The Great Gatsby - Trading Life for a Dream What is life? Life embodies ones dreams mixed in with successes and most importantly, love. Following this definition, Jay Gatsby lives a fulfilling existence while Nick stays put and ordinary like stagnant water. Life is full of risks and Gatsby risks his life for love and happiness. Even though he did lose his life, he didn't pay too high a price for living too long a single and farfetched dream of true love. Gatsby is the epitome of the American Dream, "his brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half fierce, half lazy work of the bracing days...as a clam digger and a salmon fisher." (104) From this Gatsby became a robber baron, an American capitalist who became wealthy through exploitation and in Gatsby's case, through bootlegging. Anger is what made Gatsby and wealth and power were his means toward the goals of happiness and true love. Gatsby supports this when he says to Tom, "she only married you because I was too poor and she was tired of waiting for me." (137) Gatsby has never forgotten that if he had had the money when he first met her, then she would be his. So this propels him on a quest to make money and use the money to relive the past. Daisy is currently married and has a daughter. Despite this, Gatsby still wants to make it like old times. After all, his beliefs drive him to do crazy things. Beliefs founded on different principles, "Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can...I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before. She'll see." (116-117) Gatsby's dreams drive him to do the impossible, change the past. Nick struggles to understand why a man would spend so much time and money for something that lasted so short and in no way in favor of Gatsby. "His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was" (117), the idea of a mutual love relationship with Daisy as it was in the past.
After finally reconnecting with the now married Daisy years after they were separated by the war, Jay Gatsby is determined to win her back and continue their relationship where they left off years before. Despite all the odds clearly against him, as he is of poor blood and low social status compared to Tom, Gatsby “had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart” (Fitzgerald 95-6). Ga...
Even though they parted, Daisy has been his obsession for 5 years and that’s why he cannot separate the past from the present. For Gatsby she is the golden girl she is the golden future.
One of the traits of Gatsby that makes him truly great is his remarkable capacity for hope. He has faith that what he desires will come to him if he works hard enough. He does not comprehend the cruelty and danger that is the rest of the world. Gatsby, while a man of questionable morals, is as wide-eyed and innocent as a small child in his views of the world. These ideals are evident in Nick’s narration and in the words spoken by the other characters, including Gatsby himself.
The American Dream describes an attitude of hope and faith that looks forward to the fulfillment of human wishes and desires. What these wishes are, were expressed in Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence of 1776, where it was stated:
Daisy is not pure and perfect like Gatsby thought she was in the past. From Gatsby's illusions of the past preoccupying all his thoughts, he forgets about the key dimension he exists in which is the present. Although Gatsby was persistent on reliving the past, Gatsby vaguely lived for the present. This is apparent when he cancels his biology by leaving home, changing his name, and leaving his heritage behind which was not done by following the past.
What is later revealed is that Gatsby’s wealth and luxurious lifestyle is all in the name of getting Daisy, Tom Buchanan’s wife, to fall in love with him. But in the end, even with all his money and power, Gatsby is not able to get the girl. What this brings to light is, was Gatsby’s money truly worth anything? “I love her and that 's the beginning and end of everything” (The Great Gatsby, Chapter ) This quote from Jay Gatsby shows that his entire life is centered around Daisy. That his only motive for the things that he does, for the massive parties that he throughs, for working to become incredibly wealthy, is to have Daisy fall in love with him. Gatsby’s life is one that is incredibly lavish. It is full of expensive amenities many would only dream of having. But Jay Gatsby is not living this fabulous lifestyle for himself. He is living it for Daisy, and only for Daisy. Gatsby’s only desire in life is to have Daisy be in love with him, and he chooses to live the way he does because he believes that is what she wants. Gatsby spends money at wild abandon simply to make an effort to impress Daisy. He throughs incredibly immense parties, with hopes that Daisy and Daisy alone will be impressed. But what is troubling about Gatsby is that, unlike most books, he doesn’t get the girl. Gatsby is, despite his entire life being dedicated to getting the one thing
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tells the story of a man of meager wealth who chases after his dreams, only to find them crumble before him once he finally reaches them. Young James Gatz had always had dreams of being upper class, he didn't only want to have wealth, but he wanted to live the way the wealthy lived. At a young age he ran away from home; on the way he met Dan Cody, a rich sailor who taught him much of what he would later use to give the world an impression that he was wealthy. After becoming a soldier, Gatsby met an upper class girl named Daisy - the two fell in love. When he came back from the war Daisy had grown impatient of waiting for him and married a man named Tom Buchanan. Gatsby now has two coinciding dreams to chase after - wealth and love. Symbols in the story, such as the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, the contrast between the East Egg and West Egg, and the death of Myrtle, Gatsby, and Wilson work together to expose a larger theme in the story. Gatsby develops this idea that wealth can bring anything - status, love, and even the past; but what Gatsby doesn't realize is that wealth can only bring so much, and it’s this fatal mistake that leads to the death of his dreams.
