The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

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The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

Although to the casual reader The Great Gatsby may only appear as a poetic muse on the seemingly endless rollercoaster that is love, if one plunges deeper into this novel it is easily discovered that not only is this the quintessential grail quest but it is quite plainly a search for the American dream. Gatsby plays a duel role in this piece of American history; he is both the Holy Crusader, seeking his own personal Cup of Christ, and the Cinderella story of Fitzgerald's masterpiece. If this novel could be boiled down to its very core little would be left but this very sentence "the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther..... And one fine morning-"(GG189). This is the core; this is the beautiful epiphany at the end of one man's hell, this is the light at the end of the long tunnel of greed and hatred. Even if one only scratches the very surface of this piece, he or she would see that Gatsby's rise to power, his personal torment and inevitable downfall, and Nick's final realization about what life is truly about all lead to the conclusion that a dream corrupted is still a dream worth having.

First and foremost Gatsby is nothing more than a man in search of his own dream and he will let nothing stand in his way.

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