Examples Of Idealism In The Great Gatsby

Idealism is a funny thing. It is believing in the best, most ideal version of things, yet oftentimes is portrayed as a detrimental trait. The impracticality of such an outlook in the face of the harshness of reality is likely what influences storytellers to portray idealism in such a light. For life, in all its glory, is never completely ideal. Every upside has a downside, every victory a failure. One who can only see the positive - the ideal - is not really seeing life. Idealism is blinding, in that capacity; deceiving. This is the theme tied to idealism which recurs so often in stories. To use literature as an example, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby utilizes idealism to first build up then slowly unravel the titular character

of Jay Gatsby. The idealized adopted persona of James Gatz, Gatsby is both created and ultimately destroyed by his own actions, his romantic idealism. He is an innocent victim of his own flawed perspective - his inability to accept reality - and of those who take advantage of it.
Jay Gatsby never really existed. He was always a figment, a product of the idealism of a teenager who hoped to be something greater than he was predestined for. When given the chance to rewrite his fate, James Gatz “invent[s] just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year old boy would be likely to invent” and stays faithful to this conception, for the rest of his life is built around it (Fitzgerald 98). This life is a lavish one, in which the even the deliberate, invented person behind the name Gatsby is lost among the rumors, the idealizations of “the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so [became] authorities upon his past” (Fitzgerald 97). “He’s a bootlegger” and “he killed a man” are as commonly and menially thrown around at his opulent parties as any other trivial bit of gossip (Fitzgerald 61). When the character is first introduced, all he is is speculation. No one really knows - or cares to know - Gatsby. He is larger than life, and thus unnecessary, and unimportant, to life - perhaps the price of the extent to which Gatz has taken the persona. Jay Gatsby is nothing but a product of idealizations, as seeded by those of Gatz and enriched by those of partakers in the illusion he has created.
Yet, despite his disconnect from reality, the reader is able to come to know Gatsby, as narrator Nick Carraway becomes a spectator to his life. Once his personality begins to be revealed, it is apparent that James Gatz’s idealizations did not stop with the invention of Jay Gatsby. He is infatuated with the idea of Daisy Faye, a past lover whom “he [has] wedded all his hopes and dreams to” (Edwards). Before her, all of Gatsby’s idealistic ambitions were for no one but himself, to do himself justice as “a son of God”, which he perceived himself to be (Fitzgerald 98). But meeting Daisy changed that.

Their romance was short, a summer fling too brief for any faults to yet reveal themselves, but Gatsby latched on to this idealized love. What he knew of Daisy from their short time together left him convinced that she was “the incarnation of all his elaborate fantasies, his vision of the American Dream” (Lid 179). And, thus, he cannot forget her. He cannot let her go. The novel is set nearly five years (without any interaction) after their summer together, but she is still what Gatsby lives for. Daisy is still his everything. The direction in which Gatz has developed Gatsby’s persona following their meeting is reflective of this. The Gatsby of the novel’s timeframe is an elusive, extravagantly rich socialite who lives in a grand seaside mansion and hosts exuberant weekly parties, a description which can entirely be related back to Daisy. His weekly parties were hosted with the impossible, idealistic expectancy that she would just wander in some night. Of the mansion, it is noted that, “Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay”; he looks toward her house so often that the green light at the end of her dock becomes a recurring symbol in the novel, of Gatsby’s idealistic and unwavering hope (Fitzgerald 78). Even his affluence can be attributed to Daisy’s influence, at