Jay Gatsby, the main character of the story, is one character that longs for the past. Surprisingly, he spends most of his adult life trying to recapture it and, finally, dies in this pursuit. In the past, Gatsby had a love affair with the attractive young Daisy. Knowing he could not marry her because of the difference in their social status, he leaves her to gain wealth to reach her standards. Once he acquires wealth, he moves near to Daisy, "Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay (p83)," and throws extravagant parties, hoping by chance she might show up at one of them. He, himself, does not attend his parties but watches them from a distance.
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...
Although it could be argued that when the details of Gatsby’s life are revealed and he dies his greatness is lost,his greatness lies in the fact that his dream was not actually fullfilled. American literary critic Harold Bloom argues: “Whatever the American Dream has become, its truest contemporary representative remains Jay Gatsby, at once a gangster and a romantic idealist . . . His death preserves his greatness and justifies the title of his story, a title that is anything but ironic.” (Bloom 5). Gatsby’s material success obtained by illegal means challenges the perception that the American Dream is a product of honest hard work. It speaks of the point that achievement is very often an outcome of many different elements as opposed to only genuine work and excellence. He actually created a whole new identity for himself, he made a fortune and embellished his life with material belongings which he supposes will tempt Daisy to forget everything and stay with him. Although he presumed to reach his happiness by accumulating property, it was never his main goal. It was a means to an end to reach his indefinite object encapsulated in his cherished Daisy. His love is hopeful and idealistic and yet it is inseparable from materialistic means. From Gatsby’s father Nick learns how even before he created the illusion of Gatsby James Gatz was a determined man, who wanted to improve himself and overcome his humble beginnings. They find his schedule and the father says that “Jimmy was bound to get ahead.” (Fitzgerald 185). He believed he could achieve anything with hard work; ironically he got rich by illegal means. When he says to Carraway: "Can't repeat the past . . . Why of course you can" (Fitzgerald 118) what he implies is that he really would like to regain his previous connection with Daisy, rejecting the fact that she is married and has a daughter
Gatsby has many issues of repeating his past instead of living in the present. A common example of this would be his ultimate goal to win Daisy back. He keeps thinking about her and how she seems perfect for him, but he remembers her as she was before she was married to Tom. He has not thought about the fact that she has a daughter, and has been married to Tom for four years, and the history there is between them. The reader cannot be sure of Gatsby trying to recreate the past until the reunion between him and Daisy. This becomes evident when Nick talks to Gatsby about how he is living in the past, specifically when Nick discusses Daisy with him. “‘I wouldn’t ask too much of her,’ Gatsby ventured. ‘you can’t repeat the past.’ I said. ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’” (110). This excerpt shows how Gatsby still has not learned that eventually he will have to just accept the past and move forward with his life. If he keeps obsessing about Daisy, and trying to fix the past, more of his life will be wasted on this impossible goal. Througho...
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