Rags to Billionaires
The quintessential American is someone who has aspirations, able for self-improvement, and self invention. Jay Gatsby and Oprah Winfrey show all these qualities. They never settle for less, have goals, and they reinvent themselves. From humble background to exciting new lives. They show that anyone can be anything they want to be, if they put their mind to it. Instantly, their lives changed for the better with only one change in their lives. Jay leaving his home, and Oprah being recognized for her voices. These two show qualities of perseverance, strength, and willingness that everyone needs to become the quintessential American.
Jay Gatsby shows how he changes himself to invent a whole new person. He was never satisfied with what he grew up with. His parents were farmers in North Dakota. He never felt like that life for him. When he was sixteen, he left. Later he meets Dan Cody, which he is fascinated with. So, he then learns everything to take on a new life from Dan. He changed his name in pursue of this. “James Gatz-that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen…”(98) He never was content with what he had. When he became a billionaire, he never got close to anyone. Many, who attended his lavish parties, never knew anything about Gatsby. So, they made up delirious rumors about him. “He killed a man once… He was a German spy during the war.”(44) Gatsby stayed away from a majority of people. He only had eyes for one goal.
Five years ago, Jay Gatsby had the pleasure to meet Daisy Buchanan. He was hooked to her instantly. When the war started he doomed to leave her, alone. Daisy could not be alone ever, when Gatsby tells her to wait for him in the letter, s...
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...She has donated millions of dollars to various charities and organizations, with most of her money going to three foundations: The Angel Network, The Oprah Winfrey Foundation, and The Oprah Winfrey Operating Foundation.”(Oprah: Charity Work & Causes). Her generosity helped her be the quintessential American.
Furthermore, both people have vast sums of money and are not afraid to spend it. Jay Gatsby has lavish parties with the entire New York City in attendance. While Oprah helps children build a foundation for their lives. Not only that, they had aspirations to become better. They improved and reinvented themselves to achieve and maintain these goals. Though, both never really achieved full happiness because of not having a significant other. Their lives were empty with no family of their own. But, they never let that get in the way of pursuing anything they want.
The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel based on Gatsby’s dream and hope. In order to enrich the story, symbols are used to emphasize what the author is saying and they create a curiosity in the reader as they are frequently used throughout the story. These three symbols – green light, valley of ashes and the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg are not connected to each other but each of them represents important things in the story.
When looking at Jay Gatsby, one sees many different personalities and ideals. There is the gracious host, the ruthless bootlegger, the hopeless romantic, and beneath it all, there is James Gatz of North Dakota. The many faces of Gatsby make a reader question whether they truly know Gatsby as a person. Many people question what exactly made Jay Gatsby so “great.” These different personas, when viewed separately, are quite unremarkable in their own ways.
Jay Gatsby is a mysterious businessman from the nineteen twenties that is an ideal example of the American Dream. He falls in love with a young and vibrant woman by the name of Daisy Buchannan. Their admiration for each other enforces a luminous spark of determination upon themselves. This subsidizes their relationship under struggling circumstances, and changed their lives for the better. Daisy and Gatsby are the only two that truly prospered from their “American Dream” in this novel.
The second character Fitzgerald analyzes is Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is married to Tom Buchanan. Daisy is the definition of a dream girl, she is smart, gorgeous, and just an ideal woman to be around, and the relationship between her and Tom is quite odd (Baker). Daisy and Tom move to the fashionable East Egg from Chigaco (11). Daisy has everything a woman could wish for, a wealthy husband and an immaculate house. Daisy does not know that Tom is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson. Nick Carraway plays a major role in Daisy’s love life in The Great Gatsby. Nick is Daisy’s second cousin and he knew Tom from college (11). Daisy invites Nick over for dinner one evening and that is how she relearns about Jay Gatsby (11-17). Daisy met Gatsby at a dance in Louisville. They used to be madly in love with one another when he was in the army (). They had plans of always being together and being married in Louisville at Daisy’s home (118). Later in the story, Daisy was invited to go have tea at Nick’s house, but what she did not know is that it was all Gatsby’s idea to get them to rekindle their rel...
