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A thesis of the symbolism of the great gatsby
Symbolism in the great gatsby
A thesis of the symbolism of the great gatsby
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Why A Dream? Humans have an unfathomable urge to dream for things that are thought of as impossible. This undeniable fact is one of the many wonderful that define the species and its immense capabilities. Dreams are what drive people, such as Gatsby, to structure their life the way that they do. Dreams are hard to accomplish, but not impossible. That is why they strive to achieve them, to give them a sense of purpose in their lives so that they can feel accomplished. Sometimes, however, dreams just slip away to no fault of the dreamer. Sometimes it is just too much. F. Scott Fitzgerald represents this perfectly in The Great Gatsby how dreams can shape a person’s life. A dream is what Jay Gatsby centered his life around. This dream was Daisy, a girl who, in Fitzgerald’s own words, had “an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found it impossible to forget”. (9) He got rich to make Daisy more attracted to him. He threw giant parties every weekend hoping she would show up. He even “’ …bought that house so that daisy would be right across the bay’”. (78) His whole life was centered on Daisy. She was his focus, his everything and he was going to do …show more content…
Daisy was, after all, married. Gatsby did not really see this as much of an obstacle, however. He planned it all out beginning to end. He even told Tom “She never loved you, you hear!” (130) His love for Daisy and his dream to marry her was his sense of self. He wanted her because he knew that she would make his life more purposeful and complete, giving him the only thing he ever wanted. Gatsby is human and is trying to simply fulfill his human needs. That is the whole point of even the littlest thing that he does. Whatever ecstasy he would get by achieving this impossible dream would make up for all the pain that he endured getting there. However, it is just that, an impossible
In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby functions under the illusion that Daisy is perfect and is living in such distress because she was forced to marry Tom due to Gatsby being away at war and being poor. This illusion leads Gatsby to spend his entire adult life pining after Daisy and cheating his way up the social and economic ladder in order to win her over. Gatsby believes that Daisy will someday come back to him because she loves him so much and they will live happily ever after together.
Jay Gatsby, taken in by a bittersweet fruit, drags himself through filth. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby becomes wealthy to achieve his American Dream, but he fails to achieve it because of the corruption and disillusioning effects of materialistic society.
Dreams can be powerful and inspiring, yet when taken too far, they can be toxic to one’s happiness and even fatal in Gatsby’s case. Reality, on the other hand, is always trustworthy, and it is wiser to simply accept and adjust to the faults and imperfections of a society rather than to try to fight them like Holden and Gatsby did. Both men were unwilling to relinquish their precious dreams, yet in the end, that no longer mattered because society took them anyway and annihilated them. The downfall of both these characters demonstrates the importance of staying grounded and never veering too far off the path of reality, because dreams alone cannot serve as a sufficient foundation on which to build a prosperous, fruitful life.
A dream is an intangible paradise. In the heavenly world of a dream, all hopes are within reach, and time knows no defined direction. To dream is to believe in the existence of the limitless realm. To dream is to be consumed by the passion and beauty of life, for although a dream may never become a reality, the true substance of a dream is its place in the heart. Jay Gatsby is a dreamer. He believes that the future can return him to his past and to his love, Daisy. Time blocks Gatsby’s dream, for Daisy has made Gatsby a mere memory by marrying Tom Buchanan. Tom and Daisy have minor conflicts with time that parallel Gatsby’s principal struggle with time, yet Gatsby’s dream emerges as the distinguishing factor of his conflict. When challenging the natural course of time, a dream, created by the intricate workings of the mind, and a simple memory of the past cannot be attained with the greatness of their origin. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby’s destruction and the death of his undying dream are intensified through the magnification of the conflicts found in the characters of Tom and Daisy Buchanan.