least partially. Regardless of his intentions before her, Gatsby’s reason for accumulating so much wealth, after meeting Daisy, was to attempt to close the gap in social standing between them. For their short time together, he was able to hide his true identity - a “penniless young man without a past” - and let her believe in an idealized version of himself, that “he was a person much from the same stratum as herself - that he was fully able to take care of her” (Fitzgerald 149). In order to make this lie his truth, to quickly elevate himself so he could be reunited with her again as soon as possible, Gatsby turned to crime (specifically bootlegging), abandoning any, even if obligatory, sense of morality, for Daisy. Almost wistfully, despite his great effort, the divide between the two can never be completely bridged, because of the “rigid and insurmountable barrier” that is class in 1920s America (Edwards). Even among the wealthy, class distinctions between “old money” (a category which Daisy falls under) and “new money” (which Gatsby is an example of) are prominent, a separation that Gatsby’s idealism blinds him to. He is unable, and unwilling, to see the futility of believing in their impossible, long burnt-out relationship, for, that fateful summer, he made Daisy “the unwitting ‘grail’ in [his] adolescent quest to remain ever-faithful to his seventeen-year-old conception of self” (Person). (To him, she represented everything he had ever strived for, his “American Dream”.) Much like this conception of self though, the Daisy to whom Gatsby is so devoted is just an idealized fabrication. It is the idea of Daisy, the version of her that he has created to embody his aspirations - not Daisy herself - that Gatsby so desperately latches onto. This is emphasized by Nick, when he, observing Daisy and Gatsby after their reunion, notes that, at times, “Daisy tumbled short of [Gatsby’s] dreams - not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion” (Fitzgerald 95). Daisy, in reality, is not “the bright symbol of Gatsby’s dreams” that he has glorified her as (Lid 179). But, his incorruptible and misplaced idealism prevents him from seeing this reality, his true reality - and thus, Gatsby is left living a fantasy.
Gatsby’s idealism is so pervasive that his entire worldview is warped by it. He physically cannot see reality for what it is; he sees only what he wants to see, and is left oblivious to the underlying implications of his and others’ actions. Such an affliction is just as dangerous as it sounds. Even alone, it could plausibly destroy him, simply in its hindrance of his ability to properly respond to situations (which idealism has caused him to misinterpret). Unfortunately for Gatsby, his outlook is not the only thing working against him. His is also a victim of others’ corruption, as attracted by his own immorality. (As previously mentioned, this immorality is, predictably, a product of Gatsby’s idealism, in that his wealth - acquired so that he could be with Daisy - stems from crime. Additionally, rekindling his relationship with Daisy in and of itself is immoral, as Daisy is now a married woman.) Of his victimization, he most notably suffers at the hands of Daisy’s husband Tom, and of Daisy herself. Together, they are instrumental in the cascade of events that leads to Gatsby’s ultimate downfall. Even before Daisy and Gatsby’s reunion, Tom is notoriously corrupt in that he is blatantly unfaithful, and has been keeping a (married) mistress for some time when he is first introduced. This can be inferred to be part of the reason as to why Daisy so willingly rekindles her relationship with Gatsby. She indulges his idealism, but, despite her frivolity, is grounded enough in reality that she is “not able to renounce time itself in the way Gatsby does in order to meet him again in the past” (Hermanson). Still, she lets him believe that he has finally attained what he has devoted his life to: her. She is cruel, in that sense. This falsehood which she has allowed Gatsby to construct comes crashing down on him when, in order to fully realize his dream, he demands Daisy renounce any meaning to her marriage, by telling Tom that she never loved him. Daisy, of course, cannot do this. And with her refusal, Gatsby’s perfect illusion begins to crumble. Driving home, Daisy is so shaken by the unexpected ultimatum that she accidentally hits - and kills - Tom’s mistress. Gatsby, while momentarily disillusioned, has not yet let go of his devotion to Daisy. He unhesitantly and immediately decides he will take the blame for the accident. Meanwhile, Tom, embittered at Daisy’s infidelity, blames Gatsby for his mistress’s death when confronted by her grieving and clearly unstable widower. (It should be noted that, at this point, Tom does not know for certain if Gatsby was involved.) This widower is the agent of Gatsby’s undoing, shooting and killing him as revenge for a crime that wasn't his. With Gatsby’s death comes the culmination of Tom’s ill will and Daisy’s carelessness, all set in motion by Gatsby’s own fervent idealism.
Humorlessly ironic, the means of Gatsby’s ultimate destruction stems but from himself. Yet he, comparatively, had done little wrong; against the corrupt backdrop of his society, he is an innocent, cheated out of his American Dream by very idealism (though unforgivably flawed) which had driven him to pursue it, and by the immorality which preyed upon its weakness. Fitzgerald uses Gatsby’s struggle and failure to comment on the social condition of his time, including the confines of arbitrary class distinctions and the often adverse allure of the so-called American Dream. Most importantly, Gatsby demonstrates humanity’s fatal attraction to investing in hope, for better or for worse, in conjunction with the inescapability of our own personal histories. With his death, Gatsby fades back into the obscurity of James Gatz, whom he always had was and forever will be, despite his desperate pursuit of - his hope for - something greater. Fitzgerald put it best: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”.