what wealth and success would be like. This gap is partially filled when Dan Cody's yacht anchors off the Lake Superior shore, and Gatsby meets Cody himself" (Way). Gatsby is clueless about what being wealthy and successful looks like until he meets Dan Cody. When young Gatsby sees Dan Cody anchor, he is in awe, "At once Cody, the Western tycoon, who is spending his money in the flamboyant style of the Gilded Age, becomes Gatsby's image of the wealthy and successful man. He changes his name from Jimmy Gatz to Jay Gatsby in an attempt to embrace this new conception in all its aspects" (Way). He figures that Dan Cody will now serve as his teacher and mentor. Jay Gatsby uses Dan Cody as the model for his new and improved persona.

Taking his knowledge and manners of the upper class from Dan Cody, Gatsby enlists in the military during World War I, but before he leaves he meets the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. Literary critic Brian Way states, "As well as an image of himself, however, Gatsby needs an image of something beyond him to which he can aspire, and this final stage in his imaginative development is completed when he meets Daisy during the War and becomes her lover. When he kissed her for the first time, he "wed forever his ineffable vision to her perishable flesh": from that moment, she was the substance of his dream, and "the incarnation was complete." In his eyes, she is intensely desirable both as a woman and as the symbol of a way of life" (Way). To complete the transformation from rags to riches, Gatsby needs to reach his “final stage” of development which is complete the moment he sees Daisy. Gatsby is ready to do whatever he has to do to gain the affections of the girl who is the last piece of his puzzle. The reader is already aware of this lofty goal on the title page before the novel even starts,

"Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!"
--Thomas Parke D’Invilliers (Fitzgerald).

Fitzgerald tries to alert the reader that the book will be about doing whatever it takes for love. Gatsby figures that if he can wear “the gold hat” Daisy will want to be his once again.

Although Gatsby spins webs of lies about who he is, his true greatness is his capacity to hopelessly love and trust another person. Critic David Parker says, “Gatsby is preposterous, but there is something admirable in his chivalrous idealism as well. Fitzgerald manages to generate for Gatsby a kind of wondering respect" (Parker). Even though Gatsby is a liar, narrator Nick Carraway respects his idealistic ways. While discussing Gatsby’s plans for furthering his pursuit of Daisy, Nick states, "'I wouldn't ask too much of her...You can't repeat the past'”. Not accepting what Nick has to say, Gatsby cries incredulously, “'Can't repeat the past?...Why of course you can!” Worrying about how he will fix his relationship with Daisy, “He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. 'I'm going, to fix everything just the way it was before', he said, nodding determinedly. 'She'll see'" (Fitzgerald 110). Everything Gatsby is doing is for Daisy, he is determined to repeat how the connection they had before he left for war. Literary Themes for Students states, "To everyone in the novel, Gatsby was someone different: ambitious boy, former lover, wealthy businessman, con man, success story, murderer” ("The Great Gatsby." Literary Themes for Students). Because he hides different aspects of his life to each person involved with him, he wears many masks. After all, Jay Gatsby strives to achieve success, “In the end Jay Gatsby lost his life "in the pursuit of success, or at least the appearance of success". For him, "the American dream means being able to exchange his impoverished pasts for the good life. Unfortunately, the good life is a masquerade"” ("The Great Gatsby." Literary Themes

for Students). Even though the life Gatsby works for is an illusion, he dies believing that Daisy is not far from reach. He figures that his outward appearance of wealth will achieve his goal of spending the rest of his days with the love of his life Daisy Buchanan.
To conclude, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is about West Egg celebrity Jay Gatsby and his unscrupulous ways of creating a façade of wealth and fame to achieve greatness; however, his true greatness is his capacity to blindly trust and love. In his beginning stages, he tries to the achieve the American Dream by using fraudulent ways instead of honest business but never loses hope on true love. Even though people can be deceitful and amoral, they might have a redeeming quality that proves they are more than superficial.