What distinguishes a dream from reality? Many combine the two, often creating confusing and disappointing results. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes the impact that reality has on an individual by examining the life of Jay Gatsby. This twentieth-century piece of literature holistically portrays the Jazz Age and accurately captures life in the 1920s. This decade was a time in which many individuals strove towards fulfilling the American Dream. The extravagant and lavish lifestyle which many people lived depicted their romantic desire for wealth. This constant greed and artificial attitude consequentially produced fantastic misconceptions of reality. Jay Gatsby’s life parallels the lives of those who lived during the 1920s because similarly to Gatsby, they too had no astonishing beginnings and created deceptions that were the only route to the American dream. The significance of understanding the difference between what is fantasy and what is reality is crucial, as Gatsby is the epitome of the result of dreams dictating a person’s actions. Fitzgerald suggests that fantasy never matches reality and successfully proves this by comparing the fantasy that Gatsby creates to reality.
Gatsby would still do anything in his power for them to have a future together. At this point, Gatsby not only had Daisy to convince, but he also had Tom. Tom always knew something was not right about Gatsby, especially after he got his background check results back. “Gatsby seems to have lost any quality of self- perception he once may have possessed.” (Gross, 30) When the whole group was at the hotel, Tom starting calling Gatsby out on all of his lies then he exposed the way he actually got his money. In that same moment, Daisy admits to actually loving Tom, which bought the worst out of Gatsby. He responded so horribly because he then knew that Daisy did not see a future with him. After the argument, Tom sent Daisy home with Gatsby to show him that he won and Gatsby could not hurt him. On the way home, Gatsby let Daisy drive, while they were driving through the valley of ashes, Mertyl came running in the middle of the road. Daisy hit Mertyl and kept driving. Everyone thought it was Gatsby and he took the blame. He took the blame so Daisy would be safe because he does still love her. Even after the tragedy, Gatsby still stays outside of Daisy and Tom’s house to make sure Tom doesn’t do anything to hurt Daisy because he is in denial that she and Tom actually do love each other. Later the next day, Wilson (Mertyl’s husband) starting
Gatsby’s reluctancy to the escape the dream, and move forward to the present, illustrates his refusal to give up his dream. As the book progresses, the reader begins to see this idea of Gatsby’s dream become more powerful. Gatsby's ambition to relive the past events is what leads to his downfall in the book, because it would show his weakness and hesitancy to create a new dream instead of live in the old dream. One of the most important quotes that illustrate, Gatsby;s dying dream states, “Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against a mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantel piece clock, and from this position his
In the beginning, Gatsby was a poor army boy who fell in love with a rich girl named Daisy. Knowing from their different circumstances, he could not marry her. So Gatsby left to accumulate a lot of money. Daisy, not being able to wait for Gatsby, marries a rich man named Tom. Tom believes that it is okay for a man to be unfaithful but it is not okay for the woman to be. This caused a lot of conflict in their marriage and caused Daisy to be very unhappy. Gatsby’s dream is to be with Daisy, and since he has accumulated a lot of money, he had his mind set on getting her back. Throughout the novel, Gatsby shows his need to attain The American Dream of love and shows his determination to achieve it. You can tell that Gatsby has a clear vision of what he wants when Nick says, “..he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I gla...
Dreams are a world composed of fulfilled aspirations and despite the fact their dreams rarely become a reality, people still continue to hold on to the hope that one day they will. In the novel, The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald portrays how time is the main prevention associated with keeping people from achieving their dreams. Fitzgerald shows this through the character Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is convinced that he is capable of returning to the past and reuniting with his love, Daisy. However Gatsby is oblivious to the fact that Daisy has made Gatsby a past memory and has moved on by marrying Tom Buchanan. Gatsby tries to relive the past to be able to recapture his old life with his love but is never able to.
The dreamer’s mind is a profound collection of the individual visions that embody the greatest hopes for one’s most complex nightmares. They envision beyond what is normal reality, for what few men and women yet only God accomplish. Such a mind is wonderfully drawn into existence by the astonishing author F. Scott Fitzgerald in his renowned book The Great Gatsby. For in the review of the novel many critics view Jay Gatsby as an obsessed man acting as a hero chasing the convoluted American dream. Yet within further study, evidence can proclaim that Gatsby is a man filled with some tenacity and ferocity that indulges the idea that he is the clarification of the American dream, not its materialized decline.
