Character Development In The Great Gatsby

The book we have finished reading is called “The Great Gatsby” and there are many characters in this book that help develop the book which overall makes this a great book. A character that is very significant in this book is Jay Gatsby because of his role in the book, also his relationship to the other characters and how he affects them and his development as a character in relation to the theme of the book. The Great Gatsby is a book with a lot of character development and a lot of dramatic changes to the book which is why I feel that Gatsby is the best character to analyze.

In the Great Gatsby, there are four main characters that help develop the book, these characters are Daisy, Nick, Tom, and Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is the rich man who lives

Gatsby is a character that starts off very in the dark and we don’t know much about him, but as the book develops and the other characters develop Gatsby’s true character is revealed. When we first look at Gatsby we see him as a lonely introvert who uses his money as a cover up. We see his loneliness in this quote by Nick saying “… fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadows of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets …- he stretched out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling … I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light … at the end of a dock” (Fitzgerald 25). This quote really shows our first look at the true Gatsby as a man who is blinded by his love for Daisy and as he develops with the theme we really get the same look as the man from the short story Araby. One of the themes in this book is Class, the old money, and new money, Gatsby is new money and as the book develops we really start to see how he will never be like the characters who are old money no matter how much he develops as a character. Gatsby becomes a more predominant character with all the parties he throws and reconnecting with his love Daisy we see how Gatsby covers himself and his whole life is really a façade. We know that his life is a façade when he figure out that Gatsby changes his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby because he wanted to get away from his old life. This ties in with the theme of the class, the American dream and also his character development because we are able to follow him as he starts to unravel his life to Nick. Gatsby’s character is blinded and he stays blinded through the whole book and as the book develops Gatsby stays blinded which gets him killed in the end. We see how he is blind through the quote saying “Gatsby bought that house so