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The lies in The Great Gatsby
The lies in The Great Gatsby
The lies in The Great Gatsby
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“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Buddha. In the book The Great Gatsby the theme is many people have something that they are not being completely honest about. In The Great Gatsby not everybody is telling the truth. Several people are hiding something, whether it is an affair or feelings toward someone. For example Tom was having an affair with Myrtle will he was married to Daisy. In this theme paper I will be showing a few examples of all the lying that happened in The Great Gatsby.
Tom had a couple big lies in the book The Great Gatsby. One was when he went behind Daisy’s back and had an affair with Myrtle. He also told Myrtle’s sister that they could not get a divorce because Daisy was Catholic. But another one of Tom’s lies was when he told George Wilson that it was Jay Gatsby driving that car and not Daisy. A result of this lie was Jay Gatsby’s death and that is why I think that it is so important. The quotation was found on page 140 and says: “Listen,” said Tom, shaking him a little. “I just got here a minute ago, from New York. I was bringing you that coupé we have been talking about. That yellow car I was driving this afternoon was not mine— do you hear? I have not seen it all afternoon.”
Jay Gatsby was a pretty big liar as well. He lied about where he went to school, he lied about his family and his childhood, and he lied about how he got his money. He lied to Daisy and everyone else about his past and how he grew up. He did this in order to impress Daisy because she would never marry a poor Minnesota boy like Jay Gatsby was. He wanted everyone to believe that he was the “American `Dream”. The quotation was found on page 98 and it is pretty much just a big speech that Nick is sayin...
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..., insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body.”
The examples shown here in this essay show effects of lying and how it can lead to death. Jay Gatsby was so caught up in being the “American Dream” and catching Daisy that he put his own life in danger by lying for Daisy. Myrtle wanted to be rich so badly that she put her life in danger and ended up dying just to be with the man that had more money. Tom had to lie to Daisy to cover up his affair with Myrtle. Jordan lied about moving the ball so she would win the golf championship game. Nick lied to help his friend out when his friend got himself into deep trouble. Although, his lying didn’t help much because karma isn’t a great friend. All of these points prove that many people have something that they are not being completely honest about.
Works Cited
The Great Gatsby
Jay Gatsby is the main character in The Great Gatsby. He is the mysterious character that the story revolves around. Nick is his neighbor that gets invited to Gatsby’s party that set in on Gatsby being a mysterious person that has so many people talking about him and talking about different stories about Gatsby that unravel how big of a mystery Gatsby is. In The Great Gatsby, “Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news” (Fitzgerald 105). In chapter six, the real truth is revealed about the great Gatsby. The stories of the mysterious Gatsby in the parties were not true. The stories about Gatsby also went around New York, which made Nick ask Gatsby about his past ("The Great Gatsby," Fitzgerald). Nick also asked about Gatsby’s past hoping Nick would finally hear the truth. According to The Great Gatsby, “This was the night, Carraway says, that Gatsby told him the story (its factual details have been told earlier in the novel) of his early life. The purpose of the telling here is not to reveal facts but to try to understand the character of Gatsby’s passion. The final understanding is reserved for one of those precisely right uttera...
Nick Carroway is not a very judgmental person, in fact, he himself states that he withholds judgment so that he can get the entire story out of the person to whom he is listening. To say that Nick is both approving and disapproving is not suspiring, for Nick rarely looks at things from only one perspective. Nick finds Gatsby to be ignorantly honest, in that Gatsby could not fathom the idea of saying something without really meaning it. He respects Gatsby for his determination to fit in with the East Egg crowd, though Gatsby does not realize that he does not really fit in with them. On the other hand, Nick sees Gatsby to be excessively flashy and, in the words of Holden Caulfield, 'phony.' Gatsby's whole life is a lie from the moment he left behind the name James Gatz and became Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lies about his past to try to have people perceive him as an 'old money' guy when that really is not necessary. Gatsby's valiant efforts to lure Daisy are respectable, yet they show Gatsby's failure to accept reality and give up on his long lost dream.
There are many cases throughout the book where someone is dishonest to others that they know. It is definitely a motif throughout the pages of “The Great Gatsby” The first example that I am going to explain is with Jordan Baker. Jordan is a professional golfer that was in a big match for her golf career. A semi-finals match against other great competitors must have been very important for her. “At her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the papers a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round.” She d...
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said this and this quote has greatly influenced the theme statement for this paper. The theme statement for this paper on the Great Gatsby is some people are willing to put up a false façade in order to become something they think is better and they lose their true selves in the long run. This paper will go through three examples of putting up a false façade. First the paper will go through Jay Gatsby, then Nick Carraway and finally the paper will wrap up with the parties that Gatsby throws.
Although a dishonest act may hail from a modest intention, longer fictions will eventually lead to assemblies of lies until the initial motive largely overshadows the original flaw. Conversely, Nick Carraway, the composed narrator of The Great Gatsby, confidently states that he is the most honest person he knows, a result of being surrounded by unbounded toxic characters. For instance, Nick 's immensely wealthy cousin-in-law, Tom Buchanan, is a hypocritical, narcissistic businessman who 's involved in an affair with a presently married younger woman. Furthermore, Jordan Baker, a major interest of Nick’s, is a negligent, manipulative golf champion who 's unconditionally careless for the lives of others. Tom 's judgmental manner, Jordan 's cynical
Jay Gatsby is a character that the sun affects in such a way that it
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Symbolism in The Great Gatsby Symbolism is what makes a story complete. In "The Great Gatsby" Fitzgerald cleverly uses symbolism. Virtually anything in the novel can be taken as a symbol, from the weather, to the colors of clothing. characters wear. There are three main symbols used in The Great Gatsby, they are The East and West Egg, the green light at the end of Daisy's dock, and the eyes of Dr.T.J. Eckleburg.
Lies are a treacherous thing, yet everyone tells a few lies during their lifetime. Deceit surrounds us all the time even when one reads classic literature. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald makes dishonesty a major theme in his novel The Great Gatsby. The falsehoods told by the characters in this novel lead to inevitable tragedy when the truth is revealed. Jay Gatsby, one of the main characters in the novel, fails to realize that when one tells a lie, it comes back to bite you.
It is human nature for people to question the character of those around them, and in Gatsby’s case, his friends did not have much information about him. Since little is known about Gatsby, his neighbor, Nick, must depend on misleading rumors about the man of mystery. At one of Gatsby’s glamorous parties, a group of women gossip, “One time he killed a man who had found out that he was the nephew to Von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil” (61). Other guest place Gatsby as an illegal bootlegger or as a German spy during the war. While some of these stories may be true to his past, most are the outcome of society’s ignorance of Gatsby.
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There are many American novels that yield insights into human nature, but few are as honest or intriguing as Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is brilliantly composed, and involves many different personalities, but it is at the core of this novel that we find the dark secret of humanity: deception.
Unlike those cheesy romantic heroes from soap operas and films, Gatsby believes that by attempting to be someone he is not and by faking his identity, he will be able to win Daisy`s heart . Nick Caraway, the narrator of the novel, informs readers about Gatsby`s past and his first reaction to Daisy. He tells readers, “…he let her believe that he was a person from the same stratum as herself…that he was fully capable to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities…” (Fitzgerald 149). Gatsby basically lies about his social status to win Daisy`s heart, which shows how his relationship is based on dishonesty and lies rather than trust. Gatsby changes himself in order to make room for Daisy in his life. A romantic hero never lies beca...
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