In life, we ask ourselves the question what we are? In addition, we also ask ourselves how our perspectives allow us to see this world? These questions are an opening idea’s, which requires the person answering it, to be fully aware of his or her life, and then have the ability to judge it without any personal bias. This is why, in the book that was and is in a sense is still talked about in class, The Great Gatsby, which is a book that follows a plethora of charters all being narrated by, Nick Caraway, a character of the book The Great Gatsby. Nick Caraway is the character in the book which judges and describes his and other character’s actions and virtues. Now we speak of a character whose name is Jay Gatsby or other whys known as James Gatz, which is one of the characters that Mr. Caraway, seems to be infatuated with from the start of the book. This character Jay Gatsby develops a perspective, which in his view seems to justify his actions by the way that he saw the world that he was living in. In this essay, I will explain why the ambitions of a person, can lead them to do things that are beyond there normal character.
In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald reflects the American society in the 1920’s and the different social groups that coexisted. The Great Gatsby portrays the failure of the American Dream, where corruption, illegal trading, superficial relationships, and social classes take the main roles. The author demonstrates how the American dream has become a pursuit of wealth and materialism through the exploration of the upper class. In addition, the author uses characterization to reflect the upper class in the 1920’s as two separate groups: the “old” money, and the “new money”. These are shown through the main characters in the novel, such as Gatsby and Tom Buchanan.
Alcohol was banned in every state, the Woman’s Right Movement flooded cities and The Great Gatsby was published. What do all of these things have in common? All of these events made up one decade, the 1920’s. None of these ’radical’ events were present during World War 1; life was very different and changed in a short amount of time. The “20’s” were a time of free will and revolution. Great examples of these events are told in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald which will help to view the differences in the social changes before and after the war.
"The American Dream is that dream of a nation in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with options for everyone to achieve their dream,” . Fitzgerald demonstrates in the “Great Gatsby” how a dream can become destroyed by one’s focus on only wanting wealth, power, and expensive things. Gatsby’s dream “is a naïve dream based on the fallacious assumption that material possessions are synonymous with happiness,harmony, and beauty” (“Fahey”). In the “Great Gatsby” Nick says “Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry”. The race after the American Dream is a primary theme that was seen throughout “The Great Gatsby”, wrote by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and how he represented this theme through his characters and all that they did.
The novel, The Great Gatsby focuses on one of the focal characters, James Gatz, also known as Jay Gatsby. He grew up in North Dakota to a family of poor farm people and as he matured, eventually worked for a wealthy man named Dan Cody. As Gatsby is taken under Cody’s wing, he gains more than even he bargained for. He comes across a large sum of money, however ends up getting tricked out of ‘inheriting’ it. After these obstacles, he finds a new way to earn his money, even though it means bending the law to obtain it. Some people will go to a lot of trouble in order to achieve things at all costs. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, conveys the numerous traits of Jay Gatsby through the incidents he faces, how he voices himself and the alterations he undergoes through the progression of the novel. Gatsby possesses many traits that help him develop as a key character in the novel: ambitious, kind-hearted and deceitful all of which is proven through various incidents that arise in the novel.
Jay Gatsby was a dreamer. His character personified the American Dream of rising from rags to riches.
this flashback, Jordan explains to Nick how she first met Gatsby. She explains to Nick
In all human life relationships are very important, and this is shown in many different aspects of human life . Relationships are so significant that Authors often use them as the revolving point of their stories. Such as in The Great Gatsby the author F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the different relationships as the revolving point in his story. Fitzgerald shows how the relationships between the couples in The Great Gatsby are similar in many different ways. The couples in The Great Gatsby are Gatsby and Daisy, Tom and Myrtle, and Myrtle and her husband. Each couple in this play has a dishonest relationship in which one or both are Unfaithful to their significant other.
There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen. ~Wayne Dyer
The American Dream is the idea that citizens of every social status can become successful in their life by working hard to achieve a better, richer and happier life. In The Great Gatsby, the protagonist Jay Gatsby was once a troubled young-boy who turned his life around to become a wealthier man, however in the case of Jay Gatsby, money was the only element of the American Dream which he managed to accomplish.
Jay Gatsby grew up in a family where money was not an easy thing to come by, but he was determined to change his social standing. He worked hard and dedicated himself