All of Fitzgerald's characters had a Dream, however, Jay Gatsby’s dream stood out above the others. Jay Gatsby was the only character throughout the whole novel that I found to experience both emotional and physical pain. Continuing with the emotional pain, Jay Gatsby exaggerates it. His American Dream is to go after a lost love, a love that he thought would love him and stay with him until death will break them apart, but it didn't end like that. This dream, his love, left him, and ran off with another, her husband. This left Jay Gatsby alone, tormented, miserable, and devastated. His American Dream left him, destroyed him and ruined his life, his whole entire life
His love for Daisy gets him caught up in his own world, and he hasn’t even thought about what Daisy’s real feelings may be other than her only loving Gatsby himself. Gatsby irresponsibly exclaims at the Buchanans house, “Your wife doesn’t love you, she’s never loved you. She loves me.”(Fitzgerald 130) Gatsby is proving he is a romantic idealist here because he is only thinking about his own ideas of their fantasy. Daisy then said, “I never loved him.”(Fitzgerald 132) She couldn’t even truthfully say that she never loved Tom. He was so caught up in his dreams that him and Daisy were going to go back to the way things were years ago, but that is clearly not what is going to happen. Daisy loves him, but it does not matter. This makes Gatsby even more innocent because he really thought she loved him for who he was, and was going to explain that to Tom, so in return her and Gatsby could be together. That is not how things went. Gatsby is heartbroken, and destroyed because of this. During this fight between Gatsby and Tom Daisy screamed, “Please, Tom! I can’t stand this anymore.” (Fitzgerald 134) Most likely, Daisy saying this tore Gatsby apart even more. Gatsby hears in her voice while she hollers at Tom that she is choosing him over Gatsby. His plan to get Daisy back is failing, and destroying him because of his own ideas and innocence. This is described when an article states, “In many respects, the intensity of Gatsby’s love for Daisy and his
Fitzgerald emphasizes the importance of dreams in both his stories. Jay Gatsby is driven by his dream that Daisy will accept and love him according to his fantasies. He believes in the idea that if he thinks it, it will be so. He believes that materialism can accomplish his dream of winning Daisy's heart and this becomes his obsession. However, his dreams are flawed. They are hollow because they lead to a major letdown. Gatsby acquires his money through illegal means and when Daisy learns of this it changes her opinion and love for Gatsby shattering his hopes. His dreams were "vague contours" that lack any substance. Everything Gatsby dreams is based in materialism or social acceptance. The meaningless attraction to the glitter and glamour far out ways any meaningful relationships. Fitzgerald's idea of "a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing" is an appropriate description of the weakness in Gatsby's dreams. Gatsby world is destroyed when
... his own interpretation of The Dream, but it was his dream, and the fact that he had one at all is something quite powerful. As Charlene Dawson argued – “The ideal American dream is not so realistic”. Gatsby was not a realist, he was a dreamer, who may have dreamed a dream less worthy than a man like Martin Luther King Jr’s , but it was his dream, and he may never have been called “the Great” without it. The American Dream may have sprung from a declaration of equality, but it was an invitation for people to express their individuality by demonstrating what their own definition of happiness was. Gatsby embodies the entirety of this dream, the hope, the misguided materialism and criminality and even in a way its failure, for though the Declaration of Independence states that all should have the right to pursue happiness, it said nothing whatsoever about achieving it.
“Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today”(James Dean). Dreams are what push us forward and keep us on the track of what we live. When you live like this, you can accomplish anything you want, and you can make new dreams once you accomplish that one and reach even farther into your soul for what you really want. I think Gatsby’s dream in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is to get the love of his life, who he has had a huge passion for since he saw her, and life happily ever after.