The Great Gatsby and the Power of Love

The Great Gatsby and the Power of Love

"It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which is not likely I shall ever find again." (2). The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel that takes place in the Roaring 20's. It's about a man who changes everything he is for the inaccessible woman of his dreams. After losing her before the war because of his financial status, he finally tries to win her heart back through his newly attained money. She is faced with a cheating husband and a man who wants to repeat the past. In the end, she has blood on her hands. After all his effort, he loses her in a heated argument and he loses his life to a misunderstanding. The one thing that Gatsby yearned for his entire life was, in the end, what corrupted him and did him in, love.

The one reason that Gatsby existed in this vast universe was for the love of Daisy Buchanan. She was the reason for his every breath, heartbeat, though, and action. He talks about her like she is an object to be worshiped and he is practicing her religion. He throws immense parties that outdo everyone's expectations in hopes of her simply showing up one day. He has changed his identity for his get rich scheme to prove his worth to her. " `Her voice is full of money,' he [Gatsby] said suddenly." Gatsby knows exactly what the key to getting Daisy back is. After their meetings continue on a regular basis, he fires his staff to keep their affair secret. He even goes as far as to convince her that she never loved her husband, and he tries to get her to confess this to Tom. But the thing that out shows it all is when he takes the blame for a murder committed ...

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...tely to his demise. He wanted to return to when he had the girl and life was simple. But the truth was, he wasn't James Gatz, the man that girl had fallen for, he was now Jay Gatsby, a stranger to Daisy. " `Can't repeat the past?' he [Gatsby] cried incredulously. `Why of course you can!'" (73). Maybe James Gatz could have gone back and repeated the past, but not Jay Gatsby, someone who hadn't exist in that time.

Works Cited and Consulted

Bewley, Marius. "Scott Fitzgerald's Criticism of America." Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Great Gatsby. Ed. Ernest Lockridge. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. 37-53.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.